January 15, 2009 | Read Time: 6 minutes
As I walked home from a New Year’s Day party a year ago, I noticed a glint on the ground. There, at the base of a parking meter, like scattered birdseed, lay six pennies.
I picked them up, pocketed them, and thought this was surely an omen of a good year to come.
I also realized there might be more where those six cents had come from and I ought to keep track of all the money I found during the year and give it away at the end of December.
So I did. On street corners, under bushes, on floors, in elevators, I methodically found money — and kept on finding it.
In a year that was so financially bleak for virtually every part of the economy, fund raisers might want to take note of what I’ve just done. If every person who stumbled on some loose change decided to give it away, nonprofit balance sheets might start looking brighter.
In my case, I found $49.98 during the year.
The great majority of it was pennies. But I found a golden Susan B. Anthony dollar coin on the floor of a bus in July, a rumpled $5 bill on the floor of a Baltimore barbecue joint in August, another five on the floor of a Mississippi casino in September.
The flow of cash was pretty even throughout the year — never less than $2 a month, never more than $8. Sport that I am, I’ve just added two cents to my “found” total. A $50 check to my local community food bank is in the mail.
I found at least one cent on 312 of the 366 days in the year. I found change in the lobby of a giant office building, at the entrance to a classroom, under restaurant tables, beside a tree in a park.
I found change in a second-hand bookstore, on a table at Starbucks, wedged between seat cushions on the Chicago subway, and in the middle of Fifth Avenue in New York City.
But the most consistently lucrative hunting ground was the Transportation Security Administration’s airport screening stations.
I flew 70 times during 2008, and I never failed to find at least one red cent each time I went through security.
One morning in May, I was hauled before an airport-security supervisor to explain why I had bent down oh-so-suspiciously to nab a nickel under a conveyor belt.
When I explained my charitable purpose, the supervisor got religion. He handed me a quarter he had found under the same conveyor belt earlier that day. I duly accepted it, and duly counted it in the grand total.
More than once, I risked major embarrassment in my quest for spare change.
At midsummer, my family and I were waiting in Woods Hole, Mass., to board a ferry when I noticed them — two quarters glistening on the ground, under a metal bench.
Fifty cents would be a nice haul — about four times my daily average. Only one trouble. The bench was occupied by an elderly couple. I could hardly crawl underneath them to latch onto the coins.
So I waited. And waited. The ferry began to board. I told my family to go ahead — I’d be right there. The couple wasn’t moving. And wasn’t moving. But I was hardly going to turn my back on half a found buck.
Finally, the couple got up and ambled away. I dropped to all fours, reached under the bench, grabbed the coins and scrambled aboard the ferry at the last instant.
All in a day’s work.
Could found money — especially found pennies — really be an answer to the tribulations of fund raisers? I believe it could. Consider these statistics from the U.S. Mint:
About 13 billion pennies are in circulation. But the Mint estimates that about two billion of that total are “lost” — either stowed in drawers and forgotten, or tossed into wishing wells and left there, or dropped in public and never picked up.
If even one-fourth of those two billion pennies were reclaimed and donated, that would be $5-million. Serious money in any year.
If anything, pennies could grow in value, because they may soon become collectors’ items rather than coin of the realm.
In 2008, for the 10th consecutive year, the House of Representatives considered a bill to phase pennies out of circulation. The bill did not advance out of committee, but it may soon, because the cost of producing a penny has become greater than the penny itself is worth.
If pennies become “former” currency, they will become more valuable, according to two coin dealers I consulted. Pretty soon, the adage might need to be tweaked. A penny found will be worth more than a penny earned.
What did I learn during my year of foraging and scooping?
That the United States surely leads the world in circular blobs of stomped-flat chewing gum that look like pennies from ten paces away.
That found coins tend to be dirtier and older, and therefore harder to spot.
And that people can be mighty strange beasts.
One day, in the Washington subway, I noticed a gaggle of coins at the foot of a vending machine that sells fare cards. I hastened over. But a man reached the machine before I did.
I know he saw the coins because I saw him look down and make a mental note of them. But he didn’t bother to stoop, so he didn’t conquer. He obtained his subway card and walked away. Thus did my total grow by 44 semi-undeserved cents.
The only downside to my year of “eyes down and hands out” came about twice a month, when my pockets were drooping from the weight of all the coins I’d found. What to do with them? Newsstands were the answer.
I’d buy a jumbo pack of gum. The tab would be, say, $1.19. I’d ask the person behind the counter if he minded pennies. He’d always say no. So I’d carefully count out 119 of them and hand them over. He’d always be grateful, because he’d always find a use for them.
So would nonprofit groups. Even if finders donated coins without turning them into checks, as I did, the cost of processing such donations could be zero. Many banks now offer change-counting machines in their lobbies, which depositors can use without a fee.
Major banks in Nevada and Atlantic City — home of the largest casinos in the United States — say they already process thousands of coins from slot machines without charge, even though it’s cumbersome and difficult. The reason: A deposit is a deposit, even if it’s not in paper form.
As 2009 begins, my competitive juices are flowing. Records are made to be broken, and I’d love to outdo $49.98. I plan to try — and to write a check to charity on December 31, 2009. If you see a man scoping the floor in the dry cleaners or the train station, you’ll know who, and you’ll know why.
Bob Levey is a regular columnist for The Chronicle. He spent 36 years as a columnist, reporter, and editor for The Washington Post. He has also been a senior fund-raising executive, and he is a longtime volunteer fund raiser in higher education and the arts. He teaches journalism at the University of Memphis.
