Journal Entry: Weight = 174.6; 12/1 coinage = $2.73; 12/2 coinage = $2.77; 12/3 coinage = $.87; Total Glass bottles = 20 (3 broken, one near a school bus stop); Total ground scores = 18 (mostly hardware that only my Grandfather would want); Significant find = 3 quarters in a drive through car wash coin return; Once in a life-time find = 1899 Indian Head penny in near mint condition.Feature Entry: The MoneyWalker’s fitness walk was nearly over and there it rested an 1899 near mint condition Indian head penny (note, the photo is a stock photo, the actual find is in better condition and is an 1899, not an 1898.) For more than one hour, my thinking was spent sorting through various competing ideas for my blog. The battle for eliminating rather than generating blog ideas was unusual in that I had been experiencing a “blogger’s block” for several weeks. Then boom—all the great ideas were blown away by this once in a life time find.
An Indian head penny that was minted 110 years ago must be dealt with. It was such a long time ago. So long, that there were no Indians living in the state of Oklahoma because it didn’t receive statehood until 1906. In the year before 1899, my grandfather would have been 25 years old, but he could not have listened to a phonograph record or enjoyed a coca-cola or viewed the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The Columbia Phonograph company and the Pemberton Medicine Company (inventors of Coca-Cola) didn’t begin until 1899, the same year the Eiffel Tower was created.
President Grover Cleveland signed into statehood the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Washington. Clemson University was started that year, the same year as the Johnstown Flood that killed 2200 people. Adolf Hitler was born April 20, 1899 and the English poet Robert Browning died Dec. 12, 1899. Also, the Wall Street Journal was started that year.
Symbolically, it was all there in that glorious one cent piece just waiting in a turned over Tupper Ware container outside of a thrift store dumpster waiting for the MoneyWalker to make his rounds.
MoneyWalker
How will you ever top that one? From now on those wheaties will be anticlimactic.
ReplyDeleteOur high temp today was 29, low this morning 6 degrees. Too cold to go out. Also, it's still dark and scary at 6:45 which is 45 minutes later than I prefer to hit the roads. I guess it's the pool for me until it warms up. Ugh.
Again, way to go on the fabulous find!