When was the last time that you found a coin? Quarters, nickels, dimes, and pennies were once common finds when walking around town.
My favorite places to find coins were at gas stations, car washes, and grocery store parking lots. For some reason, there were always a few laying around. When I got home, I would put the coins in a coin bank. After a few months, I would put them in coin wrappers and turn them back into the bank.
When I am at fishing accesses and boat ramps, I often use a rolling magnet to look for hooks, flies, and lures. While I am rolling, I often see coins along the edges. Metal detectors would certainly help.
I heard that the average person walked by nearly $2 of lost coins a day. That inspired me to look more closely.
Some people just have better eyes than others. They can spot a coin 100 feet away. My brother was great at seeing arrowheads and lost junk. My Dad would throw whatever we were looking for on the ground and get us to find it. Once we saw the training coin, arrowhead, or… we knew what to look for.
Aluminum cans are not worth as much coin as they used to. I still pick them up and recycle them. It’s like finding free money for more ammo or fishing tackle. At the very least, you can buy some beer or… I find more cans than coins.
Back in the day, we would place coins on railroad tracks to watch our money grow! Some of us collected coins while others tossed them into the air as pistol targets.
People just don’t use coins that much. Payments are made using a debit or credit card. Change is now recorded as numbers rather than a jingle in your pocket. Piggy banks just collect dust.
Some people say that using coins spreads Covid and other germs. I am sure that paper money is a tad dirty too. We are always getting “nickel and dimed to death!”
Homeless people and thieves are having a harder time. I remember seeing them searching parking lots for free money. Thieves would often look in the car for the coin storage in the coin organizer or drink holders. Diligent car/truck owners kept their coin storage racks full just in case. Tolls were once paid using coins. Now bigger paper amounts of tolls are required. You can buy coin tokens with big bills for car washes, laundromats, and tolls. Tolls are also paid using an “Easy Pass” so no coins are needed.
There are important uses for coins when hunting. A dime is perfect for scope adjustment or measuring a tight group at 100 yards. Sports needs coins to flip so they can decide who gets the ball first. “Heads or tails”? We used to need change to make a phone call. “Here’s a quarter, call someone who cares”. When was the last time that you saw a pay phone?
Pennies always seemed to be the most popular and important. We were “penny wise and a pound foolish”,” penny pinchers”, “spending a pretty penny”, “saving a penny for a penny earned”, “in for a penny, in for a pound.” They sure made sense.
A penny for your thoughts?
Montana Grant
