Penny for your thoughts? How about 12,350 of them?
Rolled, bagged and boxed, that’s how many humble cents my husband and I hauled into Hempfield Square Giant Eagle on Saturday at 10:30 a.m., a half hour before their penny exchange promotion was set to begin.
The grocery chain announced the incentive this week, promising to double the money of customers who exchanged their pennies for Giant Eagle gift cards.
The retailer is hoping to stock up on the cents to make change for cash-paying customers next year, now that the U.S. government has stopped making the copper-flashed coin with Honest Abe’s stoic portrait on it.
Married into it
One may wonder how we accumulated so many pennies. Well, it wasn’t me; I’m a spender, not a saver, when it comes to pocket change.
I “married into” this prolific penny stockpile.
My husband had tins full of them tucked away in his childhood bedroom. His late parents had just as many scattered throughout their closets. Some were loose; many were already rolled.
Their collection of storage vessels was a quirky, colorful testament to decades of saving: large blue Danish cookie tins, oversized Mason jars and a cheerful assortment of large and small plastic animal banks.
The penny hoard eventually made its way to our house and has been sitting in the corner of my home office for about a year. The potpourri of pennies mocked me each day as I walked by.
I kept telling myself that I needed to make time to roll the coins. I kept putting it off.
Then Tuesday’s announcement came. I immediately texted my husband a link to TribLive’s story and added, “Get ready to roll tonight.”
I knew I could enlist his help. With our bank paying just 3 or 4 cents a month interest in our checking accounts, the chance of earning a 100% return on our money was just too good to ignore.
For the next two nights, we counted, bagged, rolled, boxed.
We were ready to go Saturday with a grand total of 12,350 pennies, or $123.50.
Cashing in
I knew I could get him to help me roll the pennies. Getting him to the store on Saturday was another matter.
He normally avoids promotions that attract large crowds, so I knew it would take some convincing to get him to come with me.
I hatched a plan. We went early in hopes of being the first in line. We parked by a cart return and grabbed a buggy, and he loaded it with our penny hoard.
This was no light affair — our pennies, in total, weighed 70 pounds.
Once we found the exchange stations — there were two, at the front of the store at the self-checkout stations — we got in line. There were about 15 people in front of us with bags, boxes and jars of pennies.
Some customers pushed their collections in carts, others cradled small containers as if they were holding precious newborns.
Most people in line had just a bag or two of pennies. I was proud of our stash but also feeling a bit gluttonous.
Two cashiers worked each station, counting rolled coins and dumping loose pennies into clear deli containers, then weighing them to approximate the number of cents. Within a few seconds or minutes, the clerks printed out a receipt and handed it over to each customer with a gift card for the corresponding amount.
After our coins were counted and weighed, we received $247 in gift cards for our efforts. On the way out of the store, my husband and I discussed how smoothly the process had gone.
And while I’m happy that the mountain of change is gone from our house, I’m surprisingly feeling a bit nostalgic, too.
Every single one of those coins was collected by people who worked hard and saved through the decades — people who knew the value of every cent they earned.
It’s doubtful that future generations will be able to repeat this practice, at least not with pennies.
In that regard, the end of the 1 cent coin really is the end of an era.
It turns out that asking for a penny for my thoughts was wildly underselling the value of the experience.
Rebecca Kikel is a senior news editor for TribLive and a lifelong Westmoreland County resident. She previously served as city editor at The Valley Independent in Monessen, winning awards for news and editorial writing and page design. A 1989 Duquesne University graduate, she joined the Trib in 1998. She can be reached at bkikel@triblive.com.
