A penny for your thoughts? I’m in favor of stopping production of the humble penny. After all, it costs 3.69 cents to produce one. Nowadays, if I see one on the street, I’ll probably pass it by. Since my knee surgery, it’s not worth the risk of squatting and bending despite the old rhyme, “See a penny, pick it up, and all the day you’ll have good luck.”

It is true, though, that a penny saved is a penny earned, but we no longer think along those meager lines. You need more than a plethora of pennies to make a difference in your budget. I believe even Benjamin Franklin would revise his thoughts on pennies and dollars from “Watch the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves,” to “Watch the credit card use or you’ll go broke.” (quote from me)

I do suppose pennies from heaven is still valid if you look at them like manna from heaven. The simple penny is a metaphor for blessing (and other weird stuff which I won’t mention here). If God were to send pennies falling from heaven, I hope he would do it after we’re all asleep. If we were out and about, it would be more like a plague with people being knocked unconscious by falling pennies. It makes me think of that old TV show, WKRP in Cincinnati, when they dropped turkeys from a helicopter for a Thanksgiving promo. But I digress.

The final five pennies minted in Philadelphia have an OMEGA mark, and those five pennies are said to value between two and five million dollars. I don’t think those will be falling from heaven, more like auctioned to pay for all those pennies we’ve been losing our national shirts producing. I really don’t know, but that’s okay because you don’t come here for cutting edge coin collecting information.

Right after penny production came to a grinding halt, we visited Torchy’s Tacos, who displayed a sign on their door about a penny shortage.

Currently, there are between 250 and 300 billion pennies in circulation, so I don’t know who is hoarding them all. You might want to look in your grandparents’ seat cushions.

If you do have an abundance of pennies lying around your house, you could gather 1,250 of them and order my new book DOWN AND OUT AND READY FOR A MIRACLE. Of course, Amazon doesn’t take pennies, but you’re smart enough to figure out a way.

DOWN AND OUT AND READY FOR A MIRACLE is a humorous and inspirational story which follows Jacko, a middle-aged homeless man who forms connections with a disjointed group of senior citizens—especially the unpredictable Oscar. When some of Jacko’s questionable former associates catch up with him, he learns you’re never too old to start over again. Click picture of the book on the right column to order on Amazon.