Claim:   A collector deliberately placed three valuable U.S. coins into circulation in New York in April 2006.

Status:   True.

Examples:   [Collected via e-mail, 2006]

A friend told me that she heard that a millionnaire put a penny worth a million dollars in circulation by using it to buy a hot dog at a vendor cart. Supposedly you can tell because it has a "J" under the year.

Origins:   One of the many windfall schemes that some of us dream about in our idle moments is fortuitously turning up a rare old coin worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars — perhaps through discovering one stashed away by a relative who has forgotten about it, uncovering one hidden beneath some dirt or debris, or simply finding one in a handful of change. The last of these routes rarely yields lucky finds any more, as collectors and treasure-seekers have long since plucked every coin of significant value from circulation, but in April 2006 the odds of making such an advantageous discovery got a little bit better.

To help introduce more people to "the magic of coin collecting," Scott A. Travers, a 44-year-old former vice president of the American Numismatic Association and author of The Coin Collector's Survival Manual, decided to mark National Coin Week in mid-April 2006 by deliberately spending three valuable old pennies as he made routine purchases around Manhattan. "I'm planting a seed, and I hope that a new generation of people will come to appreciate the history that coins represent," he said.

The three coins Scott Travers planned to spend were all relatively low-mintage U.S. one-cent pieces nearly one hundred years old: a 1908-S Indian Head cent, and 1909-S VDB and 1914-D Lincoln cents. (In the conditions released by Travers, these coins are worth roughly $200, $1,000, and $300, respectively.) Mr. Travers said he put the 1914-D Lincoln cent into circulation on 12 April 2006 when he purchased a pretzel from a food stand in Times Square, and that he planned to spend the other two coins within the next several days.

So far, there have been no reports of anyone's finding any of the three rare pennies. Scott Travers may never find out what happened to them, as it's quite possible the valuable cents will end up lost, squirreled away as oddities by people who don't know their true value, or retrieved and sold by lucky finders unaware the coins were deliberately placed into circulation. Indeed, Mr. Travers has tried the same stunt more than once before, and he hasn't learned the fate of at least some of the coins involved in those previous attempts:

Travers has spent rare coins before. In 1999, he did it to coincide with the numismatic association's convention in New York, although he never found out whether one of the rare pennies was rediscovered.

Past coin drops, in 1997 and 2002, succeeded in sparking interest in coin collecting, but Travers doesn't know if anyone "cashed in" by finding the coins. Travers has met many people who believe they've discovered his coins, and though they may have found valuable coins, they weren't his.

Last updated:   22 April 2006

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  Sources:

    Golden, Jessica.   "Be on the Lookout for Lucky Pennies."

    ABC News.   14 April 2006.

    Healey, Matthew.   "Find a Penny, Pick It Up, Sell It for 1,000 Bucks."

    The New York Times.   14 April 2006   (p. B3).