I need coffee in the morning. Two big mugs full and I’m good for the day.
We have a coffee machine at work where I can get a passable concoction for 40 cents. I prefer brewing my own at home and bringing it in a thermos, but that takes effort, more effort than I often have in the morning.
    So more days than I care to admit I find myself digging through the blue change jar on the kitchen counter as I’m flying out the door. Such was the scenario a few days back when to my surprise, my fingers touched a Kennedy half dollar. Yikes, I haven’t seen one of those in years.
    “Who put the half dollar in the change jar?” I shouted to my husband and son. Dead silence. No one could remember getting the half dollar in change.
    I continued grilling them until my 17-year-old gave me a look of teen-aged disgust and shouted, “Mom, let it go.”
    OK, maybe it was a visiting son from college who threw the coin in the jar. I’d have to follow that path later.
    When I mentioned my change jar find to Numismatic News Editor Dave Harper he told me I’d have to find out where it came from and write about it. So far, I explained, it was a mystery.
    That evening my husband trumped my find.
    “There’s a couple half dollars in the change jar at work,” he said. “Nobody wants them.”
    Oh, my gosh. How can that be?
    I still feel guilty about cashing in my stash of Kennedy halves years ago when I was a poor newlywed. But, hey, we had bills to pay and formula to buy.
    So today, my husband is checking the change jar at work and bringing home all the half dollars he can find. I’m not quite sure what I’ll do with them, but they’re not getting spent. In fact, they just may inspire me to start a collection.