The Contemplative Eye

I had a true shock—really like seeing a ghost—at Starbuck’s the other day.

While the clerk was getting my coffee, I noticed there was a wheat penny in the tips jar. Wheat pennies are U.S. Lincoln-head cents minted from 1909 to 1958; they have the usual image of Abraham Lincoln’s head on the obverse (front) side and a now increasingly unfamiliar pair of wheat stalks on the reverse. The wheat stalks were replaced in 1959 with an image of the Lincoln Memorial that has remained on our pennies ever since.

With the clerk’s permission, I pocketed the wheat penny, a sentimental favorite from my boyhood days of coin collecting, and replaced it with another, ordinary penny.

“We get lots of those,” the clerk said, handing me my coffee.

“What?” I asked, uncomprehending. I’ve checked tips jars and cash-register change for decades wherever I go and feel lucky to find three or four wheat pennies a year.

“Sure,” he said, riffling through the jar. “Here’s another one. And another. And another!” We stepped out of the line of customers and went through the jar together, my jaw dropping ever farther as we gathered a good 20 pennies, some dating to 1911. I haven’t seen so many of them together in one place in 40 years.

The clerk explained that the rolls of pennies the shop receives from the bank are packed automatically by coin-counting machines and sometimes include caches of old currency, long in storage, that people decide to clear out.

“I associate it with bad times,” the clerk concluded. “People need the cash, and they dig into the back of their cupboards. It’s kind of sad, really.”

I gave the jar a three-dollar tip in gratitude, and the clerk my new gold-colored $1 coin, which he’d said his nephew would be interested in.

Good coffee, too.