Finding Coins On The Ground

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I found a dime earlier today in a parking lot. The dime was scratched and scuffed up. It had been out there a while. Since it was still worth ten cents, I tucked it into my pocket.

When I was a kid, walking down the street, I would gleefully pick up a penny that someone had unknowingly dropped onto the sidewalk. I remember finding a nickel on the blacktop of my elementary school playground. I was about 10 years old and the find was significant enough that over fifty years later I still vividly remember it.

I have a friend who is truly poor. He will pick up a lost penny each time one appears. I haven’t picked up a penny in forty years. Part of that has to do with my improved financial state adulthood as brought me, but I think a lot of that has to do with the dwindling value of a penny. I will still pick-up a nickel, but it is very close call. If I’m walking down the street and I get a glimpse of an abandoned nickel as I’m passing by, I will not halt my stride and return to the site of the coin. I’ll just keep walking. If I’m standing at an intersection, waiting to cross the street, and I look down and see a nickel at my feet, I’ll reach down and retrieve it, assuming I have nothing in my arms hindering my downward bend. To me, the displaced nickel is right on the cusp of going the way of the displaced penny.

A few days ago I was about to put some money in a vending machine when a quarter slipped out of my hand, hit my foot, and was catapulted into the darkness under the vending machine. Ten years ago I would have gone to my hands and knees, looking for the quarter. Nowadays I give a brief look, shrug my shoulders, and chalk up the quarter as a loss, the cost of doing vending machine business.

Speaking of vending machines; I’m sure billionaire Bill Gates uses them occasionally. I have wondered what he does when he gets change from one. Does he reach down into the coin return and retrieve his forty cents? Figuring that Gates was worth $0 at birth, I wonder what his lifelong per second income is. If I were good at math I would be able to figure it out. I wouldn’t be surprised if Bill Gates is worth something like $5.00 for every second he has been alive. Mathematically speaking, I’m sure Gates takes a financial loss whenever he bothers to fetch money from a vending machine coin return. So, does he bother?

This morning, when I found the dime, I picked it up and for a few seconds thought of myself as having a bit of luck, ten cents worth of luck, to be exact. Then I began wondering how long it will be before a forsaken dime will no longer be worthy of my rescue efforts. Probably not long, unfortunately. It seems that even luck can have a rate of inflation.