Mild mannered RN and blogger by day, slightly crazed coin enthusiast by night. She is "Coin Girl!"
Yesterday was a convergence of several rare factors. I was off from work, my husband was off from work, the kids were in school, it was not raining and neither of us had much in the way of pressing business to attend to.
Bizarre to say the least.
So my husband and I decided to head out for nice long walk of running errands and uninterrupted conversation.
First stop was the library where I dropped off a crushing armload of books. (Upper body workout. Right?) I found a penny along the way.
Second stop was the credit union, as I had a BlogHer check to deposit. And yes, I found another sidewalk penny en route. (This is where my story get really exciting, so you might want to swallow any drinks, so you don’t do a spit take.) And inside the doors of the credit union is the coin counting machine, and in the little return tray lay a handful of coins. Thirteen coins to be exact.
Korean coins, Canadian coins, American coins and, wait for it . . .
Four individual wheat pennies from 1941, 1936, 1934 and 1919!
I asked the credit union employee if it was okay to keep the coins for my “coin collection,” (This is the part where I am working to protect my false reputation as a sane person) and he said “yes.”
In all, there was 43¢ in spendable money, (which did not include the foreign coins and wheat pennies, which I will save) to add to my Found Money Jar. (Yes, all capitals.)
My life as Coin Girl is so much fun!
Katy Wolk-Stanley
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without”
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{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }
13 coins, 43 cents. Awesome! Nice job coin girl! I envy your coin finding skills (and your mad thrifting skills). I’ve been keeping my eyes peeled. So far, its been 1 canadian penny. :/ hmph.
I guess I’ll keep the eyes peeled.
A Canadian penny is worth more than a US penny these days, so chin up!
Wheaties! Awesome – what a lucky find. My weekend total was 0.15, a dime and a nickel. Like Dogs or Dollars, I’ll keep my eyes peeled but doubt I’ll be so lucky.
I love these coin girl updates!
Good for you! Oddly enough, I just wrote a post that mentioned picking up pennies and such and stashing them away. It adds up–slowly, but it does add up!
I am also a magnet for finding coins on the ground. My kids have been embarrassed of my bending over for a penny efforts, but found money is found money. It all adds up!
Way to go! I like to call then “Homeless Pennies”. 🙂 I just found a $50 bill over the weekend too! Gotta love free money for no effort!
My biggest Coin Girl thrill recently was coming up with a fistful of mixed U.S. and foreign jinglers out of the CoinStar machine at my local supermarket. The foreign coins included a 1947 U.K. shilling in excellent condition. Since this was not only the future Queen Elizabeth II’s wedding year, but the last year King George VI was Emperor of India (“Ind. Imp.” on the coin), I’ve added the shilling to my existing collection of British royal commemoratives. And thanks, Katy, for getting me into the habit of checking these machines!
I’m mostly jealous of the leisurely kid-free day with the husband. Nice!
It was lovely.
Katy
Note to self: My day is coming, my day is coming….
Once when we still lived in southern Oregon, we were walking around town and came across a line of coins of various types–I think there was $2.20 in all. That has been my best coin find, but my husband and daughter ends up finding quarters and has been known to find a dollar or more on a given outing. I usually find pennies, but at a fair once, I found a $50 bill at the booth I was working. I set it aside in case someone claimed it, but they never did.
What a nice picture of you! You look ecstatic. You have changed my opinion about lost change. When I lived in NYC I never bent down to pick anything up, because I could have been knocked over. But now I have started looking for coins. If it doesn’t mean anything, we should at least take it as our civic responsibility to get all the lost pennies back into circulation. Ann
Can I just tell you that I follow a lot of blogs and yours is one of my favorites? It makes me happy to read about your adventures with your irrepressible good humor. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you, that is so sweet!
Katy
This is so funny. My husband actually drops pennies on the ground. In his mind a little child is finding them..just like our kids did when they were little. He has a heart of gold or maybe..copper. Keep finding that change. I love your blog.
How cute! My kids loved picking up pennies when they were tiny!
I found 26 cents on the floor of the store I work at today. The quarter will go in my wallet, but the penny goes into a jar of savings.
Katy, you make me laugh! I love your slightly nerdly enthusiasm for picking up coins! Viva Coin Girl!
I was so proud of my kiddos – barely 1 and 2. I took them to the play area at the mall a few weeks ago. Inside one of the toys – they found a quarter! Teach ’em young!
Canadian coins aren’t spendable in the US? US coins are spendable in Canada, but always at par.
A friend of my daughter’s averaged about $30/year just picking up coins inside her school and on the grounds. It seems that high school kids are too cool to pick up coins.
Gotta laugh. This post reminds me that I found a nickel on the floor at the library yesterday. It was near the honor system bookcases and coin box, where the Friends of the Library sell used books for $1.00. I picked it up and dropped it in the box, grateful that such a system exists to help me feed my book habit for minimal cost. Then I found three great books. $3.00 (plus a nickel) well spent.
I can’t believe you found four wheat pennies and one was from 1919. That is amazing! I think my two from 1950 & 1952 are great but 1919!!
At the end of the year when you go through your coins instead of just adding up the face value you should consider taking them to a coin collector shop. A lot of coins from the 70’s and earlier are worth a lot more than their face value because of their metal composition. Most collector shops will pay you more than their face value for them if this is the case.
Here’s a true story–I can almost hear your gasps. This Wednesday, there were two teenage girls at the supermarket coin machine and they had a huge jar of mixed coins they were pouring into the machine (which charges 8% for the ‘service’ of taking your money). I kept watching and watching and finally got up my courage and said, “Excuse me girls, for butting in, but if you bring your money to the bank right over there (–it was one of those supermarkets with a Wells Fargo Bank booth RIGHT INSIDE the market, no more than 10 feet away from where we were), they will give you the FULL amount of your eighty dollars and change.” I thought they might say, “Mind your own business,” but what they said hurt me worse; they, “Oh, we did that once but they give you paper coin rolls and they make you roll your own coins and it just takes too long… But, thanks.” Can you hear my gasp?
i once read an article about a guy who proved the value of pennies. he had someone timing him picking them up. bending down to pick one up from the street, stepping slightly out of the way to get one you see juuuuuust over there, etc. based on the average time it took to pick up one penny, picking up pennies is equal to earning $37.00 per hour (if you do the math, basically it takes around 1 second to pick up a penny). yay! every time you pick up a penny, you were earning a wage of $37.00 per hour, TAX FREE! so yeah, i pick up pennies, i pick them up so hard!