The year was 1940. A little boy 8 years old, blue jeans and tee shirt with some scuff marks is walking down a sidewalk and sees a penny, tails up laying in the grass. He picks up the coin and looks at the date. 1913. He says to himself that tails up is lucky, but the number 13 is unlucky. He declares that the tails up over rides the 13 and puts the coin in his pocket. Later after supper the boy takes the coin from his pocket and places on the kitchen table. His mother ask what is he doing with the penny. The little boy says it is lonesome and needs some friends. So his mother takes a jar of pennies down from top the shelf and places in front of the little boy. Well there are a few friends he can share. But there is one condition. You better not loose them and you can’t spend them. The little boy is all excited and takes the coins into his room. He pours them out on his small table and starts counting them. There are 187 pennies. He looks at the dates and decides to place them in date order. After a couple dates have been placed he came up on a problem. He did not have a date for each coin in order. So he skipped this date and continued with the dates he had skipping each date he did not have. When he finished he had several of the same dates. So he decided he would only keep the best looking coin from each date. The little boy noticed that some of the pennies had letters under the date. So he decided he would separate one with having no letter and the other with the letter D would be together. Now he had the best coins with two types of years. The little boy went to school the next morning. His first order of the day is the teacher collects the lunch money so they know how many kids will be eating lunch in the lunch room. So he has to pay his teacher $.5 cents for his lunch. He thinks this over and decides going without lunch one day will not hurt anything. So he goes all day without anything to eat. He rides his bicycle to the drug store and goes in. The clerk behind the counter ask what he can do for such a young fellow? Can I give you this nickel for 5 pennies the little boy ask? The clerk says sure. What you going to do with 5 pennies the clerk ask? Well sir. I am going to take them home and sort them by date and how good they look. The clerk not knowing of such things just smirked, and said OK young fellow. After the boy left the drug store he went to the five and dime discount store where a long time ago he saw a coin book. He thought it was still there, it had been there for ever. He was in luck, it was a coin album for pennies. 1909 thru 1936. The little boy ask the clerk how much the book was? The clerk said it is twenty five cents. The little boy got an allowance of five cents a week if he was good. So he figured that he could skip the lunches for the rest of the week and with his other pennies he could buy the coin album. From this day forward he was a coin collector. Thanks by Big Ed
Big Ed, you forgot the postscript to the story. And so the little boy went to work placing all of the pennies into the folder, and in time he was able to fill every hole. One day, he took his album to school for "Show and Tell". On his way home from school, he stops once again at the drug store to exchange a nickel for five pennies. Another customer notices the album and asks, "Whatcha got there fella?" The little boy showed him his collection. The man was very impressed and offered to buy the collection for $5. Immediately, the numbers started racing through the little boy's head. He could sell his collection, have enough money to put together five more sets and sell them for $5 apiece. "Deal! said the young boy, and so the first coin dealer in town was born. Chris
