The penny's days are numbered in Canada, as the Royal Canadian Mint will stop making the one-cent coin today.
Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is set to take part in a ceremonial coin strike Friday morning at the mint's coin production facility in Winnipeg, to mark the end of production of the penny.
The ceremonial last minting of the penny starts at 11 a.m. CT.
In March, Flaherty announced in the federal budget that the penny would be eliminated from Canada's coinage system, citing low purchasing power and rising production costs.
In part because of rising prices for the metals it's made of, it actually costs 1.6 cents to produce every penny.
Ottawa estimates that it loses $11 million a year producing and distributing the penny, and that doesn't include the costs and frustrations for businesses and consumers that use them in transactions.
The government will phase the penny out starting this fall, when the mint will stop distributing the coin to financial institutions.
Winnipeg Centre NDP MP Pat Martin, who had lobbied for years to get the penny scrapped, said he is happy to see the coin finally fade away.
"People don't even bend over to pick them up off the ground anymore. If you throw one in a panhandler's cup, you get the stink-eye from them," Martin told CBC News.
"So, I mean, what good are they, right?"
Over time, the penny will effectively become extinct, although the government has noted that one-cent coins will always be accepted in cash transactions for as long as people are holding on to them.
"There's 30 billion pennies in circulation, you know, already — that's billion with a 'B' — and they produce another billion more every year," Martin said.
"I mean, finally somebody came to their senses."
Businesses will be expected to apply rounding to their cash transactions, according to the government.
Martin said rounding up or down prices is a method that works in other countries that have stopped using their low-value coins.
"If it's 96, 97, you round down. If it's 98, 99, you round up. It rounds down as often as it rounds up and you won't even notice," he said.
"All you'll notice is your pockets will be lighter and you won't have a big bucket of pennies under your bed that you have to worry about all the time."
Credit, debit and cheque transactions will be unaffected, so one cent will still be the base unit of Canadian currency.
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