Reality Amuck™

After lunch yesterday a coworker was surprised to find a Wheat Penny in his change. As we discussed the penny we realized that we hadn’t seen one in quite some time. Today when I bought coffee on the way in to the office (across town from where we had lunch yesterday) I noticed that I had received a Wheat Penny in my change.  This sudden resurgence in the occurrence of Wheat Pennies in change has taken us down a troubling thought path.

Why don’t you see Wheat Pennies that often?  Well, for one, they were only minted from 1909-1958 and most of the ones that still exist are held in personal collections. While they are worth a little more than face value most are worth less than 10 cents so there are still a few in circulation. Generally, even if someone isn’t a coin collector the unique look of the Wheat Penny will cause many to set it aside.  I know I have several in my “collection”. Of course the “collection” is only small wooden box on my desk to that I use to keep small trinkets or oddities.

So why are they showing up now? I think, and it’s only the panicky portion of my brain that causes me to think this way, that it’s connected to the economy.  In the past three or four months on the rare occasion that I actually have to go inside the bank I’ve seen someone at the coin counting machine every time generally with some large container full of change. Several local grocery stores have similar coin machines near the front of the store and many times lately I’ve seen people converting change into dollars.  (Side Note: You really should use the machine at the bank and skip the surcharge at the grocery store). It is my thought that more and more people are breaking into their “piggy banks” and coin collections in order to keep going. Do we keep this full collection of State Quarters, or do we buy food? In my house food always wins.

I guess the majority of Americans voted for change, and for now that’s all many of us have left; change. Save the electrons and don’t clog the interwebs with e-mails. I don’t blame either party for the current economic crisis. I blame both parties.  I blame each and every politician whose votes helped erode the safeguards put in place after the Great Depression to prevent situations like our current one.  Regardless of who got us here and why all I know is that it seems there are more Wheat Pennies than usual out there now and I suspect we’ll be seeing lots more for a while.  I’m not going to panic until I start seeing Susan B. Anthony on a regular basis.

BTM