The Ben Shoppe's Penny Vault Locket Turns a Coin Into a Keepsake

Since its founding in 2023, the California-based Ben Shoppe has tucked a penny into every order it ships, letting customers choose the year stamped on the coin. The brand calls the penny "a national treasure" on its website, and that conviction has now taken physical form: the Penny Vault, a 14k gold locket-style pendant that doesn't merely reference the coin but reimagines it entirely.

The timing is pointed. The U.S. Mint ended production of the penny in late 2025, reportedly because manufacturing each coin was costing nearly four cents to produce a coin worth one. Pennies remain in circulation, but with no new ones being struck, the supply will thin gradually, and with scarcity comes sentiment. The Penny Vault arrives into that cultural moment with something to say.

What distinguishes the pendant is how deliberately its coin has been redesigned. Where a standard Lincoln cent carries a date, the Penny Vault reads "TODAY," representing, in the brand's framing, the importance of the present moment. At the center of the coin, a woman modeled on the goddess Athena appears in profile, a figure that replaces the familiar presidential portrait with something more mythological and interior. Above her, where "In God we trust" would normally arc across the coin's face, the inscription reads instead "In self I trust," described as a reminder for the wearer to follow her instincts.

Together, those three changes transform a piece of everyday currency into something more like a personal manifesto pressed in gold. The locket format reinforces that intimacy: a locket is, by definition, a container for what the wearer holds private.

The Ben Shoppe's original packaging practice set up this moment neatly. A chosen-year penny in a jewelry box already invites a customer to attach a memory to a coin. The Penny Vault extends that logic into something worn rather than stored, collapsing the distance between the keepsake in the box and the jewelry around the neck. In 14k gold, the penny's humble origins become aspirational without being disavowed.