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My friends just moved into a new (to them) home. When they moved in, they found that the previous owners had left the place spotless but also had left a penny on every windowsill in the home. What is the significance of this, if any?
There are many traditions of leaving protective tokens or amulets on windowsills and thresholds to guard the household against evil spirits or plain old bad luck: pennies serve the purpose very well. This fine old custom has nearly disappeared in our crassly skeptical times, yet it is a sensible and economical supplement to the more common practice of shelling out money for homeowner's insurance. How much better to prevent theft, fires, floods and tornadoes in the first place than simply be compensated for their ruinous effects, minus a large deductible!
In addition to being tidy and considerate of others, the prior owners of this house must have had a proper reverence for the luckiness of pennies. It was no doubt part of their thoughtfulness to leave the pennies behind for the new owners. The Penny Priestess hopes your friends have left them in place, as it may be unlucky to remove them.
Are there any anti-Semitic connotations of someone leaving a small handful of pennies on one’s doorstep anonymously?
It is difficult for the Penny Priestess to conceive of the act of leaving pennies on a doorstep as other than a mitzvah, since the luck of the penny leaver redounds to the penny finder. The Penny Priestess has heard from others who felt that they were being teased or stalked by someone leaving pennies for them to find. However, there are (sadly) a multitude of more obvious ways to express hatred, bigotry, or general xenophobia; and it is hard (at least for the Penny Priestess) to see menace or intimidation in a humble penny. Whatever the motive for leaving these pennies at your doorstep, they are still lucky, as all found pennies are. Don’t worry about it—just pick them up.
I had three highly unusual things happen to me yesterday. First, I had a borderline heated conflict with a few colleagues. Came home and changed clothes, put on my slippers, walked around the house and felt something weird inside my shoe. Took my left slipper off and found a quarter (25 cents) inside of it. That was the first time in my entire life that I've ever found a coin in a shoe. A short while later I got on the computer and an ex-lover I had not heard from in almost a year IMd me out of the blue. But my question to you is really about the quarter in the slipper. This question may seem silly, but for some reason the three incidents really struck me as being highly odd and even this morning I am still intrigued.
Generally speaking, the Penny Priestess doesn't do quarters—just pennies. However, there is a tradition of placing coins in one's shoes for luck. Tradition does not specify the denomination or species of the coin, but a penny would certainly be more comfortable than a big clunky quarter. The most familiar version of this good luck ritual is the custom of placing a silver coin in a bride's shoe and, yes, often the left shoe is specified.
Do these three events coming together suggest that you should forgive any quarrels or conflicts you might have had with this ex-lover and start seeing him again? The Penny Priestess cannot say: she is not quite that powerful as a seeress; and she doesn't do quarters, just pennies.
Someone visited my home recently and used my bathroom. When they left I found a penny in front of the toilet placed tails up. What does this mean? Thank you for any information concerning this incident.
Most interesting! It happens that pennies and toilets share a rich social and linguistic history. Back in the days when public facilities were usually pay toilets, the fee for a pee was one penny. (Later inflated to a dime, a shilling, a franc, 500 lire, etc., depending on the nationality of the toilet.) “To spend a penny” is old-fashioned slang in the United Kingdom for “to urinate.” It would be nice to suppose that “pee” is similarly derived from the slang for pence as “pee” (five pee, ten pee, and so on). But Webster’s Third International, that stodgy old spoilsport, says that “pee” originated as p___, a euphemistic shorthand for the more vulgar “piss”.
The Penny Priestess cannot tell you whether your particular penny was dropped deliberately (perhaps as some obscure reference to the British slang phrase) or accidentally (in the shuffling up, down, and around of the visitor's clothing). However, this penny, like all found pennies, is lucky. Do not despise it for its unsavory origins but add it to your lucky penny jar, if you have one.
Every now and then between fifty and a hundred pennies will show up on the street in front of our driveway. My son and husband pick them up. What does this mean? It has been going on for a few years and it is just in front of our house. We are baffled.
All too many people impiously and foolishly toss their pennies away as trash, but certainly very few of them are tossing whole handfuls at a time. The Penny Priestess will hazard a guess that this unknown penny litterer is either a barista or a server in a deli or some other low-cost eatery—someone, in other words, who receives a lot of crummy tips that consist mostly of small change and a few crumpled one dollar bills.
To avoid a lot of awkward his/her-ing and other circumlocutions, let’s suppose this person is a waitress at a sandwich shop. She hates her job. She particularly hates how people leave their change on the table as a tip—as if she wanted their lousy pennies! On her way home (or more likely on the way to her second job), she sorts through the change and dumps the almost-worthless pennies in the street. Why in front of your house and not your neighbor’s? That the Penny Priestess cannot say, having never visited your neighborhood. Most likely this downtrodden and embittered waitress dumps her pennies regularly in different locations chosen for different reasons—maybe one spot is relatively secluded, another close to the bus stop or her parking place. Two things are clear: First, you, or at least your husband and son, are very lucky. Second, since the luck of a found penny comes from the person who lost it, this poor waitress is never going to escape her dead-end job unless she starts holding on to her pennies.
Here, recently, everywhere I look there are two pennies. On the floor board of my car, I looked down on the floor in front of my desk at my office, two pennies, on my dresser, where I never put money, two pennies and today, in my drawer at work, two pennies, I put them in my pocket. What’s with the two pennies?
Previously, the Penny Priestess heard from a man in San Francisco who was finding three pennies everywhere he looked. This seemed very lucky indeed, for not only is three a charm, but the Pythagoreans believed three—the triad—to be a sacred and powerful number. Ion of Chios wrote, “All things are three, and nothing more or less; and the virtue of each one of these three is a triad consisting of Intellect, Power, and Chance.”
Now, as it happens, the Pythagoreans took a dim view of the number two—the duad—considering it to be the source of all divisiveness. Yet they also called it “Diversity” and saw it as the source of genius, motion, boldness, fortitude, and femininity. But what did the Pythagoreans really know about pennies? Practically nothing, judging by their surviving writings. The Penny Priestess says simply that all pennies are lucky—two pennies, doubly so.
There may or may not be a personal message in these penny synchronicities. Carl Jung thought that synchronicity, which he also described as “meaningful coincidences,” was evidence for his idea of a collective unconscious, a unifying dream world of symbols and archetypes shared by all humanity. Well, maybe. The Penny Priestess believes that these synchronicities are the work of the trickster gods, who like to scatter coincidences along our way, sometimes to give us a warning or advice, more often just to tease.
After finding a penny, does the luck transfer to me or is it lucky only as long as I physically have the penny with me? If I put the penny in a jar will I still have the luck with me or have I put the luck in the jar with the penny? Is there any certain period of time the penny luck remains with the finder?
Luck is a property only of animate beings; indeed, life may not be possible without it. So, when we say that pennies are lucky, we actually mean that pennies have a special virtue as conductors of luck, carrying it from the penny loser to the penny finder. Once you hold the penny in your grasp, the luck is now yours, providing you do not subsequently lose the penny.
All found pennies are lucky, but how much or how long depends very much upon the intrinsic luckiness of the individual penny loser (how much luck he had to lose) and the penny finder (how much luck he needed to avert disasters headed his way). The penny could be weakly but durably lucky if it came from someone chronically careless with pennies, but went to someone who had been finding a lot of pennies and so had luck to spare. In contrast, the penny could be extremely lucky but only momentarily so if the penny finder was at imminent risk of being run over by a truck or flattened by a piano dropped by careless movers. We can never know just how lucky we are, but we do know that we are a little bit luckier every time we find a penny.
A friend of mine has been finding pennies on her doorstep. She is a very spiritual person in respect to God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. She is very very very much on guard with respect to things she does not understand and that which reeks of witchcraft and ungodly origins. She suspects that she is being targeted by ill meaning folks with witchcraft and satanic ritual. Do pennies on the doorstep in any way reflect this sort of thing? I have read through your responses to others and find them interesting. However, I know there are dualities in all “faiths” with a little of the anti in them.
Aside from a fervent belief in the luckiness of found pennies, the Penny Priestess’ own spirituality consists mainly of a feeling that that there is a lot out there that we do not understand. If your friend understands the Trinity she is well ahead of the theologians. Augustine wrote fifteen volumes on the subject yet can hardly be considered to have gotten the final word. But to your question: Finding chicken entrails or cryptic symbols scrawled in blood on one’s doorstep might be worrisome, but pennies? Innocent “In God We Trust” Honest Abe Lincoln pennies? For whatever reason they may have been left, they cannot be doing any harm.
I recently remodeled an upstairs apartment. I found several pennies face down under the baseboard. Does this have a meaning?
The Penny Priestess personally believes that everything has a meaning, not just everything having to do with pennies but absolutely everything—a cloud passing overhead and throwing everything into momentary shadow, a cryptic fragment of overheard conversation, a breeze rippling through a field of grain, the staccato barks of the neighbor’s annoying dog—only the meanings are hidden from us poor befogged and bewildered mortals.
Possibly the previous occupant was careless with pennies and swept them under the baseboards, or played pitch penny against the wall to pass the time and these were the pennies pitched too far. The fact that they are all tails up does seem deliberate, however. As mathematician Ivars Peterson points out, on a random toss the Lincoln penny has a heads-up bias. However the pennies got there, they are assuredly lucky. Perhaps they will bring you a nice, quiet tenant who always pays his rent on time.
I know this is a really weird question, but can you put a good luck charm on a penny?
No question can be too weird for the Penny Priestess, so long as it concerns pennies. The answer is: of course you may, only you might not like the requirements. It is nothing nasty or difficult like collecting newt eyes and bat wings. To put a good luck charm on a penny you simply have to let it negligently drop to the ground.
Unfortunately—since luck can be neither created nor destroyed—the good luck that the penny acquires comes from you and goes to the person who picks up your lost penny. If a mere charm could endow pennies with luckiness de novo, if one could coin luck as easily as one mints a penny, then surely the cumulative superabundance of charmed pennies would long ago have transformed this miserable planet into a paradise of plenty and equality. No such luck.
For years I have tried to remember the rest of the ditty of “find a penny pick it up, all that day you’ll have good luck, find a penny let it lay and ....” Might you know the rest of the line?
Also, we have had many guests this past season and have found a penny in the empty drawer saved for guests’ use. Is there some thought about placing a penny in an empty drawer?
The second couplet of that doggerel rhyme is usually the sentimental, “Give a penny to a friend and your luck will never end.” The Penny Priestess has addressed the theological implications of these lines elsewhere. The less common variant you cite ends predictably with “all day long you’ll have bad luck.” The Penny Priestess considers all such good/bad, heads/tails dualities to be poor theology. If you spy a fallen penny and neglect to pick it up, your luck remains just as it was, good, bad or mediocre.
The Penny God does not favor penny extremists, nor does he smile upon the penny-greedy. It may be rational and prudent to let a found penny lie if the penny is lying in a busy road or in an unusually disgusting puddle. You will be no more unlucky than you already were, and the penny may well go to someone whose need is greater than yours. The Penny Priestess would amend the rhyme to the less punitive: “Find a penny, leave it alone, the luck will go to persons unknown.”
Now for your second question: There is an obscure sect of penny worshipers who deliberately place pennies in meaningful locations to bring luck to their endeavors. It is possible some penny-pious guest put the penny in the drawer to bless your home or to bring happiness to their visit. It is equally possible that the penny dropped, unnoticed, out of one guest’s belongings, and all your subsequent visitors were either too respectful of your household luck or too penny-indifferent to pick it up. In any case, a thoughtful host might leave it there, as a small offering of luck to any guest who needs it—a courtesy far greater, to those who might appreciate it, than fresh linens and a comfy bed.
My mom recently passed away from cancer. Prior to her passing, for several days she was trying to tell me something about pennies. On the fourth day I finally got a little information out of her. It went like this: She told me to get all the pennies—I had to make sure I had them ALL. I got all that I had and then she said I had to put them on the floor. After I put them on the floor, she said I had to pick them all up and put them back. After I put them back, with great relief in her mind, she said “That’s it, now everyone will live, we will all have eternal life.” I thought this very odd and at first attributed it to the drugs she was taking for her pain. However, I spoke to several people about it because she was so intent when trying to tell me and so excited about it when she finally was able to make me understand and then was so relieved afterwards. A few people told me they had heard some kind of story like this but couldn’t remember how it went. I have since researched this on the internet for endless hours and really come up with nothing even close. We sent her to her resting place with bags of pennies hoping it will help her RIP. But can you help our family with this story or myth or whatever it may be?
Was your mother of some distinct ethnicity? Could she have heard stories and folklore from the old country as a child? If so, you might try researching the folklore and funeral customs of that country. Her request—and her statement when you fulfilled it—suggest the pennies were part of a resurrection ritual: they are first placed on the ground, as if dead and interred, then picked up again as if restored to life. Many different cultures have a folklore tradition that associates pennies (or other small coins) with death and the afterlife. There is the almost universal custom of placing pennies on the eyes or under the tongue, to pay for passage to the underworld—a practice that survived in the Christian era under various guises. A wake or a funeral might include a collection box for pennies, which were then given to the poor or to the parish priest in exchange for prayers to be said for the soul of the deceased. Pennies were sometimes thrown by mourners into the grave. So placing the bags of pennies in your mother’s grave is a loving gesture with many centuries of history and meaning.
My friends and I were talking tonight about pennies and their different fables. Most of us were told as children: find a penny pick it up, for the rest of the day you’ll have good luck. I have also heard the story of a penny found means a ghost is thinking of you—heads up it’s a male, tails up it’s female, and the year of the penny has some significance but I cannot remember. Could you help us with the rest of the story?
Well-meaning adults invent such fables to teach their young proper reverence and awe for the unseen forces that protect us from ourselves. No thinking person can doubt that our personal happiness and our very survival depends upon luck, yet the nursery rhyme, “Find a penny, pick it up, And all day long you’ll have good luck,” is an overly concrete simplification.
All found pennies are lucky, but the good fortune they bring is of no constant or knowable duration. We might be happy forever after (unlikely, but we might), or we might have just one brief burst of good luck. Perhaps that momentary delay caused by stooping to pick up and inspect our new-found penny changes the course of events, so that we are preserved from stepping in front of an oncoming truck at the next corner, or just from encountering an unpleasant acquaintance whom we would rather avoid. Nonetheless, that simple nursery rhyme successfully trains children to pick up pennies because they are lucky, as they certainly are.
Many of those same well-meaning adults, determined to ensure their children pick up pennies, embroider the truth further with elaborate fictions about angels in heavens or (in your instance) ghosts depositing those pennies especially for us. The Penny Priestess personally considers that, if the dead may return in spirit and apport objects from one place to another, then surely they would use their powers to communicate matters of greater moment than a greeting card sentiment along the lines of “Uncle Fred—thinking of you” or “Best wishes from Grandma.” The traditional poltergeist activities of knocking books off shelves and swinging creaky doors open and shut have a more respectable spookiness to them.
You might have heard a story claiming that even and odd dates had some special dichotomous meaning—male/female, bad/good luck—but here again we find only a story told to children to teach them respect for the penny. The Penny Priestess firmly believes that the penny’s date, mint mark, and condition are all fraught with hidden signficance—only we are not privileged to know their meaning.
I think I’m being stalked and the stalker leaves me pennies in odd places, on my window sill yesterday, etc. Normally I go with the German saying: “Honor the penny and you will be worth the dollar.” So I pick up the occasional penny for good luck, but being stalked is bad and I need to stop it. I’m a foreigner and have no clue about the cult of pennies or any interest in the worship of money, but I am irritated by being stalked and what does this penny thing mean? I hope you are a priestess of the good and pursue your penny worshiping for purposes of benefiting the common good, are you?
The Penny Priestess is familiar with that beautiful and noble German saying, so little known here in the United States. The cult of the almighty American dollar does not extend to the humble penny. If you are a new resident of this country, it could be you are finding so many pennies because there are more to find. Most Americans despise pennies for their limited buying power and will fling them to the ground along with their ATM receipts, cigarette butts, spent chewing gum and fast food wrappers.
If the pennies are being deliberately placed for you and only you to find, the message (perhaps an allusion to “a penny for your thoughts”?) does not seem menacing. The penny is among the most innocent, unassuming and harmless of our common possessions. It cannot wound, or start a fire, or arouse envy in others. According to the tenets of our penny religion, the luck of a found penny comes from the person who lost or abandoned it. So, even if the pennies are being left with some malicious intent, what is meant for evil is turned to your good luck. The Penny Priestess recommends that you continue to honor the penny and to pick these pennies up, since, however they got there, they are nonetheless lucky finds.
The penny faith is admittedly not among the so-called major religions—if only because no wars, pogroms or persecutions have yet been committed in the name of the Lucky Penny God—but neither is it a cult. We do not wear silly robes or babble prophecies—nor do we worship money or pretend to a luckier-than-thou superiority to others. Our penny observances are devoted purely to acknowledging the overwhelming importance of luck in determining one’s health, happiness and prosperity. The Penny Priestess herself can say that she has never made a penny by her religion, except for those she picks up.
I was reading the decades old minutes from our club where they used to have a penny drill. What is a penny drill?
Hmmm. Penny drill. Fasting, meditation and prayer did not help the Penny Priestess with this one. She had to consult Google. From Google we learn that many different sports have a “penny drill” designed to improve some aspect of technique. A golfer’s penny drill is to putt off a stack of two pennies. Marksmen will balance a penny on the gun sights to improve steadiness and control. For training divers, a penny drill is pretty much just what you would expect—and quite difficult if the penny is dropped into a silty river bed rather than a swimming pool. In fencing, the proper style of a lunge can be checked by a penny placed under the heel or on the toes. At least one downhill ski instructor suggests a “penny drill” to improve stance; in this instance the penny is put under the tongue of the ski boot and held in position by keeping the shin pressed forward in the boot.
So, if you belong to a golf, ski, gun, swim or fencing club, you have your answer. But there is another category of “penny drill” practised by old-fashioned women’s auxiliaries and charities. A small sampling of rural newspapers and old club minutes (online and indexed by Google) report the result of the club penny drill, which appears to be both a game (with a winner) and a fund raising exercise. These penny drills might have been timed or fast-pace versions of an old parlor game in which participants give or take pennies from a pot as they answer “yes” or “no” to such ladylike questions as: “Have you ever worn white shoes after Labor Day?” and the relatively risque: “Did you meet your husband on a blind date?” The winner is the woman with the most pennies at the game’s end, but the contents of the penny pot would go to the club’s favorite charity.
One cannot become an expert fencer, golfer or sharpshooter with a credit card. A question-and-answer game played with dollar bills in place of pennies would inspire more cheating than charity. Let us praise the Penny God for the manifold goodness and utility of the humble copper-clad penny!
My dear friend found two pennies yesterday night and gave me one, saying that we make a wish each. We had a wonderful evening together before, so I wonder if there’s any secret meaning (I mean love) in that behaviour? He also told me to throw the penny in water after making the wish. What do you think about that practice?
Finding two pennies, one for each of you, is a very good omen indeed, since we know that luck and love travel together. The Penny Priestess feels it is unwise to toss pennies into fountains, wells and lakes for one very practical reason: the luck of a found penny can only come from the person who lost it; therefore, it seems prudent to keep a tight grasp on one’s pennies.
But love is neither practical nor prudent, and your friend’s penny ceremony has an intrinsic beauty. If the two of you made the same wish, one that is within your own powers to fulfill, then you will not be needing any of the luck you might have tossed away with your two pennies!
I heard somewhere that if you find a penny tails up that you should pick it up, but a heads up was bad luck ... ever heard of that?
This is a novel and somewhat surprising penny heresy. The doctrine of penny/luck dualism more often proclaims that heads-up pennies are lucky whereas tails-up pennies are unlucky. Could it be that these Penny Manichaeists are trying to gull others into picking up all the pennies that they (falsely) believe to be unlucky?
The Penny Priestess has tried to root out this pestilent heresy but to no avail. The major religions have many well-developed strategies to discourage heterodoxy, such as stoning, mutilation, amputation and the ever-popular conflagration or burning at the stake. The Penny Priestess must instead rely on gentle reasoning to persuade her fellow penny believers that all pennies, whether heads or tails up, are holy and good and worthy of veneration, or at least worth picking up.
We are born into this world in a state of original bad luck. Personal merit and hard work are insufficient in themselves to bring us to a state of good luck. (Why else would so many innocent creatures suffer so horribly?) The penny dualists err in failing to recognize that the global burden of bad luck greatly exceeds all the pennies ever minted. Thus the good luck of a found penny (whether heads up or tails up) may be manifested only as a partial cancellation of bad luck. We show our respect for the Penny God and his pennies whenever we remember to reflect that it (whatever it may be) could have been worse.
Someone once told me that when you find a coin on the ground and you pick it up it means that someone in heaven is thinking of you. Have you ever heard this before?
Hah! The Penny Priestess sees what is going on here. First it was Neoplatonism and the festival of Adonis, then the Druidic Yule tree and the Anglo-Saxon celebration of the vernal equinox—now they are after our Penny God. A certain major religion is always pilfering the best ideas of the minor religions. Then that major religion puts its own bigger-and-better marketing spin on the concept—gifts under the tree! a cute bunny (rather than a scary pooka) providing home delivery of your fertility-symbol eggs! good luck straight from heaven with every coin you find! Join now and get the afterlife of your dreams!
Well, since the Penny Religion is ecumenical and all-accepting, you may believe in that thoughtful person in heaven if you must. But it’s really the Penny God. And it isn’t coins—just pennies.
Is it bad luck to dump my jar of pennies into a Coinstar machine?
We know that the good luck of a found penny comes from the person who lost it. Logically, the fewer pennies one owns, the less the chance of unluckily losing one. Converting a jar of pennies to cash should therefore be luck-neutral or even mildly positive.
However, the Coinstar transaction must be managed with great care. You certainly don’t want to spill any pennies. And you should be sure your penny jar contains only ordinary, negotiable, good-quality coins. The Coinstar machine will filter out and keep any coins it evaluates as non-negotiable funny money. Take your coins to a U.S. machine, for example, and any Canadian or U.K. pennies or Euro cents will be snatched away. The machine will also keep (without compensation) any 1943 U.S. steel cents (actually worth about 50 cents) or any badly damaged or sticky pennies. You will not even know this has happened until your luck turns. You get laid off work, come down with a cold, or drop a good wine glass, and only then will you realize—alas, too late!—that you must have lost a penny inside that Coinstar.
Even after you have successfully emptied your jar of clean, negotiable pennies into the Coinstar machine, you ought not relax your guard until the entire transaction has been completed. If, for example, you deposited five hundred pennies but misplaced your certificate or gift card before cashing it, it may well be argued that you have lost not five dollars (merely annoying) but five hundred pennies (terribly unlucky!).
Given the many risks and unknowns, the Penny Priestess opts for the old-fashioned course of rolling her own coins and taking them directly to the bank.
I am emailing you from the UK. My boss has found a five pence piece stuck to his back gate and wonders if there is any superstitious meaning behind this deed. Can you help?
Unless your employer strongly resembles Queen Elizabeth and the image has been defaced, the intention cannot have been evil. To the Penny Priestess’ knowledge, the traditions of leaving pennies places are all positive and beneficent. Pennies are tossed into fountains and wells to bring luck or grant wishes. Pennies are left at thresholds (a back gate would qualify) to protect the dwelling and its inhabitants from misfortune and malevolent spirits. In the United States, no one has ever considered nickels to be lucky: the coin is always a penny. But, since the old silver sixpence was a lucky coin in English and Irish folklore, a five pence piece might be the modern substitute.
You do not say how the coin was stuck to the gate—whether with glue, a nail or some unidentifiable gunk—or how long it might have been there. Could a previous occupant have fastened it there to protect his garden and residence? Might a tradition-minded friend or family member have thought your employer could use the luck and stuck it there with a bit of gum? Or could a passerby have picked up a gunk-coated coin, not worth keeping, and put it on the gate to get it off his hands? Whatever its origins, the Penny Priestess would advise leaving the coin there, if only as a Penny-Pascal’s Wager: it can’t be doing any harm and might well be doing some good.
The Penny Priestess cannot tell you the meaning, which is known only to the Penny God. The significance is that finding a penny is lucky; finding three pennies is thrice lucky, and maybe a bit more, since three is a lucky number. Good things come in threes, as we often hear, and the Pythagoreans in particular thought very highly of the number three. Ion of Chios wrote, “All things are three, and nothing more or less; and the virtue of each one of these three is a triad consisting of Intellect, Power, and Chance.” Just keep on picking up those pennies, whether you find one (unity), two (duality), three (harmony) or any other number of them.
Why do some people put pennies on the eyes of the deceased?
One explanation is that the pennies were traditionally used to keep dearly beloved’s eyes shut for a deathbed viewing or a wake, since no one enjoys the cold stare of a corpse, however well-loved during life. So James Joyce writes in Ulysses: “She bore his children and she laid pennies on his eyes to keep his eyelids closed when he lay on his deathbed.” This seems nicer and more respectful than the contemporary embalmer’s trick of glueing the eyelids shut. But it may have been a rationalization or adaptation of an older, pagan tradition.
In the ancient world, it was widely believed that you could take it with you. Thus, the rich and noble were buried with precious jewels and artwork to carry their high status with them into the afterlife—and a good thing too, because archeology would be a drab, dull subject if they hadn’t. For the not-so rich and not-at-all noble, the respectable minimum was to furnish the departed with the little bit of pocket change for the journey into the Beyond. The ancient Greeks and Romans placed a low value silver coin called an obol in the mouth of their dead, which was to pay Charon to ferry the ghost across the river Styx into the underworld. Many other cultures also buried coins with their dead, apparently on the shared assumption that their journey was long and might involve expenses. If the pennies on the eyelids are a survival of the tradition of paying Charon for his ferry services, the two-cent fare seems very reasonable in an era when a one-way subway ride comes to two dollars.
Just discovered your website while trying to research the significance of putting pennies over doorways to ward off evil spirits. Friends just moved into a new home and within a couple of nights they were wakened nightly by the sound of a child crying. They also discovered pennies over every doorway in the house, which they removed. I’ve understood that the placement of pennies over doorways (they were always face up) is seen as a way of warding off evil spirits. Do you know anything more to enlighten us? Should they return the pennies to their places?
There is an ancient and worldwide tradition of placing good luck talismans or tokens above or below a threshold—to keep evil spirits out and to empower the good spirits within. Usually only the outer doorway is so protected, but no harm in being thorough. The Penny Priestess commends the taste of the previous house owners in choosing pennies over clunky horseshoes or garish hex signs. It may be that the household gods—Penny Penates—are wailing for the loss of their treasure. Given that possibility, the Penny Priestess is in favor of restoring the pennies.
My last name is Penny. Am I lucky or is it insignificant? I also have a business using my name. I’m trying to come up with a catchy logo—any ideas? It’s a service business.
Of course you’re lucky: it’s a lovely name. Think of the poor unfortunates who have to go through life with names like Skoggs or Crapley or Borenschlosser. You are not so lucky, however, that people are going to fall over themselves offering you free marketing consultations. Besides, if you took a close look at the website, you would recognize that graphic design is not the Penny Priestess’ forte.
As the teacher of 55 public education students, I have challenged them to ask any question they wish, and I will seek out the answer if I do not have it on hand in mind or library. Alas, I have seemingly been bested by today’s brain buster and I am seeking from your well of knowledge the answer to the following:
“How many pennies are lost each day?”
This question came from a student who was responding to my prompt, “Would you rather have $5,000 per month or all the pennies that are lost each day in America?”
Please help us solve this copper clad conundrum.
Having once been a teacher herself, the Penny Priestess will strive to keep her answer as succinct and educational as possible:
å− = [ Ρcirc ± σ ⁄ Ρ year ]
where å− represents lost change, Ρyear is the number of new pennies entering circulation per year, and Ρcirc is the number of pennies remaining in circulation per year, and σ is the give-or-take statistical fudge factor.
At this point, it becomes necessary for the Penny Priestess to confess that she taught English, not Math—which she finds very pretty but utterly incomprehensible.
Fortunately, the highly educational topic of counting lost pennies has been broached before, in a 1999 issue of the online newsletter, Chance News. They have a bit of trouble with the problem too. However, they do cite the official “estimated annual attrition rate” for U.S. coins as 5.5%. The United States Mint reports minting 8,234,000,000 pennies in 2006.
With the aid of a calculator, even the Penny Priestess can do the math on this one: that’s 452,870,000 pennies leaving the circulation each year. Of course, the estimated annual attrition rate includes all the pennies dumped into drawers and coffee cans—as well as all the pennies reverently deposited in lucky penny jars and shrines. If by “lost” we mean pennies that have been discarded or dropped, whether deliberately or accidentally, then lost pennies would be a much smaller subset. Alternatively, it could be argued that all coins that disappear from circulation (except those enshrined in lucky penny jars or coin collections) have been “lost”—in which case perhaps some 400 million pennies go missing every year. Since we’re dealing with very big and highly inaccurate numbers, call it a million a day. Tragic!
The Penny Priestess could have given you her answer to your original question without a moment of hesitation or calculation: take the lucky pennies over the cash—always, every time!
I have personally witnessed on two different occasions people finding pennies and then eating them, thinking it was good luck. Is this true? And, if so, how much more luck does it bring?
One other question, if you don’t mind me asking, is for the formula used to find an individual penny’s luck quotient.
To eat a found penny strikes the Penny Priestess as cultish and extremist—and, while extremism may be the holier-than-thou vogue in many other religions, the Penny God does not look with favor upon penny extremists and penny martyrs. The Penny Priestess recommends putting found pennies in one’s pocket, not in one’s mouth.
Somewhat like M&Ms, pennies do melt in your mouth, or at least your stomach—which brings up another, admittedly minor consideration. Pennies are toxic. Not “Aaarghhh! Poison! I’m dying!” toxic, but toxic nonetheless. Dogs and babies, both notoriously fond of bolting down random objects found on their all-fours forays, can be rendered quite ill from penny ingestion.
It apparently takes a considerable dose to bring down an adult, but penny pica is not unknown in the medical literature. If one of your penny eaters should stumble upon a large cache of dropped coins (not an unusual find) and feel compelled to eat them all ... well, he might achieve some measure of postmortum fame as an interesting case report in a third-tier medical journal. Probably not the sort of luck he anticipated.
How can our lucky pennies be poison? Blame the penny atheists at the U.S. Mint, who pinched all the copper from our coinage. All Lincoln cents minted from 1982 onwards have been 97.5% zinc (a nasty, base, ignoble metal) with just a thin coating of copper to keep them acceptably penny-like. It is the zinc that is poisonous in overdose. Curiously—dare we say mystically?—the effect of a zinc overdose is to cause a copper deficiency. Our puppies, toddlers, and schizophrenics might all be healthier and happier with a true copper penny. (Well, okay, you can die of copper poisoning too, but it takes some doing. In our busy, on-the-go lives, who really has the time anymore to swallow 700, or even a relatively modest 275 copper coins?)
Whether a pre-1982 penny might be intrinsically luckier than a debased post-1982 penny is a difficult theological question to resolve. But we do know that the luck quotient of a found penny comes from the person who lost it and so must be unique and knowable only to the Penny God. All found pennies should be treasured but not consumed, as they might spoil one’s appetite in a big way.
What do you call a person who follows the Penny God as I do? For example, on a profile that has a space for religion (e.g., “Religion: Christianity”), what would I put? The best I can come up with is “Religion: Follower of the Penny God”. Surely there is a more convenient label. Also, do you think I can be a follower of the Penny God (see how unwieldy that is?) and still call myself agnostic? Many thanks from one happy to be one of the Penny God’s chosen ones.
Ah! You ask a question that the Penny Priestess has been asking herself, since for marketing and missionary purposes, a snappy name is essential.
“Tokenite” has a nice ring to it but means nothing to the uninitiated. By the time you are halfway through explaining that Token is the name of the Penny God, who dwells in lost-and-found pennies and endows them with luck, your potential convert is walking away, most likely as rapidly as possible. You might call yourself a Pennyist, a Pennean, or a Pennearian, except then you might be mistaken for a breakaway sect of Pastafarians.
Then again, the standards are not so very high. Most of the so-called mainstream religions are named for doctrinal differences that once seemed worth a martyr’s crown but now are largely irrelevant. The Presbyterians no doubt had an important point to make about the precise role of a priest/minister, but how many of their churchgoers could explain it now? Do Episcopalians ever regret taking a name that suggests they believe in bishops rather than a god or gods? Are Methodists more methodical, and does it matter if they are?
The Penny Priestess notes with interest that some Christian sects (Calvinism/Calvinist, Lutheranism/Lutheran) are named after their principal theologian. It would be a trifle immodest for the Penny Priestess to propose this solution (Penny Priestessism? Penny Priestessist?), and it certainly would not solve the issue you raise of an unwieldy name.
Since the penny religion (unlike all those other religions) is non-dogmatic and all-accepting, we may call ourselves by any name that suits our individual background and beliefs. A high-church Protestant who also believes in pennies might style herself a Pencepalian, while an evangelical type (if those people ever pick up pennies) might proclaim herself to be a Pennycostal. Those a bit out of the mainstream, but still in the Christian tradition, might wish to join the Church of the Latter Day Cents.
Or, if you prefer to avoid any association with traditional big-church religion, you could just say that you are a Penny Deist. Let them figure it out. The Penny Priestess is certain that it is still fine to call yourself an agnostic. Doubt is a form of humility (also intelligence), and the Penny God especially dislikes arrogance and complacency.
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