Find A Penny…

...pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck!

So what happens if you find a smashed penny? Does that give you extra good luck, or does it give you bad luck? I found a smashed penny today from the Discovery Center of Idaho. It’s been around the block a time or two, but is still readable. I’ve never been to the Discovery Center of Idaho and, in fact, have no idea what it is…except, perhaps, a center of discovery.

Because I found this smashed penny, I did a search to see if there was more to the penny saying and ran across this very interesting site: The Lucky Penny Website. Everything you every wanted to know about pennies and then some. Don’t you just love the internet?

Of course, I found this one, too. This is more likely to happen to me the way my luck goes.

And this is fun, too. I choose wrong on my first try. Huh. Apparently I need to be more observant. Must be because I smash all my pennies. Be sure to click the link that takes you to the page that shows how many people picked which one.

And finally, if you want to know if it is worth your time financially to pick up a penny, check this one out. I love this:

Now the issue of the time cost of money (where applicable) is addressed. The median income of a male full-time year-round worker is $40,688 (2003 figures - the reader is welcome to insert his or her annual income instead). Assuming 50 weeks of work and approximately 40 hours of work per week, we arrive at an average hourly wage of $20.34. The three seconds required to pick up a penny -- assuming that one would otherwise be compensated for one's time -- cost the working test subject $0.01695, or 1.7 cents. A test subject walking back to work from lunch should therefore not bend down to pick up the penny unless he or she is paid $11.88/hr or less.

I apparently wasted my time and lowered my monetary value by picking up this penny. And the fact that it is a smashed penny, and therefore not spendable compounds my problem so that I now apparently OWE money. To whom, I’m not sure. The Penny God? I guess I’ll go drop some pennies while I’m out at lunch and see if I can put myself right with the universe again.