Brooks: America mints its last penny. What’s the new going rate for our thoughts?

Grandpa Brooks counted his pennies.

He owned a little pharmacy in Chicago and he liked to sift through the till, hunting for interesting coins. Wheat pennies. Indian head pennies. Buffalo nickels. The steel pennies they minted during World War II when America needed its copper for ammunition.

His coin collection — a gym bag full of wheat pennies and whatnot — passed to my dad. When Dad brought the collection home, we pawed through the hoard like it was pirate treasure, running our fingers through the old coins, imagining all the other hands they’d passed through, all the penny candy they’d bought.

Some old pennies are worth a fortune. These were not. Eventually, we poured them back in the bag and tucked it onto a back shelf in the closet. What else are you going to do with a gym bag full of pennies? Wheat pennies: Too cool to spend, too heavy to lug around.

For more than two centuries, pennies have filled America’s conversation and couch cushions.

We pinched pennies. We wore penny loafers. We turned up like a bad penny. We talked about pennies more than we spent them. Tourists will blow 50 cents to flatten a penny into a souvenir. That penny will never be good for anything else after that, but pennies are more keepsake than currency these days.

Now, America is about to mint its last penny.

What’s the new going rate for our thoughts?

There are something like 114 billion pennies circulating in America, with nowhere to land. Nothing costs a penny anymore. Vending machines don’t want your pennies. Most gumball machines won’t take them. Even the pennies in the take-a-penny, leave-a-penny trays by the registers sit there, mostly untaken.

In February, President Donald Trump announced that the penny was kaput. This week, the U.S. Mint placed its final order of penny blanks. Once those run out, the United States will be out of this penny ante business.

And then it will be time to nickel and dime the consumers. At some point, the price of everything will round up, because they never round down. Maybe gas stations will finally get rid of the nine-tenths of a cent they tack on to the price of every gallon. They cannot charge us nine-tenths of a cent that no longer exists ... can they?

Making cents no longer made sense. It costs more than a penny to make a penny — the federal government spends almost 4 cents to make a penny that most people wouldn’t stop to pick up if they saw it on the sidewalk. Nixing the penny is expected to save the government $56 million a year.

Four out of five transactions are cashless these days. Even if you’re paying cash, no cashier or customer wants to wait while you count out 200 pennies for a candy bar.

It was the right thing to do, but it does feel like we’re losing a little piece of ourselves. The penny was one of the first coins the newly minted U.S. Mint produced in 1793. Pennies have always been there for us. Penny dreadful. Penny saver. Penny for your thoughts.

When words failed and the world seemed unfair, we could always express our irritation through the medium of pennies. Wheelbarrows full of pennies. A couple of times a year, we’re guaranteed to get a story about someone wheeling in a cart full of pennies to pay off a fine or a tax or a bill.

Back in 2010, a protester dumped a bag full of pennies on a table in front of then-gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer. Say what you will about a bag full of pennies, it makes an impression. Emmer, in an enormous display of restraint, did not immediately start digging through the pile for wheat pennies.

The penny will be with us for a while. There aren’t enough couch cushions or wheelbarrows in America to make billions of pennies vanish all at once.

So enjoy them while they last. And if you find a penny, pick it up. All the day you’ll have good luck.