The U.S. Mint has finally decided to stop producing pennies. I say “finally” because, let’s face it, you need a backpack full of them just to buy a single breath mint these days. And with the mint spending about 4 cents to make each one, I’m shocked they didn’t stop around the time disco died.
But despite the penny’s practical uselessness, I felt a strange pang reading about its demise – because once upon a time, pennies were my childhood joy.
When I was a boy growing up in southern New Mexico, sunshine was abundant, clouds were rare, and children were expected to be outdoors unless there was a good reason – like a tornado or dinner. “Why are you in the house?” my mother would say. “It’s nice outside!” And it always was.
My favorite outdoor adventure? Pedaling my bike down to the bank to buy rolls of pennies – 50 cents apiece – and going home to sift through them like a tiny archaeologist. My treasure map was a cardboard tri-fold coin folder, with little holes labeled by year and mint: Philadelphia, Denver, San Francisco. Each coin I plugged in gave me a rush: the thrill of the hunt, the satisfaction of completion, the occasional coppery smell on my fingers. Simple joys, but powerful ones.
As time went on, it got harder to find the coins I needed. My fellow kids were too busy throwing baseballs to care about mint marks, so I had to trade with adults – other collectors, mostly men. One of them was my eighth grade science teacher, who taught atoms by day and traded wheat pennies by night. You don’t forget a man like that.
Indian Head pennies were the holy grail. Minted from the 1850s to 1909, they were rare, but I found a few in circulation. Once, the vice president of my local bank – Mr. Campbell, a kind man with a soft spot for nerdy kids – brought out a whole bag of Indian Head pennies and told me to pick out the ones I needed. I was in heaven.
Then came the crime.
As I sat sorting them with reverence, a boy wandered over, asked what I was doing, grabbed the entire bag – and ran. Just bolted out the door.
A policeman stood nearby, but apparently wasn’t trained for “penny theft.” So I gave chase. Block after block I ran, panting, sweating and fueled by righteous indignation and teenage hope. Eventually I lost the little bandit and walked back to Mr. Campbell, empty-handed and ashamed.
To his credit, Mr. Campbell didn’t scold me. Maybe he knew what it meant to care that much about something small.
I even ran across some large cents – about the size of a quarter but much thicker. And once or twice, I got my hands on a half-cent coin, which the U.S. wisely discontinued in 1857. Makes sense – what can you buy for half a cent? What can you buy for 1 cent, for that matter?
And so, the penny goes the way of the half-cent. But for me, it will always be more than a coin. It was an adventure. A community. A chase, quite literally. It made my young heart race. And not many coins can say that.
Goodbye, old friend. You were never worth much. But you were priceless to me.
