$800,000 for Set 232 of the Omega Pennies
On December 12, 2025, Stack’s Bowers auctioned 232 sets of the last minted 1-cent coins, colloquially known as pennies, on behalf of the US Mint. A total of $16.76 million was raised. This amounts to an average of $72,241 per set. However, the prices varied considerably. The “cheapest” sets sold for $48,000. The vast majority ranged somewhere between $50,000 and $70,000. The two most expensive sets were the first and the last. The first sold for USD 200,000 and the last for USD 800,000. The exorbitant price for the last set can be explained by the fact that it also contained the (invalidated) dies used to mint the Omega pennies.
What are Omega pennies and what did a set consist of?
On February 9, 2025, Donald Trump instructed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to halt the production of new pennies, as they cost 3.69 cents to produce per coin, more than three and a half times their face value. This instruction is understood worldwide as the end of the penny, although from a purely legal standpoint, the U.S. Treasury could resume production of pennies at any time without consulting Congress or the president. This is because no final congressional decision has been made on the matter to date.
The U.S. Mint took this opportunity to offer sets of the last pennies to the public. They contain three coins: one penny each from the Denver and Philadelphia mints and one gold penny from the Philadelphia mint.
All bear the Greek letter omega, marking the end of an era. The penny has been minted since 1793. The number of sets refers to this long period, representing the 232 years during which pennies were produced.
Immense demand for the Omega pennies
Even before the auction, the Omega pennies were a hot topic worldwide, and not just in numismatic media. Unreliable reports (“The $5,000,000 Penny”) fueled sensationalism and greed. So many people wanted to watch the auction (and perhaps even bid) that even the platform of Stack’s Bowers, one of the world’s largest auction houses, was overwhelmed. After the first lot was auctioned, the system appears to have crashed. Collectors report that they heard nothing but music for a good hour before they were able to access the auction again.
This is remarkable and came as a surprise. Stack’s Bowers has extensive experience in auctioning coins that have a spectacular effect on a wide audience. Among other things, the golden Sacagawea dollars that had flown into space in July 1999 with the STS-93 mission were sold here in September 2025. One of them fetched USD 550,000 and was – until the Omega pennies were auctioned – the most expensive item in modern US numismatics.
Fun fact: Did the US Mint miscalculate?
The first penny—the Large Cent—was minted in 1793. Minting is scheduled to end in 2025. That gives us the calculation 2025 – 1793 + 1, which equals 233, not the mintage of 232.
Some people were happy that the US Mint had miscalculated. But no, that’s not the case. It simply took into account that no pennies were minted in 1815 due to the copper shortage at the time.
We reported on the sale of the Omega Penny.
If you want to know more about the Denver Mint, we visited it in August 2025.
