A couple of members have mentioned the 1990 film "Ghost" where Patrick Swayze is murdered and returns as a ghost to protect his girlfriend Demi Moore from the murderers. The film has a couple of scenes showing closeups of US pennies. Early in the film Patrick and Demi are remodeling an old loft and Patrick finds a jar with an 1898 Indian Head penny in it. Later, after Patrick becomes a ghost, he finds Whoopi Goldberg, a confidence artist who he can communicate with. They go to Demi's apartment but she will not let Whoopi in. Whoopi pushes a penny under the door and Patrick levitates it, showing that he is present. Only the obverse side is shown but the coin appears to be a Lincoln copper cent dated 1943-S.
VG 8 and AU 53... oh, wait, not that kind of thread. Was there a specific reason for using a wheat cent for the second one?
The same thing got my attention but with a different item. I worked 38 years making disposable syringes. In the movie Con Air with Nick Cage, he opens a first aid kit somewhere near the end of the movie and pulls out a syringe-freeze frame-Becton Dickinson (BD) syringe. In another horror movie Dawn of the Dead, when everyone is hiding in an attic, they open a first aid kit to give one of their friends a shot of morphine-freeze frame-another BD syringe.
Swayze's character name was Sam Wheat if I remember correctly. I don't know if it was spelled Wheat however. The IHC was found by him when moving in with his GF, Demi Moore, and he explained to her that they were good luck. Wonder where they got that from considering the movie was 1990, script written around that time as well, that IHCs specifically were good omens. I think it'd still be uncommon to find them in change even 25 years ago. Then again I was a kid when that movie came out. Seen it a bunch of times tho. edit - coincidentally enough, the murderer who was in league with Carl (Swayze's banking friend) had the same first name as you OP, Willie.
Yes because the 1943 pennies were made of steel, thus they were magnetic. This magnetism allowed producers to show the penny "levitating" up the door, when in reality they just had a magnet on the other side. They painted the steel penny to look like any other penny, which are not magnetic, to add to the effect.
