Thursday, August 07, 2008

The End of the NYC Luck

I knew that my finding streak in NYC was to good to be true. In the 7 days since I returned, I have found nothing! Thankfully at the end of this week I had to go to Minneapolis for work, so I was able to find some change on the road.

During the trip I found:
  • 1 Penny at STL Airport
  • 1 Penny at MOA - More details on this below
  • 1 nickel & 1 penny in return slot of Coke Machine at Hampton Inn - More details on this below
  • 1 quarter & 1 dime at MSP TSA
Onto the interesting stories. While walking around the Mall of America (A friend of mine in NYC wanted one of their Harry Potter Lego Keychains, so I was forced back into the MOA) I found a penny in the wall! I fished out the penny, then thought about what a weird place to find a penny, so I decided to go back and take a picture for all of you.

The penny was in that vertical metal strip, about belt high. Probably just a kid messing around with a penny, and got it stuck. Not quite as puzzling as the find that I made later in the night.

While getting some ice at the Hampton Inn, I checked the coin return slot and found the nickel and penny mentioned above. To the best of my knowledge, Coke machines do not give pennies as change. So how did the penny get in there? Did someone put the $0.06 in there? Did they have a penny in their hand while going to get their change, and simultaneously dropped the penny and left the nickel? Did the machine mistake it for a dime? I am really perplexed by this find.

I am eager to hear your theories on how the penny got there.

Total since last post - $0.43
Total for the Race - $275.00

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

that is awesome!!! i love the pic for sure - good work on that one.

that's def. interested about the penny too....maybe someone just wanted to get rid of their change and put it in there for some lucky blogger such as yourself? maybe it was me! haha.. that would rock, but sadly i'm only clever AFTER an event takes place :)

switching gears here, i found TWO quarters under this table at Chipotle but i couldn't pick them up because 2 people were eating right above it!! i thought about pretending to drop something at first, but there was a line of 40+ people waiting to eat and they all woulda saw me. i figured much better to leave them alone for another lucky individual, and just tell you about it. haha....

Anonymous said...

I steped out of the office for a second and while I was out I started thinking about how I save all my change and wondered how many other people did this.

When I sat down a my desk I poped in my headphones to continue listening to NPR and they were doing an article on colecting change...weird. That is how I found your site.

I have a theory for your "6 cents in the coke machine perplexion".

I dont think coke machines will accept pennies. So if you drop a penny in a coke machine coin slot, it will just go straight to the coin return bin.

For the nickel, I suspect it was change from a soda that a person failed to retrieve. Just my thoughts on the issue.

Anonymous said...

it was probably currency devaluation that occurred in the machine

Bailey said...

BAS - That would be very funny if you left it there for me. But then I wouldn't be able to count it as lost change, since you planted it for me!

Sorry to hear about the 2 quarters that you weren't able to get. I would have waited it out as long as I could for $0.50!

Anonymous - Unmask yourself!! :-)
That is a weird story about you thinking about change, then hearing the story on NPR. You might be right about the penny, but then again, who puts in a penny, then just leaves it?