The Final Plinkdown

Well, all good projects must come to an end, I guess.

Five years ago I described the Plinko Project.  It was a fun way to prevent my then-two-year-old son from breaking his foot by dropping a multi-pound box of foreign coins on it.  When we moved, the coins and the Plinko game were put into the new attic where they sat until last month.

In early March the boy came home from his grandpa’s with a small baggie of Indian head pennies.  Since I had a “collection” when I was a boy I was able to tell him a little about what coins used to look like a long time ago.  I use the word “collection” loosely here because it was just a bunch of wheat pennies, some Indian heads, a few silver coins, and some silver certificates (mom worked part time at an OTB and traded out “odd looking” money when it came through her window).  Now, of course, since coins and bills change styles a lot more frequently than they did 30+ years ago it’s not so unusual to see “odd looking” money…

Nonetheless, he was interested to hear that the coins grandpa gave him were “rare”.  Not “rare” numismatically speaking, you dig, but interesting and not-often seen.  And, like any kid that age, they collect things and are especially interested to hear when something is “rare” or “limited edition” (even though pretty much every single toy in the whole wide world is “Collect Them All!”-ish… I’m looking at you, Ugly Pets and Minecraft figurines).

I got online and I was happy to see that the same type of cardboard books I had as a kid were still around.  I bought the Whitman Lincoln and Indian Head Cents books along with the Red Book and once they came in we sorted and started smooshing the coins from the baggie and our change dish into their respective places.  As we worked I told him about mint marks and double strikes and the WWII metal shortage and how to discern the composition of a 1982 penny by sound. Looking through the Red Book, he was very interested to see that “most money used to only have pictures of girls on them”… I never really thought about it until then.

I told a couple of co-workers about the nascent collection and the next day one brought in a whole bag of newish pennies with one wheat penny tucked in there for good measure.  “It’s all about the hunt,” she said. I agreed with her and thanked her for her generous donation.  The boy had fun looking for non-duplicates and was happy to see the wheat penny in there. 

That Saturday we went to a nearby coin store to get some wheat pennies to help fill out the books.  The guy said he had them in bulk and was willing to sell them for five cents apiece.  Super!  For a couple of bucks we could fill in quite a few gaps.  Let’s just check out the reviews of this place and… oh… great. 

See, what I found out was that one of the guys that worked here was “rude” and “cocky” and “a jerk” - exactly the type of guy that is really skilled at crushing the hopes and dreams of little kids looking for treasure amongst the trash.  The boy was amped to go and see the inside of a coin store and look though the collection of wheat pennies for ones he didn’t have yet, so on the drive over I prepped him for the worst.

“Look, buddy,” I said “This guy might not be very nice to us.  But it’s not his fault.  Every single day he probably gets, like, 20 phone calls or visits from people who insist that they have a super rare or valuable coin, only to be told that what they have is common or fake.  And a lot of the time the people who talk to him get upset and argue or call him a liar or a cheat.  Some of the ones that do have nice coins to sell look through books like the one that we have and expect to be paid the amount listed there… or maybe even more, which is crazy.  And those people also get mad at him.  So, after a while, it can turn some people kind of mean.  Just be respectful and look around at what you want to but just remember that he’s not being mean to you – he’s being mean to the 10,000 people who were mean to him before, okay?”

“Okay,” he said.

All I can say is that reviews often lie - we all know this.  This guy and his wife were courteous, eager to help, and very accommodating to the budding coin collector.  They even gave the boy a free (albeit very worn) Buffalo nickel and his pick from “the free pile” of magazines and other stuff near the doorway.  The boy left with his free loot, 100 new wheat pennies to rifle through (including quite a few steel cents), and a smile on his face.

We will definitely be back.

A few days later another coworker showed up with a fairly large baggie of wheat pennies!  The baggie also contained a film canister that “had some surprises” in it.  “Nothing big,” he added, easily winning the “Not-At-All-Suspicious Odd Thing to Say” award for 2016.

I looked at him for a bit and said “Well, thanks for this. If we notice anything of value in there we will certainly return it or pay you for it.”  He said “Don't worry about it. It's just a couple of bucks worth of stuff.”  Again, “totally believable”.

When I got home I showed him the new bag and he was very pleased. The wheat pennies there had an older distribution than the ones grabbed from the ammo box at the coin store so quite a few empty spaces got filled in. The canister did have quite a few surprises. Silver coins ranging from (WWII) nickels to half dollars made up about a third of the container! The other two thirds were filled with beat-up Buffalo and V nickels and lots of old foreign coins. I used the book we had and a couple of sites online to estimate the value of this hoard.

It added up to over $50 worth of stuff!  Quite a haul for a budding collector.

I let him know the next day about the value of the coins. He “seemed” surprised that the Chinese copper was worth anything and was interested to hear that the WWI Dos Centavos piece from Cuba was also worth more than “a couple of bucks”  but he refused any money or return of the coins. As a matter of fact he wanted to give the boy an additional pile of Buffalo nickels which I declined. I told him no - he'd been more than generous.

Besides, now that the boy had other coins than pennies to deal with, just chucking the new ones into a box someplace or keeping them in a baggie wasn't going to work. I remembered the Plinko project and I decided to invest in some coin flips and a three-ring binder with pages to hold them. I really didn't want to go that route just yet since I wanted to see how the penny thing would play out (he might get bored with it). But the new stuff was a cheap enough solution and solved more problems than it caused. Additionally, I got a State Quarters book, mainly so I could qualify for the free shipping, but also to help answer questions like “is Norway a state or a country” that we are asked way, way too often.

I brought down the Plinko thingy (now missing its Plexiglas window) from the attic and went through the coins there sorting them by country and denomination. Other coins we had around the house from Canada and the Bahamas and Morocco were included. We spent some time on a rainy afternoon stapling the flips shut and sliding the (roughly) 75 different foreign coins into their new homes.  I will help him label the flips later. The remainder of the Plinko coins were put into a small black box which was placed in his bookcase.

I still don't have a solution for the handful of silver coins and old nickels but I will probably end up getting Whitman books for them as well.  For now I will hold onto them.

The picture on the left there shows the Plinko project next to the trash can and the overflowing scrap wood bin - I'm not sure yet which way it will go. I'm a little sad to know that it has plinked its last plink but, hey, nothing lasts forever, we've got video of it in use, and the coins are in a more useful place than the attic.