An Ode to the Penny

“This is a 1956 Pennsylvanian minted wheat penny,” Grandpa remarked as he showed me the tiny reddish-brown coin. 10-year-old me grinned with pride.

The almost 70-year-old coin was an incredible find; the average coin’s lifespan is only 25 years, and most collectors had grabbed up all the wheat pennies when they ended their production. But, secondly and maybe more importantly, I loved collecting coins because I was with my grandpa. It felt like a treasure hunt that we could complete together.

On Nov. 12, the last penny was minted after 232 years of production. The cost of making them has become too high to justify the coin’s value. Most people shrug at this and move on; realistically, no one in our generation uses coins anyway. But I see it differently. I see the penny as a symbol of a simpler time; a time where I had fewer worries; where all that mattered was being with my grandpa and filling in the last of our coin collection books. Just as the U.S. has seemed to outgrow the penny, our lives have overwhelmed the practice of collecting coins.

“Schools Closed Today: Kalamazoo Public Schools… Lawton Community School…” 

It was 2016, and I sat cross-legged staring at the TV long before dawn. A snowstorm had buried Western Michigan, and I was waiting for my school to appear on the little ticker at the bottom of the screen. 

“…Lakeview School District.” 

YES FINALLY! Channel 8 just confirmed—IT’S A SNOW DAY!

Shortly after, Dad dropped my sister and me off at my grandparents’ house across town. As we walked in, the crackling of bacon filled my ears as Grandpa prepared breakfast. After a generous helping of eggs, bacon, and toast, my sister settled in for a TV show while Grandpa and I snuck off to see the coins he had collected for us this past month. 

Grandpa is a patient, kind, and aged man. He can best be described as a geek: over music and instruments—dedicating his life to teaching others how to play as a middle school band director; Ohio State football, where he played in the “Best Damn Band in the Land:” cars, though he could never afford a Porsche, he was an avid 20-year subscriber to “Road & Track,” showing off the latest in Supercars; and of course, our coin collection. 

While my family often poked fun at his geekiness, I have always believed Grandpa is my role model, and many of his obsessions fascinated me. I played the trombone because Grandpa did; I was an Ohio State fan because Grandpa was; The only thing I ever asked for for Christmas was Matchbox cars because I played them with Grandpa. I became fascinated with coins because Grandpa had shown them to me.

On his coarse basement carpet, we huddled around his various coin books—a coffee can of coins sat between us. The coins were poured into a small pile in front of us, jiggling as they fell onto the carpet. One by one, we picked out the coins to examine. We started with pennies: after fishing them out of the cluster, first, we looked at the year, then the mint location. D was Denver, P was Philadelphia, and, if we were fortunate, S was San Francisco. I often had to look closely because the letters were too small for Grandpa to see.

For hours, we would go through the coins. If we found an unfilled slot, I would set the inspected piece, and Grandpa would press his weight until the piece popped in. I was always impressed that, despite being over 70 years old, he seemed to remember which coins to add to the book. Grandpa would tell me stories about where he was the year a coin was minted, or what he remembered about the symbols on the back. He told me about how his penny collection was stolen when a student broke into his old house, and how we were rebuilding what he started 50 years ago.

It was amazing and simple. Life was simple. I wasn’t studying for a physics exam or stressing about upcoming assignments. I was just with Grandpa. 

I loved the time I spent with Grandpa, but life moves fast, and we both grew older. Snow days spent at my grandparents’ house had become fewer and fewer. Grandpa and I still sorted coins, but his hands grew shakier, and my schedule grew busier. On snow days, I was often doing homework, binging a show on Netflix, or out skating on the lake with friends. Life brought new pleasures and challenges, and slowly we stopped our tradition of sorting coins.

Grandpa’s memory wasn’t always keen on finding new coins. My stubborn grandparents stopped getting change and finally switched to credit and debit. 

As our old tradition slipped away, it was replaced by laughing with the family at the dinner table or by intense political talk when he drove me somewhere. When I moved to Boston, sorting coins became all but a memory, lost to the past. In a way, I felt guilty that the tradition stopped, but we had both seemed to have grown out of it in our own way.

This past Thanksgiving break, I was at my grandparents’ new house, without the basement rug or the tub of Matchbox cars. Something about the news of the ending of penny production had been sitting in the back of my mind. So after dinner, I slipped away to the guest bedroom where the small containers stacked with coins were kept.

I opened the top drawer and was met with that familiar metallic scent. I ran my fingers across the pages, mostly full, with just a few open spots waiting for us to return to them. I brought the books out to the table where everyone was talking. Grandpa smiled and remarked, “I was just thinking about those.” He still kept coins for us every once in a while, though we never seemed to get to them. 

Even though we were still on the hunt for countless pennies, quarters, dimes, and nickels, we didn’t sort the coins that night, there were more important things to do. But we found time to look through the books together, staring at the empty coin slots and remembering the good times; though, I can’t help but feel mad about the missing 1977 Denver penny.

The penny hasn’t really been worth much for years. A half-gallon of milk in my hometown costs 428 pennies; a pack of gum costs 219. We don’t think about the value of money much anymore. My grandparents used to have to count out nickels, dimes, and pennies to buy their cravings. Now I just tap my iPhone to the card reader at CVS and walk out with a Celsius. 

All those hours spent on the rough carpet, I thought, were a treasure hunt and adding value to our collection. But as I look back, it was never about the value in the books, but the memories I made putting those books together with Grandpa. Someday, I’ll likely inherit those coin books. My financial advisor might tell me to sell that book of pennies for the thousand I could make off of the collection, but I never would. The reminder of my grandfather, and of the time we spent together, would and will forever be of more value to me.

The penny is ending its production, and most saw the news articles and thought, “It’s nearly worthless anyway.” But what I thought about wasn’t its monetary value; instead, this news was a reminder about time. Time spent with family. Time uninterrupted by school or stress. Time that life can get in the way of, unless we choose to protect it. 

Kalvin Frank ’28 (kfrank@college.harvard.edu) loves spending time with his grandfather.