You're listening to Part Time Genius, a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
Guess what, Mango?
What's that? Will?
All right? So when somebody offers you a penny for your thoughts, they're actually using a phrase that's over five hundred years old. And you know how much I love old stuff, so I was super excited about this. It was first documented in fifteen twenty two in philosopher Thomas Moore's treatise. It was called The Four Last Things, and here's what he writes.
Quote.
It often happens that the face shows the mind walking of pilgrimage in such a way that other people suddenly say a penny for your thought. But if you want to be historically accurate, which I know you do, you have to account for the fact that a penny in Thomas Moore's time was worth more than it is now. In fact, it was worth about three dollars and sixty three cents in today's money.
Somehow, three dollars and sixty three cents for your thoughts doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
No, it doesn't, but it would make it much more worth it to offer those thoughts. But it is annoying when inflation ruins a catchy's saying, here's the good news, though, We've got eight more fascinating facts all about pennies, and you really can't put a price on that, So let's dive in. Hey, their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson, and as always I'm joined by my good friend Mangesh hot Ticketter and over there in the
booth wearing a truly terrifying clown costume. That is our pal and producer Dylan Thing, And I almost couldn't look over there because it really is so scary close. I think he might have misunderstood when I told him we were doing an episode about pennies, and I think he thought, you said, penny Wise, what do you think's going on here?
Yeah, you know, I fully expected to walk in and see him dressed up like Abraham Lincoln or like once in candies all over the place. But yeah, you know, I've never actually read a Stephen King book, and I actually haven't watched that much Stephen King. But it's crazy how my kids, who have also never watched like it, are somehow obsessed with penny Wise. Like I don't know how they know it. They love the reference for some reason as a punchline.
It's absolutely true, same same with mine. But anyway, we've got a great show today, all about pennies. But Mango, I have to ask, why are you recording inside a pillow fort?
I know, so if the sound here sounds a little awkward, it's because I brought my family to tennis camp, where you figure out how much your family dislikes tennis over the course of two days.
Or each other for that matter.
Whatever. Day one has been pretty successful, but finding a place to record has been a little dicey. So this is me and a pillow fort.
That's fun, though, and I know you guys are having a great time, and how much fun do we all be together and playing a great sport.
But we should get to our next fact. So this one is about the United States Mint and it was established in seventeen ninety two after Congress passed the Coinage Act and George Washington signed it into law. Now, the Act authorized the Director of the Mint to purchase up to one hundred and fifty tons of copper and turn it into circulating currency. In seventeen ninety three, the newly minted US Mint released its very first coins, a series
of eleven thousand, one hundred seventy eight copper pennies. Now, these were a lot bigger than modern pennies, closer to the size of almost like a modern silver dollar, and the face of these early pennies featured a woman's profile with long, wavy hair. Today, this incredibly rare coin is known as the seventeen ninety three Flowing Hair Large cent, and if you're lucky enough to own one in flawless uncirculated condition, it could be worth as much as one
hundred twenty five thousand dollars. Isn't that amazing?
Wow, that is a lot of money for a penny. But believe it or not, Mango, that's not even close to being the most valuable penny out there. That was one of the things I was most eager to look up. But that honor goes to the nineteen forty three d Lincoln Bronze wheat penny, which is worth two point four million dollars when it is in ment condition, but only in men condition. You're like, I get it. If it's in ment condition, I get why somebody paid two point four million dollars.
Two point four million dollars. Is so much money for a penny? How is that po possible?
I did not know the answer to this, but it's actually because of an accident. So during World War Two, the United States began making pennies out of zinc coated steel, and this was in order to save copper for the war effort. But at some point in that transition, a few copper pennies actually got made because there was copper left behind in the men's presses. Now, this happened at
all three mint facilities that existed at the time. These were in Philadelphia, Denver, and San Francisco, but the ones from Denver are especially rare because they're marked with a D on the face. Only one nineteen forty three d copper cent is known to exist, but it's actually believed that there are a few others out there. However, a word of warning, though, because they are so valuable, these pennies are one of the most frequently counterfeited US coins.
Be a real bumber to pay two point four million dollars and realize that it was not real. But luckily there's an easy way to tell if your nineteen forty three penny is one of those rare copper accidents, So you hold it up up to a magnet. If it sticks, it's steel. If it doesn't, it's copper. Now there's one other thing to be aware of. Some scammers have actually taken nineteen forty eight Denver pennies and filed down the
eight so it looks like a three. So whatever you do, don't give someone millions of dollars for an old penny unless it has truly been authenticated.
Yeah, I remember my grandmam telling me the same words a long time ago.
So wise.
So you may be wondering when Abraham Lincoln first appeared on the penny, and the answer is in nineteen oh nine, which would have been his one hundredth birthday. The iconic design was the work of Victor David Brenner, a Lithuanian sculptor and engraver who emigrated to the US as a teenager. Now, he arrived in New York City and support himself with the engraving skills he'd learned from his father, and then
he continued his studies and friends. He kind of became this expert medallist, and that's an artist who designs coins, medallions and other small items with raised designs. Anyway, nineteen oh seven, Brenner made a portrait of Lincoln on a bronze plaque, and President Teddy Roosevelt happened to see it, and he decided it would be the perfect thing to grace the new penny, and of course Brenner jumped at
the opportunity. He designed the reverse of the coin to feature wheat stocks with the words one cent and the United States of America between them, and of course he signed his work placing his initials VDB below the wheat.
Now this is the same Lincoln portrait that's on pennies today, right, Yeah, so it's hard to imagine a penny without it. But when they were first released, Brenner's pennies got a lot of criticism. Some people in the South were angry that Lincoln was on their money. Other people complained that Brenner's wheat stocks weren't botanically accurate, which is both wonderful and larrious, but perhaps most insulting of all. Some people thought Brenner's
initials were just too prominent. I mean, I feel a little bad for the guy. He just wanted to make a nice penny, I.
Know, a nice wheat penny, but President Taft, who succeeded Roosevelt, bowed to pressure and had Brenner's initials removed, and then they were restored in nineteen nineteen and stayed on the reverse of the penny until nineteen fifty eight, when the wheat was replaced with an image of the Lincoln Memorial.
And I'm guessing somebody was like, that Lincoln Memorial doesn't look architecturally accurate.
Yeah, there's always a critic when it comes to arden coins and things like that.
Very true. All right, Well, here's a quick fact that I find absolutely fascinating. So you've heard of a halfpenny, right.
Yeah, that was like the old timey British coin.
That's exactly right, and as the name implies, it was worth one half cent. Half penny coins started being made in the UK sometime in the thirteenth century and they were in use until nineteen sixty nine. Actually, but before the coins were produced, people with di wyatt, so they would cut pennies in half to make half pennies, or in quarters to make farthings, which literally means a fourth thing.
Huh, that's so weird. I had no idea that's what a farthing meant. But also it feels like so much work to get a half cent, to actually have to cut a penny in half.
No, it does, which is probably why the Royal Meant began making normal round coins called half pennies and farthings. But I also learned that the US had its own halfpennies. They were one of the original currencies designated in the seventeen ninety two Coinage Act that you mentioned earlier. They stopped being minted in eighteen fifty seven, which turned the penny into our smallest currency at the time.
Well, we've got to take a quick break, but when we come back, we'll tell you why you shouldn't swallow a penny and why you should put one into your loafers. So don't go anywhere.
Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where we've gotten halfway through an episode about pennies without using the phrase common sense.
Get it? So?
I think we do this as there are some applause for that, now, don't you mango?
Yeah, Dylan, can we get some applause soundtrack? You like?
That might be a little bit canned, but it is still rewarding reward. Before the break, you promised listeners that we would tell them why you shouldn't swallow a penny. And I'm curious how this constitutes a fact like it goes without saying, right, don't swallow pennies.
Yeah, And I know our audience is too smart to do something like that, But there is a fact here, and it has to do with pennies chemistry. So in the nineteen eighties, rise and copper prices forced the US Mint to change the way it made pennies. And those World War Two era steel pennies you mentioned weren't in production for very long. They actually caused a lot of problems.
For one thing, penny vending machines were designed with magnets to catch fake coins, and that meant steel pennies got caught. Two plus people kept mistaking steel pennies for dimes. So the Mint went back to a mix of ninety five percent copper and five percent sinc. But in nineteen eighty two, copper became costper hit, so the ratio actually got flipped and pennies became mostly zinc with a thin layer of two point five percent copper to give them their characteristic
color and charm. And that's when they became seriously toxic. So researchers at Duke, a school you might be familiar with, found that swallowing a post nineteen eighty two penny meant that the zinc combined with stomach acid to form a mixture that is quote as corrosive as car battery acid hikes.
All right, now, hypothetical question, what if I have a penny from nineteen eighty two, Like, did they make this composition change exactly on January one? Or are there some nineteen eighty two pennies that mostly are copper and not zinc.
So again, if you're thinking of eating a penny, don't right, that's the first piut. But if you have a nineteen eighty two penny, it could be either type and you can't really tell by looking at it. Apparently, though, if you flip the penny in the air and it makes a high pitch whistling sound, it's mostly copper, and if it's silent, it's zinc. And then when it lands on a table, a copper coin might make a higher pitched ting while zinc makes a heavier thud.
I love all these rules that we're learning about which ones will attach to magnets, which ones This is pretty cool. All right. Well, I told you earlier I love stories about old stuff, but you know I also love stories about space, so I was excited to find this next fact.
This goes back to November twenty six, twenty eleven, when the Mars Curiosity Rover blasted off from Cape Canaveral and along with its lasers, high tech cameras, and particle spectrometers, it carried a single nineteen oh nine penny, one of the first from a series designed by Victor David Brenner. Now, the historic scent was mounted on the rovers calibration target, and this was sort of an homage to the field
of geology. One of Curiosity's main tasks was to explore the Martian landscape and examine rock samples there, and in geology, it's common practice to include a coin in specimen photos to show how big an object is.
Oh, that's really cool. You know. This is a total aside, But my favorite thing about the Curiosity Rover is that someone at NASA programmed it to play Happy Birthday to itself one year after landing on Mars, which is sometimes it's so great and so lonely.
That is terrific.
But something that's even crazier is that the rover only played the song once and never played it again on subsequent birthdays because it actually took so much power and the rover has this finite supply, so it didn't have the power to like sing itself again, which is kind of crazy, so.
Weird, like I wouldn't guess that something like that would take that much power. But that also makes it even sadder. It just never got to sing Happy Birthday in the future.
So back to pennies. My next fact is about as far from space as you can get. It's about pennies
on your feet aka penny loafers. So apparently, the first penny loafer was designed by a Norwegian shoemaker named Neils Tehranger who worked in the US as an apprentice in the early nineteen hundreds, and when he was here he noticed moccasins made in the Iroquois style with no laces, low heel and gathered stitches at the toe, worked something he appreciated, so back home he combined that inspiration with a laceless shoe popular in his hometown of our Land.
The result was this simple, unisex design that could be dressed up or down, and the new shoe became popular with American and European tourists who visited the region, which was also famous for its salmon fishing. Now, pretty soon loafers went from our land and the valley there to
the pages of Esquire magazine. In fact, Esquire founder Arnold Gingrich liked them so much that he brought a pair to John Bass, head of the American shoe company gh Bass and Company, and he suggested that he manufacture them. But Bass actually thought the original design wasn't sturdy enough, so we added a thicker sole and a strap across the van for top of the shoe, and he called
this updated style Ruegian, short for Norwegians. And as the loafers caught on, especially with young people and college students, folks realized that the slit in the strap was the perfect size to store a penny, so if you put one in each shoe, you'd actually have two cents, which at the time was a great solution because it was exactly how much you'd need to make a call at a payphone.
Actually, well, speaking of things that are obsolete, we cannot talk about pennies without talking about the push to get rid of them. I knew we had to talk about this at some point, and the date, several countries have eliminated their pennies, including Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, even Canada,
which stopped using pennies in twenty thirteen. Now anti penny ciniment has been brewing in the United States too, of course, and in February of twenty twenty five, the President ordered the US meant to stop making them.
So I feel like this has been a long time coming. We've read about this in the news. But the knock on pennies is mostly that they cost more to produce than they're actually worth.
Right, that's exactly right, And according to Treasury statistics, each one cent coin costs about three point seven cents to make. But here's the thing that's true of nickels too. In fact, five cent coins cost almost fourteen cents to make, and halting penny production wouldn't necessarily mean a huge windfall for
the government. So in fiscal year twenty twenty four, the Treasury minted about three point two billion pennies at less than four cents per That works out to a total cost of one hundred and eighteen million dollars so when you consider the six trillion dollar federal budget, it's a drop in the bucket, but you know they are coming
out with some savings there. But a better antipenny argument is that people don't like using them, so a lot of us just leave them lying around in coffee cans or on the ground, so as currency, they've actually kind of become almost worthless.
You know, I totally get that, and I understand, like, ioretically the reason why you wouldn't want pennies, but the idea of a pennyless world is like kind of a little sad to me. And I also feel like, wouldn't there be some impact on prices.
Yeah, we've actually seen this in countries that get rid of their pennies, so prices just get rounded to the next smallest currency, which in our case would be the nickel. So a seven to twenty three latte would cost seven to twenty five. But what's really interesting to me was the effect that this would have on charm pricing, which is the term for all those prices that end in nine.
Oh, because you're more willing to buy something for four ninety nine than five dollars right the.
Second Oh, Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, and so consumer research has consistently shown that this kind of pricing has a big impact on sales. This goes back decades. There's even a chain of stores called ninety nine cents Only. This began in nineteen eighty two and was valued at
one point six billion dollars by twenty eleven. Another example that some of us are old enough to remember is the iTunes store, which made a fortune selling songs and movieers for ninety nine cents each forgotten, Yeah, for real. And if you look at your app and software subscriptions now, you'll find a lot of them ending at nine. The psychology is simple. People see four ninety nine and they think four, not five, and that one penny actually makes all the difference.
Okay, well, so we've reached the end of this episode. But instead of one of us deciding who gets today's trophy, I think we could do something a little more fitting. Why don't we flip a penny for it? Oh? I like that?
Okay, can I guess? Can I take heads?
Yeah? Yeah, you can take heads, and I'll take tails obviously, And here goes it is heads. So congrats will.
Thank you so much. That feels really good and thank you to the Penny, which may be on its way out, but it's given us plenty of stories to remember it by now. If you like this episode, be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast app. Leave us a five star rating and a review. We love to hear from
you. You can also find us on Instagram at part Time Genius, where we read every comment that we get, every single comment, every single one, and from Dylan Gabe, Mary Mango and me thank you so much for listening.
Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted by Will Pearson and Me Mongaishatikler, and research by our good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry, with social media support from Sasha Gay, Trustee Dara Potts and Viny Shorey.
For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Another