Your Lucky Penny

When I worked for a freight company, I would pick up nuts,bolts and washers found on the floors of the trailers. When a coworker asked why I did that, I told him to go price them at the hardware store!!
 

I have picked them up but lately, not. At one of the discount food markets here, to cut costs by not having an employee bring carts back from the lot, you have to put a quarter into the lock to free the cart. The assumption is you want that quarter back so badly, you will return the cart, lock it up and get the coin back. Lately, I've just given the cart to an incoming shopper, refuse their quarter & tell them to pass it on.

The earlier comments about back and knees precluding picking up pennies apply to me and once "freed" from the delusions about pennies, fortunate enough that I don't have to count them at least for now, I don't care about small change so much anymore.

Its the same at our Aldis, Radish. Put your quarter in, unlock, and get it back when shopping is done. If someone is going into store, I give them the cart and tell them to pass it on.
 
I once found a change purse with no ID full of cash in a supermarket parking lot once, at a time when I was poor single parent with no money and no food. It got us through the week.
 
I have a personal reason for picking up a penny. Many years ago my Dad worked in the Philadelphia Mint and his job included making pennies. So every time I see one on the floor I pick it up and wonder if my Dad made it and was sending me a message of love. After I fill a jar with them I give them to my Grandchildren to spend.
 
People must be throwing money around a lot more where you folks live than here. If I picked up every coin I ever saw I don't think over all it would have added up to a dollar. But actually unless I dropped it myself, I don't pick it up. I deliberately leave it with the hope that some child will find it & get a kick out of it.
 
I pick up pennies and old lottery tickets. My coworker made fun of me for picking up this dirty lottery ticket off the parking lot of a convenience store. It was a $10 winner. I bought us a couple of iced bottles of Guinness stout. He never made fun of me, again. One time, later, in a lot where we were taking down some trees, a lottery ticket was blowing in the grass. Guess who picked it up?
 
My husband picks up all coins including pennies. He makes about $40 a year doing this. We also pick up old scratch off lottery tickets and enter them in the 2nd chance drawing. So far I haven't won, but I expect to tomorrow.
 

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