Tag Pennies

Yay for me

Michael 14 Comments

I had such a weekend. l’ve been collecting pieces of idiocy and ran out of space in my brain before we ran out of weekend.

I doubt there is anywhere in the country where stores are not feeling the penny pinch. The US Mint stopped making pennies earlier this year. That hasn’t really caused the shortage. That the Federal Reserve Bank’s coin exchange program was directed to not accept pennies from member banks caused a big problem. Some parts of the country have none, others have enough one cent coins to last through their expected 60-year lifespan. In my neck of the woods, a major local grocery chain was running perilously low on the copper clad coins so they came up with a solution. Bring in any pennies you have laying around the house and they’ll double that in gift cards for you. The preliminary count Saturday night was over $1 million dollars in coins turned in for exchange. All because somewhere in country, banks have vaults full of rolled pennies they can’t exchange for other coinage.

Speaking of coins, there was a lot of coin dropped Friday night when The Big Cheeto gave a 1920s, Great Gatsby themed party where he performed his signature dance, the f—-ed up chicken. This on the eve when SNAP (and don’t forget WIC) benefits would be stopped. The orange menace probably thinks he’s punishing people for not working hard enough to pay their own way. I know how to stop the bleeding and get him to release the funds he is legally required to release. Tell him every dollar of benefits he holds back is $2.00 of business one of his greed-soaked friends is missing out.

There were many other tales of stupidity but I tire of listing them even though I’ve stayed away from Herr Cheese Puff’s lunacy for a while. He damn near overshadowed that today is publication day for Bad Impressions. Yay me!

See a penny, pick it up

Michael 8 Comments

Last week I was called a friend just to chat and the opening line I used was, “HI, what’s new.” “I’m sorting pennies while I still can. I haven’t found any good ones yet.” This was actually the second time in a few months our conversation started thus. Thusly? Started like that.

Last weeks news that the US Mint is officially out of the penny minting business has people across the country breaking into piggy banks looking for elusive billion dollar pennies.

Way way way back, I wrote a post about a someone who paid $1.38 million dollars for a penny. People complain when scalpers ticket brokers charge more than face value for tickets. Nobody said anything about the guy who paid $1,379,999.99 over face for a penny. Okay, so it was minted in 1793, but it’s still just a penny, right?

The chance of you pulling another 1793 penny from your safe deposit piglet is so rare it ain’t gonna happen. The chance off pulling an illusive 1943 or 1943-D penny worth a paltry $1.00 million is close too it ain’t gonna happen either. But digging up a pre-1982 penny is possible. Not probable but possible. In theory, a pre-1982 penny, thanks to its near (95%) all copper makeup, is worth at least three cents.

But is it? Copper is currently trading at about $.01 per gram, those older pennies weigh 3 grams, so they contain about three times their face value in copper metal. Except they aren’t worth 3 cents because as legal tender, it is illegal to melt down coins for their metal weight value.

It has been said the value of any object is how much somebody is willing to pay for it, yet its worth is how much somebody wants for it. Rarely are worth and value equal. If our collections actually cost what we feel they are worth, they would far exceed most people’s ability to pay for them, thus lowering their value. But it is because we place such worth on these objects that give us so much joy that they are so valuable to us. Even pennies.

Was my friend searching for that million dollar treasure or a handful of three penny pennies? Turns out neither was to be found so it didn’t really matter other than it made for a pleasant conversation and a not so worthless blog post. Or maybe that would be a priceless post.