“If my old man had known the value of a penny,” the cabbie said, “I wouldn’t be stuck driving this stupid taxi.”
I told him he shouldn’t be too rough on his father. “A lot of undereducated people fail to understand much about economics and markets,” I said. “It took me a long time to grasp all the nuances of high finance, investments, monetary policy and the like. I’m not surprised that a man without my, shall we say opportunities, has limited fiscal perspicacity. By the way, I believe the usual expression has to do with knowing `the value of a dollar.”‘
“I’m not talking about dollars,” the cabbie said. “I’m talking about the Pennsylvania guy-Jesse Watson, his name is-who has a 1944 steel penny that’s worth at least $50,000, and maybe as much as a million. My old man was around in 1944, and I bet he spent a lot of valuable coins on sugar cookies and peanut butter logs. If only he’d known the value of a penny.”
I told the cabbie the odds were that his father never saw a 1944 steel penny. Only a few of them were made, pretty much by accident. He was probably remembering the 1943 penny, made of zinc-coated steel. “They made so many of those-nearly a billion of them-that even in good condition they’re worth only about $50,” I explained.
“Only fifty bucks,” the cabbie said. “Do you realize that if my father had kept just $10 worth of those in a jar someplace, they’d be worth $50,000 now. Two hundred dollars worth of pennies, and I’d be a millionaire. Boy, if my old man had only known the value of a penny!”
Actually, I told the cabbie, I understood something of how he felt. I remember thinking how rich we might have been if my parents had put away an uncirculated penny, nickel, dime, quarter, half dollar and silver dollar the year each of us was born, and a similar set for each year of our childhood. “That total investment of $1.91 per child per year would have been worth all kinds of money today,” I said sadly.
“Right,” the cabbie said. “And where do you keep the coins you’ve put away for your children? You don’t have to answer that, because you newspaper people are just like everybody else-you talk about these things like you understand them, but all you’ve really got is 20-20 hindsight. That’s why you’re not rich, either.”
I told him I thought there were other things to think about besides getting rich, but if he was obsessed with the idea of being rich, he shouldn’t condemn his father for not saving pennies. “You should really be on his case for not keeping a boxful of Honus Wagner baseball cards. They just sold one for $451,000, according to an article in the current Forbes magazine. Even a 1952 Mickey Mantle can fetch $12,000-twice that in excellent condition. Comic books, movie posters, teddy bears-all kinds of things are bringing outlandish prices. Why don’t you guilt-trip your father with that?
“Or better yet, why don’t you guilt-trip yourself? If you had put your Mickey Mouse watch in a drawer, kept your original decoder ring, put all your toys in storage along with brand new Coke and Pepsi and Nehi bottles, your unblemished Daisy BB gun, your unworn Ball Band sneakers and everything else you ever owned that wasn’t vital to your continued existence, you’d have enough money to lend your old man a few bucks.”
“Sure,” he said, “but it would have taken a warehouse to keep all that stuff, and probably most of it wouldn’t be worth the space it took.”
That, I told him, was the point. I read him the advice from Forbes: “If you really like looking at the stuff you collect and enjoy the chase, collect away. But don’t kid yourself: It’s the rare person who makes a big profit from collecting.”
“I see your point,” he said. “I guess I just got carried away daydreaming about how nice it would be to be rich-especially if it didn’t involve too much sacrifice and hard work.”
“I’ve got just the scheme for you,” I told him. “It’ll take a while, but it involves absolutely no heavy lifting. What you do is take a $50 bill, hock it for $40, then sell your pawn ticket for $40. The guy who buys your pawn ticket can redeem it for $50, minus a couple of dollars for the pawnbroker’s interest. And you’ve got 80 bucks where you only had 50-a quick $30 profit. Everybody wins. Just keep doing it till you’re as rich as you want to be.”
The cabbie was silent for a full two blocks. “Got to be a catch,” he said at last, “but I’ll be darned if I can figure it out. What the heck, I think I’ll just try it. Wanna lend me 50 bucks to get started?”
I handed him a shiny new penny. “Just be patient,” I said.
