When Change Changed

How long has it been since you really looked closely at a coin? I haven’t paid much attention to the change in my purse since I was a young child. My grandfather emptied the change in his pockets into an old, beat up, rusty, coffee can that sat on the shelf in his workshop. When my brother and I came to visit, he would pour the coins onto his workbench and we would sort through them one-by-one.

Granddad had bought us navy blue coin collector folders with a round indentation to hold the coin. We had ones for pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, half dollars and silver dollars. I knew where to place each coin because, written underneath and printed in silver writing, was the date and number of coins minted. It may have the date of 1944 and 244.1 million. The most difficult to find were the ones with an “S” or a “D” mintmark, indicating that it was minted in San Francisco or Denver.

I didn’t realize that being a young numismatist was considered hoarding coins. And because of people like me, coins dated 1965 and 1966 didn’t have mintmarks, so that the government could keep them in circulation.

My brother and I would try to “out-find” the other one with locating the most treasured dimes, half dollars and quarters dated 1964 and before. These coins were special because they consisted of 90% silver, not copper-nickel like the coins dated in later years.

The U.S. Treasury thought it was important to continue minting some coins with silver in them. The Kennedy Half Dollars produced from 1965 through 1969 still had 40% silver content. However, there were very few in circulation because they were worth more than the face value, often ending up in melting pots. By 1971, half dollars had been changed to copper-nickel clad as well.

Yesterday, I was given a penny at a friend’s memorial. We were told about when she was young and had a friend die in a tragic accident, she asked God for a sign that her friend was with Him. She looked down and saw a penny on the ground. From that day forward she believed that a penny on the ground was there to remind us that a deceased loved one was thinking of us. The minister asked that we put the coin somewhere so that someone would find it and be reminded of their deceased loved ones.

Today’s gift was to put the coin on the sidewalk downtown for someone to find. The metallurgical content of change changed in 1964, and yesterday my perspective of a penny of change changed.

In Giving,

Robin