Recent reader experience beats mine

I am glad I am not the only one who will stop and pick up a cent.

This morning's blog depends on it.

I was at an Aldi’s on Saturday morning heading for the car when I noticed a dime and a couple of cents on the pavement.

I stooped to pick them up.

While I did so, a woman who seemed to be in her 70s came up behind me and said I had missed one.

She proved that her vision was probably better than mine.

I turned around to acknowledge her presence and found another cent that was lying some distance from the other three coins

I picked it up.

Naturally, I looked at the four coins.

The most interesting was a 1972-D cent.

It is 95 percent copper, after all.

The other two cents were copper-coated zinc.

One was dated 1986.

The date of the other cent and that of the dime I cannot even remember on this bright Monday morning two days later.

All four coins ended up in my coin stash at the bottom of my cup holder in the car, which I empty out only occasionally.

There really is nothing to report here, except I am not the only one looking at cents.

I have an email this morning from an East Meadow, N.Y., reader who reports his latest experience.

His find is more interesting than mine.

He writes, “A few days ago, while buying my morning coffee at 7-11, while getting ready to pay for it, I noticed a Wheat-back one cent piece in one of those ‘leave a penny-take a penny’ trays on the counter.

“I picked it up and replaced it with a nickel I had in my pocket.

“When I got back to my car, I looked at the obverse and saw it was dated 1919, and most likely was in about very fine condition.

“A nice find, considering that penny is nearly 100 years old.

“Not worth a lot, but cool to find anyway.

“You can’t help to wonder how many times it exchanged hands, what it has purchased, and where has it been?

“Has it been circulating all of this time, or was it in some coffee can or drawer for many years?

“We will never know.

“But for now, it will rest in my ‘found in circulation’ collection, until one day someone puts it back, and returns it to trade hands, and travel the country again.

“That is, if we don’t abolish using the cent.”

This story is interesting, don’t you think?

So if you still check your cents, tell me of your experiences.

Buzz blogger Dave Harper has twice won the Numismatic Literary Guild Award for Best Blog and is editor of the weekly newspaper "Numismatic News."

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