Numismancy

It's the start of a glorious new year, folks. Hope you had a happy and healthy Halloween/Day of the Dead! Time to crack open the Kitty and see how much spare change we scooped off the streets.

Wow...slightly underwhelming. No paper money at all. However, look how clean that carpet is! Thanks, G-man.

2009 —$12.57 with just me collecting
2010 — $30.44 and an iPod
2011 — $119.47 (year of the Hundred Dollar Bill)

2012? — $14.33!

So this year the two of us found 22 quarters ($5.50), 50 dimes ($5), 20 nickels ($1), 283 pennies ($2.83), and, L to R in front of the Kitty in the photo above, one mutilated penny, one quarter-sized slug, one nickel-sized round of metal with a pretty leaf design, one Canadian penny, one 5-baht Thai coin, one game token for Country Club Lanes in Sacramento, and a Pope John Paul II medallion.

Therefore, for 2013 the Kitty says, if you can print your own money do so, otherwise, stick with tangibles. Greece is only the first.

Happy-Go-Lucky Kitty

Seven dollar bills
$7.30 in dimes
$6.25 in quarters
$1.10 in nickels
$4.82 in pennies
Fifty-two cents Canadian
Two slugs

So, yeah, going from a walking route to driving The Big Truck put a serious damper on my coin collecting. $19.47 for the year? Tsk. If it weren't also for the hundred dollar bill I found Jan. 7 we'd be well below average.

Oh, yeah!

Year of the Kitty

Remember last year, when I saved every piece of money I found on the street? I did it again this year, and G-man enthusiastically joined in. Halloween night we counted it up. It was quite the International Year of the Kitty.

Last year our international friends expressed astonishment that we could find so many coins on the street, an attitude which seemed strange to me. Don't you always find money lying around? Maybe where the streets are paved with it, you do, but in close to two months time abroad for the two of us this year, we found exactly two coins overseas, a 50-centavos coin in Mexico and a 1-kronar coin in Iceland. But in the US?

1 Euro penny
2 Canadian dimes
1 10-centavos coin
1 Humboldt State University (game? laundry?) token
4 dollar bills
39 quarters
95 dimes
34 nickels
549 pennies

...for a total score of $30.44!

And that doesn't count the iPod I found in the supermarket parking lot.

$12.50

Have you ever wondered how much you'd get if you, for a year, picked up every single piece of money you saw lying on the street?

I did, and now I know:

$12.57

2 dollar bills
11 quarters
35 dimes
31 nickels
277 pennies