Of course they have to be “heads up”

You know, the old adage,

“Find a penny, pick it up

All day long you’ll have good luck”

That doesn’t apply if the penny is face down though

So in that case I’ll leave it

Sometimes I will turn it over for the next guy to pick up

I guess it’s my tormented version of paying it forward

Seems to work though, they get picked up

When it comes to the rest of the coin universe I don’t care if it is face down. I’ll be superstitious for 1.8 cents but not 8 cents. Every man has his price. Besides you don’t get the good luck benefit picking up the higher valued coins, it only works for pennies.  I really like it when I stumble across older coins. It’s kind of a nostalgic feeling. I found a 1951 quarter a while back. Back then coins actually contained silver. It wasn’t in collectable shape but still it was worth six bucks for its metal content. Amazing. I have a sock in a drawer to keep them in.

Everybody likes to find paper money, even if it’s your own “found” money you forgot you had in a pocket. It just feels like free money.

Washing machines and dryers can be a prime source of currency. Waaaayy back when I did my own, at the local coin operated establishment, I would regularly find money in the machines. I never really knew if it was mine or not but it didn’t matter, green dopamine coursed through my veins.  It was laundered too but for some reason law enforcement turned a blind eye.

Congress is considering doing away with the penny and minting other coins using  steel or aluminum instead of zinc and copper. The Canadians apparently do this already with some of their coins. It probably won’t happen though. The zinc lobby is pretty strong and nobody wants a flimsy aluminum Quarter.

At some point in time the cost to produce all coins will exceed their value but, doesn’t that mean that the coins will once again have value?  Ever since we left the gold standard, printed currency has had no true basis of value. Coin’s values float with the price of raw materials. So for the first time in a long time, money is actually worth something.

If you think about it, maybe you should ask your boss to be paid in nickels.  You could take your metallic “paychecks” to the recycler to cash them. At eight cents for every nickel, that’s just like getting a 60% raise!

If you hadn’t gotten greedy and emptied your pre-1982 piggy bank, you would find that those pennies each contain 2.6 cents worth of copper.

So,  thanks to inflation my current thoughts will cost you nearly two cents now. If you want a pre-1982 thought, it will cost a little extra. Not sure if it’s worth it.

Copyright 2011 Patrick Granfors