In Praise of a Humble Coin

I am a grown, working man who bends over and picks up pennies on the streets of New York City. Some friends laugh. Others rebuke. One warned that picking up pennies takes on someone else's bad luck. My West Virginia mama disagreed. "Finding pennies is good fortune," she used to say. But then, Mama-Lou was a housewife who hummed to the tune of her vacuum, "Every time it rains, it rains pennies from heaven …" She was a product of the Great Depression, and money remained at the top of her hierarchy of human needs.

But pennies get a bad rap. New York panhandlers don't want them. Schoolkids gladly give them away. Cash-register signs read: TAKE A PENNY. LEAVE A PENNY. Which makes me wonder, is the penny dying?

My obsession goes way back, and I feel sad that the penny could become obsolete. In high school, I wore penny loafers with pennies in the slits. I won many a penny-pitching championship. My favorite Cary Grant movie was the black-and-white tearjerker "Penny Serenade." Highest on my musical list—"Pajama Game," adapted from the novel "7½ Cents." The most re-read novel on my shelf remains Elliott Baker's bittersweet 1968 novel "Penny Wars," a hardcover, still in the bookcase after scores of spring cleanings. And the song that hangs around in my head the most? The Beatles' "Penny Lane."

Without a break in stride en route to work, I can snag two, three, four chucked at the bus stop. Nearer the office, five or six coppers wait, sometimes neatly stacked, but abandoned on the pay phone near Starbucks. I feel a kinship with the unabashedly unwanted—those tossed in midstreet, trounced by New York kamikaze cabs, run over and over— scratched, scuffed, scraped, scarred, hammered victims of war. I favor those damaged coins as much as a collector would the 1909 V.D.B. Lincoln penny.

While my colleagues debate their ceaseless love-hate relationship with the city ("Leave or go?") and other quandaries ("Iraq: pull out or stay?" or "recession or no recession?"), I suspect few are aware of the penny's continued demise. Ultimately, the unkindest cut of all, there hasn't been a penny's worth of copper in a copper penny in years.

A positive sign: the Coin Redesign Task Force, an internal United States Mint committee, tells us the image of President Lincoln on the cent has not changed for nearly 100 years, longer than any other coin image—and suggests it's time for change. Three government groups, amid much controversy, are meeting to review proposed designs for a revamped Lincoln penny. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. will have the last word. Stand by. The way I see it, the sad passing of the U.S. copper Lincoln penny—which costs more than a penny to produce—should surprise no one. It's one more unjust affront from our throwaway society. Glass bottles. Cotton diapers. Vinyl records. Three-year-old computers. Relationships. All eminently replaceable.