Goodbye, outdated penny. The U.S. Mint stopped minting pennies earlier this month, a big milestone after the cash misplaced their financial utility within the face of inflation and price extra to make than their worth.
The information additionally prompted some sentimentality amongst my three siblings and me — in regards to the outdated penny. Extra particularly, the wheat penny. In 1909, Abraham Lincoln grew to become the primary U.S. president to seem on a coin, to commemorate the centennial of his delivery. Lincoln’s face adorns the entrance, however on the again, two wheat sheaves framed the phrases “One Cent.” The wheat disappeared in 1959 when the reverse design was switched to a picture of the Lincoln Memorial. Throughout World Warfare II, the Lincoln penny was made from zinc-coated metal in 1943 as a result of copper was wanted elsewhere within the conflict effort.
Our late dad was a passionate collector of cash of all types. Every of us 4 youngsters frolicked at his elbow as he often reviewed his in depth assortment on the eating room desk on weekend afternoons. Silver {dollars} and silver certificates. Previous cash older even than his dad, born in 1888. Yearly, he would order uncirculated units encased in cellophane — “untouched by human arms,” he would say. Bins and containers and containers.
He would regale us with trivia spiced along with his humor. As an example, the 1920 silver greenback had Girl Liberty’s face in profile, a change from the standing Liberty. Dad famous that was the yr American girls obtained the appropriate to vote. “And so they haven’t shut their mouths since,” he mentioned, delivering the punch line, and all of us laughed. Each. Time.
However there was one thing in regards to the wheat penny. A Melancholy child, Ralph Knutson had a behavior of selecting up cash off the bottom, even when he was a railroad government at King Avenue Station. Whereas he didn’t want the change by then, he relished serendipitous discovery. Our enthusiasm to assist after we had been youngsters turned to mortification after we had been teenagers, however finally to abiding tolerance, even complicity.
We grew to become brokers in one thing of a Wheaties Surveillance Service. After we labored in retail as younger adults, we every stored our eyes peeled for any “wheaties” passing by the tills at our jobs: Eddie Bauer and H&L All American Sports activities in Bellevue; The T-shirt Emporium in Kirkland; and the Wherehouse and The Mariners in Seattle.
After assembly my of us, my boyfriend-now-husband got here throughout a pair and we taped them in Dad’s birthday card and despatched it off to Spokane.
Wheaties grew to become rarer as time handed and the movement slowed to a trickle. However we sharp-eyed Knutson youngsters stored them coming.
After Dad died in 2020, my sister and nephew assembled a listing of Dad’s in depth coin assortment, which he had saved in an outdated Northern Pacific Railway secure. We nonetheless haven’t had it appraised, however our conversations this week may nudge us in that course.
Dad had collected greater than 1,700 wheat pennies, most saved in rolls and arranged by years. Meticulously.
However the present of this low-key surreptitious household challenge is price rather more than the pennies’ collective face worth of $17. All of us have fond recollections of Dad’s pastime — and the cash immediate us to consider him now. A few years in the past, after a day of lacking Dad, one sister left work. There, in the midst of a large Seattle sidewalk, was a solitary wheat penny. She obtained teary telling me about it this week.
My different sister nonetheless retains her eyes peeled for wheaties. “I nonetheless search for them to this present day and all the time decide up cash I discover on the bottom in his reminiscence.”
Pennies will disappear from our pockets and alter keepers, however these loving recollections of this oddball household mission is not going to fade.
— Kate Riley
