A Penny For Your Thoughts

There is almost nothing more wonderful than finding money. There it is just sitting there. You didn't have to do anything. No effort has been expended. It's free*.

Found money.

A number of years ago I had a young friend who gave me a homemade Christmas present.

It was a cardboard oatmeal can, cut in half and wrapped in decorated blue paper. It had a slit on the removable top about an inch long.

There was a little sign on the top too. It read, "Found Money."

I still have it. At the time I would pick up the occasional penny or dime that I found in the street and put it in my right pants pocket. That was to differentiate it from the change in my left pocket, the coins that I had gotten when I broke a bill. The left hand money I had earned. The right hand money I had found.

My young friend was aware of the fact that I played this little game and gave me the gift so I could store my found coins. Very thoughtful and very creative.

When the can would get full I would sit in front of the television and put the coins in paper wrappers so I could take them to the bank to exchange them for bills. I kept a running tally in the lid.

To suggest that I was obsessive about it would overstate the effort. I was interested in seeing, however, how much I would find. I did this for twenty years.

It wasn't hard. It became automatic. Get change from a transaction...put the coins in my left pocket. Find a coin. Put it in my right pocket and then, at bedtime, when I would empty my pockets onto my dresser, I would put the found money in the can.

The result?

On the day I stopped doing it, after twenty years, I added up the columns in the can's top. I had found an amazing $760.00!

In pennies and dimes and the rare quarter. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I did find some one dollar bills, a five or two, a twenty and one fifty at Starbucks on Columbus Ave. at 67th Street. That one was amazing!

But those bills accounted for, maybe, 15% of the overall take.

The rest was all coins and mostly pennies.

People don't seem to care about pennies. If one gets dropped while looking for a quarter for the parking meter, it is left to roll away and disappear into the dirt or the gutter.

But there it is nevertheless. It might be dirty and it might be scratched but it is still there, in all of it's copper glory, waiting to be picked up, to be brought back from the dead, to be loved again. And far be it from me to ignore that penny's cry. "Here I am to save the day!"

"Come to Papa! Join your cousins in the warmth of my pocket!"

And especially an old Wheat Sheaves penny. But they don't ever get spent. They go into that funny little pocket above the right hand, bigger pocket in my jeans that was originally designed for a watch but has long ago become useless except for the Wheat Sheaves penny and/or a guitar pick. It would be where George Bailey would have put Zuzu's petals had he worn blue jeans in Capra's classic, "It's a Wonderful Life." It will, no doubt, be where Brad Pitt puts the petals when they remake the movie. That funny little, wonderfully useless pocket, Old Building and Loan Pal.

Got off track there, sorry...anyway...then the Wheat Sheaves penny goes into a different jar at home to be saved forever or to be redeemed by my grandchildren when they (the pennies, not the grandchildren. The grandchildren, as we all know, will be priceless...) are worth more than a penny apiece. And they are so cool anyway. They have old dates...1943, 1952, 1937...wonderful to think of where that penny has travelled and how many pockets its' been in. And whose pockets those were. And in what town. And to buy what. Wonderful...


I, long ago, stopped separating the earned coins from the found ones. It was getting ridiculous. Now they are all in my left hand pocket. All friends together. No favorites.

I had acheived my goal and established an important benchmark, a valuable piece of data.

On average, if you're looking, you will find $38.00 a year. That's a movie for two and a large popcorn and a large drink and a large box of Sno-Caps (or Jujy Fruits...but not enough for the dental floss to remove the piece of Jujy Fruit lodged in the teeth in the back of your mouth. The dental floss would be extra. Maybe $3.00...for the good stuff...not the stuff that frays and makes you want to gag.)

$38.00 is almost a tank of gas. In New Jersey.

It's a large pizza with all the toppings and two big bottles of soda.

It's a lot of things. And the best part of it is that it's free!

(Remember the asterisk at the beginning of this post? Well here you go...)

Actually, as we are always hearing, nothing is ever "free." After all, you have to bend over to pick the coin up. But that has its' benefits too. You are exercising without thinking about it. Come to think of it, $38.00 is three months at Planet Fitness and a bottle of water per month...which, if you only buy one, you can refill and help the environment at the same time and have a few bucks left over to apply to the cost of the abovementioned dental floss.

And another thing. Watch what happens to your walking companions when you cry out, "A penny!"

Immediately they start scanning the ground in the hopes of finding one too...or a dime or a quarter or a dollar bill.

But there are rules. There are definitely rules here. You may not pick up a coin in a known room or yard. If it's in your friend's living room or garden it's his. No question about it. No negotiation. Just leave it there.

If you see someone drop a coin or a bill and they don't notice it, that piece of money is fair game after they have left the immediate area of the "drop." It does, however, present you with a sticky moral dilemma but the money is fair game nonetheless.

As is a coin in a newspaper box, a pay phone or a parking meter. These are all areas of interpretation...moral conversations between you, your God and your dark side.

But in the street or in the gutter or on the sidewalk...you're golden! Not literally though. Gold is no longer found in coins. Gold is only found in wedding rings and on Capitol domes. And sometimes in teeth. But, not in coins.

Go for it! Pick 'er up. Put 'er in your pocket. Develop a relationship with someone who will make you a little box. Separate out the found coins from the earned ones. Keep a log. Wait twenty years. Count your money.

Be a lunatic. Start to talk to yourself. Drool.

Prepare for the end.

$38.00/year

The price of admission to Happy Acres.

"Got any spare change...?"