Dear Penny Priestess ...

More from the Penny Priestess' voluminous correspondence with the penny puzzled and the penny curious

Please please respond!! I am so happy I found you! I am totally freaked out. Since July, I have been showered with pennies.

It all started five months ago, when I was helping out at a dog rescue. I would step in a pen to see the dogs, and lo and behold, there would be a penny at my foot. This happened a few times.

Then I began to find them in common places— the washer, the floor, in pockets ... nothing too unusual, but I did ask everyone in the household to put all loose change in a jar so that it wouldn't be lying around for me to find. The reason I began to notice the oddity of it was because the pennies were always by themselves with no other coins nearby.

Then I began to find them in more and places ... and not just in my home. The past few times, the pennies are together in threes and fours. Up until then, the pennies were by themselves.

There they appeared: In my bed, on the sidewalk, making my sister's bed— a penny in the sheet, underneath a mango at the grocery store, stuck under a baseboard while I'm cleaning, in front of me on a pile of magazines at the airport, another time at the airport, in front of me as I was standing in security. In parking lots (with no other coins around), at Staples, under the table at Starbucks, letting my dogs out from a car ride in the back of gas stations (this was a very new shiny penny, way back where people didn't walk), on the large patio while I'm sweeping, as I step out of my car ... going thru a collection of mismatched old jewelry, a lone penny in the container.

The other day was the weirdest. I was vacuuming my car at a gas station and placed the car mat on the pavement to clean it. I got down on the ground, and in front of me was a lone penny. Then I saw there was a penny on my left and to my right as well. One time I was with my sister in a rented car and she kept pushing the wrong button and the hood would go up. I got out to close it and walking back to the car was a penny at my foot. She did it again (she's an idiot), and when I opened up the passenger door, lo and behold, there was another penny just two feet from where the original one had been sitting. There have been other instances that I can't recall....

At first I was spooked. But now I think someone is just playing with me for fun. I hope so...does it mean anything or am I just subconsciously looking for pennies wherever I go??? Or do people just drop a lot of pennies and my eyes are attracted to them while other people just don't notice them?

Thanks for any advice/expertise you may offer...(if it means I'm going to die soon, please don't feel any urgency to respond).

Fear not! It can never be a bad thing to find a penny. All found pennies are lucky. It may indeed be the case that someone is playing a game. (The finger of suspicion points to your sister.) If so, the joke's on them, since we know the luck of a found penny can come only from the person who dropped it.

For the pennies you have found in isolated places (away from your sister), it may be that you have become attuned to penny finding (and perhaps have some special gifts in that direction). You are all the more fortunate if that is the case!

A third possibility suggests itself. It may be that the Penny God is a dog lover and you are being rewarded for your good deeds. The Penny Priestess dotes on cats and feeds the birds (and squirrels) religiously, but she has never been so showered with lucky pennies. It could be that something really bad was going to happen to you, and it is taking quite a lot of pennies to ward it off.

The Penny Priestess recommends the use of a lucky penny jar for safekeeping of one's copper blessings. You will need one with at least a one-gallon capacity.

The story my sister related to you about the constant penny finding is quite true. I must alert you that your suspicions that I am doing this are not the case. Actually, I wish it were true as it would explain this happening. The facts are that she finds these coins in places that are nowhere near me most of the time. Additonally, my life is way too busy to be playing this funny kind of prank. It's been happening for a long time and there are times when my sister gets disturbed by this. Any change in thoughts knowing that there is no prankster sister??? I thought it might be my mother who has passed on or perhaps my brother.

Okay, we'll drop the prankster sister theory, although it was an appealing explanation. Two further hypotheses can be proposed (elaborations, really, of the ones already offered): the natural explanation and the supernatural explanation.

Natural causes for incessant penny finding: Dog owners spend more time walking about than most people, and so have a greater likelihood of finding pennies. Moreover, someone as fond of dogs as your sister isn't staring boredly at passing cars and tugging impatiently at the leashes. She is looking down and enjoying the happy dogginess of dogs on a walk. So she has a considerable headstart on finding a lot of pennies. True, many of her pennies were apparently found nowhere near either dogs or siblings. But, in the Penny Priestess' own experience, airports, gas stations, and convenience stores (frequented by hurried, harried people who can't be bothered with the smallest of small change) tend to be especially rich in dropped pennies.

Supernatural causes for incessant penny finding: the Penny God, of course. Given your sister's ambivalence about pennies, the Penny Priestess rather suspects the Penny God (a trickster) is having fun with her. If she'd just relax a bit, maybe he'll get bored and start giving all those pennies to someone who would better appreciate them (such as the Penny Priestess herself).

I have a bet with a friend about the good luck of the penny. My friend argues that deliberately leaving a penny on the ground is just as good luck as finding a penny, but I don't think this is true. I believe the only deliberate giving of a penny that is good luck is the tossing of the penny in a fountain or the “give a penny to a friend, then your luck will never end” theories. Please clear this up for us.

The Penny Priestess must politely (but firmly) disagree with you both about the luckiness of deliberately giving or leaving pennies under any circumstance. It is obvious that there is not enough luck to go around, or why would so many people suffer needlessly? If one could acquire or generate luck for oneself by casually tossing pennies here or there, whether in a fountain or on the ground, then why would we ever want for luck? If deliberately dropping a penny anywhere, at any time, could be lucky, then the luck so granted must be infinitesimally slight.

The harmless tradition of tossing pennies into fountains at least recognizes the luck-giving potency of pennies, and the same may be said for the superstitious practice of giving a found penny to a friend. However, we know the luck of a found penny must come from the person who lost (or deliberately dropped) the penny. So your penny-leaving practices are luck-neutral, while your friend's is luck-negative. Thus, in the Penny Priestess' infallibly oracular opinion, you are both in error, but you win the bet.

Penny Princess [sic], I had some pennies jangling around in my pocket, and when I was feeding a meter, I just let them drop, since they have no value and are more trouble than they're worth. Do I get any good points in heaven for just letting them drop like that?

For the record, it is Penny Priestess— but to your question. We know that luck can be neither created nor destroyed. The luck of a found penny must therefore come from the person who either knowingly or unknowingly dropped it, since penny theology makes no distinction as to the intentions of the person who previously owned the penny. All found pennies are lucky, no matter what their origins, although their individual luck quotient is unknown and variable.

Now, you could decide that you had more luckiness, as well as more pennies, than you really needed. Is it therefore possible to donate your luck by deliberately dropping pennies? This is a difficult issue in penny theology because such an act, however well intentioned, arrogates the divine role of our penny lord who, as a trickster god, might punish such presumption with one of his little tricks or pranks.

The Penny Priestess notes that you anticipate “good points” in exchange for deliberately releasing your good luck pennies. Isn't this attempting to have it both ways? Unlike some other religions, in penny theology there is no afterlife of rewards and punishments for the good and the bad or the lucky and the unlucky. The Penny God pities those who helplessly suffer misfortune, but those who disdain his gifts of luck—penny martyrs, if you will—are likely to stir his divine annoyance and to suffer some trick or prank as a consequence.

I went to the local coffee shop the other day, pulled in, crossed the parking lot, went inside and bought my coffee. Outside the shop, as is usual on a nice day, half a dozen or so people sat at café tables, sipping and nibbling.

On the way back to the car, I found four pennies in the lot. Three were so new that they gleamed in the afternoon sun—impossible not to see. The fourth was near the other three. But with all that coppery glinting, shouldn't I have noticed at least one going in? Later, examining the pennies, I saw that two of the bright ones had small hearts neatly marked on them with a felt-tipped pen.

I'm still puzzled. Any explanation?

The simple (and extremely lucky) explanation is that the Penny God loves you very much. Of course, this does not necessarily mean that something wonderful is about to happen to you. It may be that something terrible will not happen, or won't be quite so bad as it could be.

Mere rationalists might propose that the coppery glinting would not be apparent if the sun were at your back on your way to the café so that the pennies were then in relative shadow. The Penny Priestess rejects this explanation, however, as incomplete as well as uninteresting.

We are all familiar with the mysterious disappearance of objects, such as keys, coffee cups, and glasses, that were right there moments before. Less frequently observed is the parallel phenomenon, in which objects mysteriously appear that were not there moments before. Since we are not the ones who lost these objects, their sudden appearance is usually noticed only as an odd synchronicity, such as a series of right-hand gloves or mismatched baby socks dropped along the sidewalk. By the same token, odd little screws, washers or whatchamacallits that are discovered lying about one's house are the very ones that have just rolled out of sight for some repairman or do-it-yourselfer in the middle of a job. By these mysterious appearances and disappearances, the trickster gods signal their presence among us and reveal the existence of an unseen world of shadows and spirits who enjoy a good laugh at our expense.

Does leaving a penny by an exterior door of a person’s house have meaning?

Finding a lost penny in a personally meaningful place can be especially lucky. So, unless you dropped it yourself fumbling for the keys or paying the pizza delivery guy, a penny you found on your threshold would have special meaning. But, deliberately leaving a penny in such a place is (in the Penny Priestess' opinion) misguided and possibly unlucky, although it is the practice of an obscure sect of penny believers.

If planting pennies in strategic locations could bring luck, then a single year's production by the United States Mint (7.7 billion pennies, give or take) would be sufficient to solve all the world's problems—forever. Alas! Luck, as we know, can be neither created nor destroyed, and there obviously isn't enough of it to go around.

The luck of a found penny comes from the person who lost or dropped it. Did one of your friends deliberately plant a penny at your door? It was no doubt a well-meaning (if superstitious) gesture, and the polite thing would be to leave it there. Did one of your friends happen to lose a penny at your threshold? You'd best pick it up: he's out of luck, and it might as well be your lucky penny rather than the postman's.

If you find a penny that was made when you were born is that worth something?

Well, unless you were born a very long time ago, it is still worth exactly one cent. All found pennies are lucky, but each has a unique quotient of luck. On the principle that “luck favors the prepared mind,” the Penny Priestess ponders every newly found penny to discern whether it might augur some special favor of the Penny God. A freshly minted penny—very lucky! An old, battered, almost illegible penny that must be happy to be rescued from neglect—extra lucky! A penny minted during a year that something lucky happened to you is particularly lucky. And what could be luckier than being born? So, yes, it is an especially lucky find. Treasure it.

I found a penny with a hole in it. What does this mean? I put it on a chain and wear it.

This penny ran away from someone who was mean to it. And you have given it a loving home.

Three days a week I go to an indoor pool to do water aerobics; the changing and shower room has a bank of lockers beneath which runs a bench. Shortly before Christmas, I saw a penny on this bench. How lucky, I thought. Yet the penny was right beneath a partly opened locker from which trailed the strap of a purse. Perhaps the penny was only temporarily misplaced. I might have been filching from an innocent poolmate. I left it.

Two days later, the penny was still there, unmoved, although the locker was now closed. Two more days later, it was still there. I remarked to some other women changing clothes that the users of the pool seemed exceptionally honest since nobody had taken the penny. Someone laughed that it wasn't worth taking.

It is now past New Year's, and the penny is still there, never moved from its original spot. Should I leave it be? Is its purpose to stay in the locker room until a janitor finally sweeps it off? Or do I dishonor it by letting it lay there in the showery haze?

PS:  Someone has also Super-glued a penny to the cement in front of the ticket booth of the local cinema. Is this a trickster penny that deserves liberation, via jackhammer perhaps, or should one simply ignore it, or flee from it, screaming?

Your letter raises two interesting, indeed perplexing, penny issues: the not-actually-lost penny and the irretrievable penny.

There is an obscure sect of penny believers who deliberately place pennies in selected locations to protect their property or to bring an aura of luckiness to their endeavors. Your gym locker penny, which seemed as though it could have been strategically placed rather than carelessly dropped, might have been such a protective token. The Penny Priestess cannot say that there is anything overtly wrong or immoral with this strange practice, only it does create a dilemma for orthodox penny worshipers. To snatch up a presumably lost penny, only to discover later that it in fact belongs to someone, is not only socially awkward but possibly quite unlucky, if the Penny God should choose to punish this error with one of his tricks or pranks.

The Penny Priestess herself once encountered glued-down coins at a ticket machine in a train station. Fortunately, she spotted a halo of resin around the edges and had the presence of mind to nudge the luckless quarter with her toe before attempting to retrieve the penny—and thus discovered the fraud in time. Fortunately—because attempting to retrieve such a penny and failing to do so is equivalent to losing a penny, and so decidedly unlucky.

Now, assuming these stuck pennies have been repeatedly found and lost by others who also attempted and failed to retrieve them, they would then be so richly endowed with luck that they might be worth more forcible attempts to collect them. However, bringing out the tool box in order to pry up stuck pennies might be over-zealous, or just plain greedy, in the eyes of our Penny God. Certainly, being caught chiseling stuck pennies out of roadways or sidewalks could be more than just socially awkward if one attracts the attention of the police and fines or citations result.

The Penny God does not seek martyrs or fanatics among his followers: he does not ask that we be shot full of arrows or broken on the wheel or burned at the stake in defense of our penny faith—simply that we attentively and reverently retrieve lost and fallen pennies that are there for the retrieving. Of course, the penny must be truly lost and truly retrievable, or we are in for a spot of bad luck. These are the challenges of our faith!

My fellow comrades of the forum and I are currently in a heated debate concerning the luck of a penny. For example, if I find a dollar bill on the ground, then do I not receive 100 good lucks? Since a dollar is worth one hundred times that of a penny. Or must it be a penny? What if I hit the jack-pot and find 100 pennies on the ground, do I get 100 good lucks? Or is it folly to believe of such amount of luck at once? One of the members seems to think that if you find multiple pennies then it goes one good luck, one bad luck, one good luck, and so on. Anyway, I could go on further but I must first have sufficient answers to these questions. I look forward to your response.

In posing your questions, you seem to have confounded money and luck. Luck may take the form of financial gain (or of avoiding a financial loss), but more broadly considered luck is any fortuitous event that did not need to happen. Finding a dollar bill is lucky because a dollar buys stuff. Finding a ten dollar bill is ten times as lucky because ten dollars buys ten times as much stuff. But a dollar is only 100 cents, not 100 lucks.

We penny worshipers believe that the luck force exists as discrete but non-quantifiable units that pass from person to person through the physical medium of the lost-and-found copper penny (and by the divine intervention of the Penny God). Thus, finding 100 pennies on the ground would be really, really lucky, but not quantifiable as 100 good lucks, for two reasons.

First, the luck comes from the person who lost the penny. Let's suppose someone dropped a roll of pennies which then burst open, but he was too lazy and too impious to pick them up. All of those pennies are lucky, but weakly so, compared to 100 pennies dropped by 100 individuals.

Second, even if you found 100 uniquely lost pennies, you might not perceive yourself as remarkably lucky if much of that good luck was dissipated in warding off bad shit that was already headed your way.

Found pennies are always lucky and do not cancel out each other. Your colleague's theory seems to be a variant of the infamous heads-good/tails-bad heresy, which arises from the overly optimistic assumption that good luck means something especially nice will happen, as opposed to something especially nasty not happening.

Put another way:  you can count your pennies but you can't count your blessings.

I certainly believe that luck determines everything! Is there some particular way we should pray to the Penny God to get the luck we need?

It is especially hard for new converts to comprehend this, but: You should never pray to the Penny God. The Penny God is a trickster god, and pushy, whiny ingrates incite his divine ire. For, lo!, however bad you've got it, someone else has it worse. Not only will you not get what you pray for—you may well lose what you've got. Want a brand-new Mercedes-Benz, do you? BAM! There goes the muffler on your 98' Honda Civic! Honor his holy pennies and your turn will come, eventually, some day, sooner or later (probably later), in some form or another.

I've heard that driving your car over pennies in the road brings bad luck. Is this true?

The Penny Priestess has decisively refuted the doctrine that finding tails-up pennies brings bad luck, for found pennies can only bring good luck. The belief to which you refer is different, however. If true, it would explain a lot. It is also testable.

A study could be done with two groups of volunteers. One group would get into a car (preferably an SUV) and drive from strip mall to strip mall to strip mall, buying and spending and laying waste their credit cards—and inevitably driving over pennies en route. The other group would walk or bicycle wherever they needed to go, taking care to skirt any pennies stuck in the road tar, which they could easily see and avoid. After, say, a week of this, the two groups would be interviewed. Do the mall-shopping SUV drivers feel strangely depressed, empty, dissatisfied, despite all their new stuff? If yes, then we could safely conclude that it must be because they did a hit-and-run on a road penny.

After I began my small acts of faith in luck by picking up pennies, my husband became interested. He started pouncing on pennies he saw and proudly giving them to me. I sensed it would be wrong to accept a penny someone else has found, no matter how good his intentions, and put these pennies in a separate container on a different shelf. Should I be harboring them at all?

When I finally told my spouse that I was uneasy about taking these coins, he stopped picking them up, but now when we're out walking, he'll cry, “There's one!” and gleefully point it out. This, surely, is wrong. How can I tactfully deal with it? He won't collect the pennies for himself, so that suggestion won't work.

Indeed, it is never wise to point at pennies or to gloat. At a minimum, doing so will drain them of their luck. At worst, it is a temptation of the Penny God, who dearly loves to play tricks on those who are too boastful or too confident in their luck and their found pennies.

The Penny Priestess believes that your husband is the more likely target of the Penny God's pranks, although they may be visited upon you both. Such pranks can take the form of minor embarrassments—a pratfall, a large and prominent pimple, a prickly case of hives—or of apparent good fortune, like, oh, winning some raffle only to receive a hideous lawn ornament as a prize. You must therefore exert all efforts to convince your husband that his luck will not turn until he seeks forgiveness from the Penny God.

You have done well in your management of the luck-drained pennies themselves. The prudent penny worshiper keeps a place to deposit what we may call pennies of doubtful provenance. These include pennies found in one's own household and pennies that have been picked up by someone else who has superstitiously given them away.

Love the website. What are your thoughts on the British two pence coin?

Not wishing to answer in haste, the Penny Priestess reached for her funny money jar and shook out all the foreign copper coins. She judges that the two pence has too much heft and substance to be lucky. To be a fitting dwelling-place for the God of Luck, a coin should have token rather than monetary value. The two pence feels too much like a nickel, despite its copper coat, and it's worth almost as much too.

I was taught that a found penny should be given away. Keeping them for yourself and hoarding them in a lucky penny jar is just another manifestation of a rude and egotistical age!

The misguided folk tradition of giving away found pennies is epitomized in the uninspired little ditty: “Find a penny, pick it up / and all day long you'll have good luck. / Give a penny to a friend, /and then your luck will never end.” Note that only the penny—not the luck—is being given away. And the purpose of friendship is merely to consolidate one's grasp on the luck. Quite frankly, the Penny Priestess considers that this is about as generous as giving someone else a cold. When we find a fallen penny in our path, we should honor the Penny God by treasuring his gift.

Priestess of pennies, what ill fate could the following bode? I was behind a man at the checkout counter at the hardware store when he got his change and dropped a penny. My eyes fastened greedily on it. He looked down at it, turned, bent his knee —thought, “Dang, he's going to crouch and pick it up”—and instead he kicked it so it flew under another counter and disappeared completely. Doom, right?

Doom, yes, certain doom to him, the unbeliever! Had you followed him out of the store, you would surely have witnessed the god's vengeance. Perhaps he was run down by a stolen vehicle, or perhaps a stray shopping cart banged into his car, or perhaps he was just forced to continue with his sorry status quo—but by one means or another, the Penny God surely smote him for his sin!

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