STONEWOOD – Penny for your thoughts?
Don’t get John Hines started.
“Yeah, it’s a little silly, I think,” the Stonewood, Harrison County, man said Wednesday afternoon.
Those thoughts came just minutes before the last of the 1-cent coins – ever – were struck by the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia.
“Just don’t make as many,” Hines suggested.
President Donald Trump this past February ordered the demise of the iconic currency, saying they now cost more than their stamped value to make.
“This is so wasteful,” Trump wrote online.
Before the last of the minting Wednesday, it was costing the government 4 cents – to make a 1-cent penny, according to the president and U.S. Mint.
Besides, Trump added, consumers have hardly used them in the days since American retail began going digital in the late 1980s.
President Abraham Lincoln first appeared on the penny in 1909, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birth.
Renowned sculptor Victor David Brenner designed the revamped coin with the signature stalk of wheat on its other side, to symbolize the country’s prosperity.
That version of the penny was minted through 1958. Then, the Lincoln Memorial replaced the wheat.
“Oh, yeah, the ‘wheat pennies,’” said Hines, who turns 70 his next birthday.
“Everybody loved the wheat pennies. They were iconic. I collected ‘em when I was a kid.”
Hines is a self-educated numismatist – one who makes a study of coins and currency – who grew up in the Land of Lincoln, with a hometown equally iconic.
“I’m from Metropolis, Ill.,” Hines said. “Same place Superman grew up.”
Unlike Superman, Hines was never mistaken for an airplane, but he flew in several during his hitch in the U.S. Air Force, which led to the job with the U.S. Postal Service that eventually brought him to West Virginia.
Not long after his arrival, he fell in with another iconic group, the Stonewall Jackson Coin Club, which flipped into being in 1960, a year after the new Lincoln penny hit the market. Hines currently serves as president of the club.
“You’ll have to come see us at our coin show,” he said.
That happens from 10-a.m.-3 p.m. Nov. 30 at the Best Western Plus on Lodgeville Road, in Bridgeport.
Admission is free for the event, which will feature copper, silver and gold coins and tokens of every commerce-stripe.
“Lincoln Cents, Indian Head Cents, silver dollars, half-dimes, a little bit of everything,” he said.
Like a coin (that won’t get tossed)
In terms of American culture and commerce, those pennies the U.S. Mint began producing in Philadelphia way back in 1793, have just turned up, well, everywhere, Hines marveled.
You had your Penny loafers footwear and the aforementioned “Penny for your Thoughts” invitation to share what’s on your mind, he said.
Don’t forget the promise of good luck to come, he added, should you find a penny – head’s up – and pocket it.
And even today, he said, some people still pay cash, which means change – which means, or used to mean, pennies and other coins, the kinds of which he coveted back in Metropolis.
“Coveted” could be the term that pays, he said.
A few years from now, he expects the last of Wednesday’s Philadelphia lot to be coveted, in the ways of those wheat pennies of yore, at his coin shows.
“Yep,” he said. “The collectors are going to go for them.”
