Rolling Coins

When I was a kid, my sister and I were avid scavengers of loose change. Every once in a while, we’d rummage through the couch cushions, dig out from under the washer and dryer, excavate the underside of the car seats and basically root around everywhere until we’d collected every penny, nickel, dime and (our favorite) quarter we could find.

It wasn’t usually very much, usually less than five bucks, but five bucks was worth quite a bit more in 1984 dollars, so we’d consider ourselves rich and head somewhere like the Shake Shack or Avery’s 7/11 or Bill’s Dollar Store to spend our booty.

Well, I never gave up hoarding coins. I have a large hat box from a leftover Christmas present that sits on my dresser drawer in my bedroom that all of my change goes into… eventually. We leave change everywhere in my house, from the table by the door to the counter in the kitchen to the bathroom cubby.. It just collects there for days until I go around and scoop it up, and into the hat box it goes for, I suppose, some ill-defined rainy day I occasionally use it for “high-stakes” family card games and every now and then I dig a handful of quarters for the car wash, but largely it just accumulates. So, the other day I decided to see just how much there was in that hat box, so I picked up a pack of those color-coded coin rolls from the store and set about counting it.

You’d besurprised how much those coins can add up to. I saved the pennies for last, but I ended up with $110 in rolled dimes and $64 in rolled nickels before my fingers gave out and I called it a day. I can’t wait to get to the quarters.

Maybe I’ll take my sister to Shake Shack!