ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
People who collect things - stamps, records, trading cards - look at the world a little differently than the rest of us. Why does that one misprint on the label make that vinyl record worth $500? Why is one Pokemon card worth thousands more than some other card? It's collectors who hold the answers to these questions. And with the news that President Trump wants to get rid of pennies, NPR's Andrew Limbong stopped by one coin-collecting shop to find their reaction.
ANDREW LIMBONG, BYLINE: In just a few weeks, members of the numismatic community - that is, coin collectors - will be coming into Baltimore for the big Whitman Coin Expo. They'll be buying, selling, trading, grading coins and paper money of all types. And so I figured here, of all places, would the death of the penny mean something - that it'll be the talk of the town or at least a heated topic of debate.
PHILIP SAGER: Absolutely not.
LIMBONG: Absolutely not?
SAGER: Nobody's going to care one way or another.
LIMBONG: That's Philip Sager. He's planning on going to the expo, like he always does. He owns Geezer's Tweezers. It's a shop just outside of Baltimore city that deals in rare and collectible coins and stamps. He's been at this location for more than 30 years.
Do people ever come in thinking - with pennies, particularly - like, oh, I got something here?
SAGER: Oh, yeah, every day. Sometimes they'll say, well, gee, this is a 1914 penny. It's got to be worth some money. Well, no, it doesn't. Just because they're old doesn't mean they're worth anything.
LIMBONG: He says everyone's got piles of pennies laying around in jars and cans and boxes, including, of course, Sager.
(SOUNDBITE OF COINS SHIFTING)
SAGER: Here's pennies.
LIMBONG: He takes me to a room in the back where he's got pennies laying around in cardboard boxes, and he hands me a couple.
SAGER: Well, this is an old penny.
LIMBONG: This...
SAGER: But that's a large penny.
LIMBONG: It's about the size of a quarter.
SAGER: And that's what pennies looked like in the 1830s and '20s and '40s. Here - here's a better one. This is 1859 - nice Indian-head penny, says 1 cent.
LIMBONG: On the other side, it's got what looks like a woman wearing a headdress. It hits me that I'm holding history in my hand right now - a big penny from the 1830s and an Indian-head penny from 1859. They've been around for a long time and have seen more than I ever will, but even to expert coin collectors, these pennies aren't worth much. They're bouncing around in loose cardboard boxes, in rough shape. If Sager sold them both, it'd probably amount to the cost of an OK lunch, and as if to drive that point home, as Sager is showing me other pennies, I realize that I don't have the Indian-head penny in my hand anymore.
SAGER: Here's an interesting coin. Here - it's a 2019. So it's only five years old.
LIMBONG: Oh, wait. I think I dropped the Indian head.
SAGER: Oh. As it was right there, right?
LIMBONG: No, this is the big one.
SAGER: Oh.
LIMBONG: Did I give you back the Indian head?
SAGER: Yeah, I guess we did. Oh, it's somewhere.
LIMBONG: It's somewhere, he says, as if to say, it's not a big deal if it's lost. And maybe it's not a big deal if the penny as a currency ceases to exist. We, as consumers, have cash, credit cards, Venmo, Apple Pay to buy stuff. Collectors have tons of other cool coins to buy and trade. And I know - Sager said - just because something is old doesn't mean it has inherent value, but it will be the end of a hundreds-yearlong run for the penny, which has got to be worth something. Andrew Limbong, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF POST MALONE SONG, "CHEMICAL") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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