We may not have pennies very much longer. Every so often, talk rises about doing away with the penny. Truly? I shudder to think about it. So many things cost in the amount ending in 99 cents. Land’O’Lakes butter is 2.99. Salmon is 6.99 a pound. A two-liter of Coke is 1.99. Without the penny, things would be sad that way. There would be no more 99 cent sales.
Without the penny, we’d have to rely on other measures for our luck to change. All the times we’ve seen a penny on the ground, knowing that if it is “heads up,” we pick it up. And we stoop right over for all that luck, therein. With the penny gone? I see a large market upswing rabbit’s feet. And. I am strongly opposed to rabbit’s feet, unless, of course, they are still attached to the rabbit.
But I didn’t start this wondering about the absence of the penny. Although, there are probably some things you should know where all that is concerned.
Here’s a little something for all my gardening friends. Pennies are NOT made of copper. Our little one-cent coins are actually composed mainly of zinc with a copper coating. But get this, my green-thumbed pals. Those pennies buried in a garden will repel slugs. Yes. Slugs get a little electric shock from touching copper and zinc.
Though, that’s some expensive gardening, truth be told. They say a penny costs 1.82 cents to manufacture. But the actual value of the one-cent coin is around $0.0182 each. This disparity comes to $69 million in losses compared to their total value. Although, that is peanuts compared to our military budget. Also full of copper and zinc.
Anyway, there is a thrifty side to them too. On average, the penny can circulate for about 25 years. We wear them out after that time. But they do much better than our dollar bills that only have a lifespan of about 18 months. Pennies live a lot longer.
Here’s another trick. If you need to measure something, keep 16 pennies with you. A stack of 16 pennies equals one inch. And, if you lay them out in a line, that equals one foot.
I just bring all this up because of today’s date, February 12. It is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, of course. Charles Darwin too. They were born in the same year, too, in 1809.
But Lincoln was the first historical figure to be on a U.S. coin. He was first portrayed on the penny in 1909 to commemorate his 100th birthday. Another item of note, the Lincoln penny was also the first U.S. cent to include the words “In God We Trust.” But here is the thing about today’s date. In 1959, the Lincoln Memorial design on the penny went into circulation.
I’m no coin collector, but I do keep my eye on the lookout for old coins and bills. That 1959 design of the Lincoln Memorial replaced the “sheaves of wheat” design. The old wheat penny.
My Dad was a coin collector, though. And any time one of us kids would get a wheat penny, we would run it home to my Dad. Like a gift. Of course the first thing he would do was look at the mint mark and date to see if it was the 1943-S copper Lincoln Wheat Penny. That thing is valued at $185,000, although one of them sold for a cool $1 million at an auction in 2012.
We never found the 1943-S.
But that is my fondest memory of the penny. Handing those old wheat pennies over to Dad. It felt like we were finally able to give him something, instead of the other way around. Giving does that for the soul. Makes it feel like a shiny, new penny. And then, he would always quote Franklin, saying, “A penny saved is a penny earned.”
And as always, a penny for your thoughts?
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“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”
― Epictetus
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“Money may not buy happiness, but I’d rather cry in a Jaguar than on a bus.”
― Françoise Sagan
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“The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.”
― Albert Einstein
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Penny wise. Not like the King novel. The other.
