As some of you know I make fantasy coins. By that I mean that they are "from" fantasy places of mythology or fiction. I also tend to have a "hole in my pocket" sometimes when I visit places and I leave coins around national parks, historic sites, caves, phone booths, and penny trays. I have probably dropped a couple hundred of my coins in various places over the years. Generally of course I never hear anything about them... but I got a strange phone call the other day!!! Turns out a fellow and his teenage son had driven down to the Arkansas hills from Iowa to do a spot of spelunking in one of our wild caves. Well... it's a cave I sometimes lead trips into, and where, upon a time, a coin or two may have fallen out of my pocket. Well this fellow proceeds to explain how they had stopped to rest in the cave and his son reached down and pulled a crusty copper coin out of the mud. It had a tree on one side, and was covered with inscriptions they could not read except for the date which was in Arabic, "1402". They immediately assumed that they had found proof of pre-Columbian European contact in America. The rest of the way through the cave and on the long drive home the importance of the find grew in their minds so that by the time they got to Iowa this coin would pay for the son's college education and they'd be famous for discovering it. They figured it was some sort of Celtic piece and immediately started to research it. Well... it didn't take long for all the search leads to come to naught... it didn't resemble any real Celtic coins at all... nor anything else they could find. Finally he turned the computer over to his daughter, who just googled "1402 coin". Bang! Up came my website with a picture of the coin. It's my 1402 Shire copper penny... second most-common coin I ever made... mintage about 6,800 pieces... retails for $6. He enjoyed the humor of it... but was still disappointed that it wasn't a major find. But I thought I'd share that with you. The only other one I know about was when I was at a Renaissance Festival and a guy was looking at my coin display and startled. "Hey... I have one of those!" He said, pointing at a coin. Turns out he worked at a bank, and had found one stuck in a change machine. He didn't have a clue as to what it was til he saw my display. I never stuck one in any change machines... so I still don't know how it got there in the first place.
It's fun to think about the possibilities of where these fantasy coins may have ended up and who may have them. Perhaps there are some floating around overseas, where the mystery of what they are would be even greater. Thanks for the story!
Awesome! I know a good tailor for that hole...lol. That's a nice story. Thanks for posting it! Phoenix
