Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Snowfall and Crummy Coins

Snowfall and Crummy Coins



This week the main story around this part of the neighborhood is snow. It's February – go figure. A storm lashed its way through our Buckeye State last Friday night (and elsewhere, if you recall) and dumped many inches of the white stuff on this land between the river and the lake. We, in my hometown, shared in its bounty during that storm, counting anywhere from 10 to 14 inches of snow on our yards and streets and sidewalks. Other areas of the state had varying amounts also, from not-too-much to way-way-too-much. I guess our foot, give or take an inch or two, was about average. If you want to know the truth, I'd have enjoyed being less than average this time around.


I'm sort of ambivalent about snow. (I love that sentence.) Of course I've lived with it all my life. I've seen old black and white photos that were taken by my father, when I was a baby, of monster snows that occurred during those years. People were stranded for days and days during those snows. I understand I caught pneumonia during one of those onslaughts and spent some time in the hospital. I don't really remember. Just stories.


Were the snows actually bigger in the “old” days, or are our memories getting more easily revised as the years go by?


I have to drive quite a ways to work these days and am not terribly fond of having to make my way through the mess that a substantial snowfall entails. It almost invariably leads to slow travel and apprehension as to the safety of being on the road. And it's always more time consuming, having to clean off the car, having to warm the car, having to make sure the car has its safety equipment, perhaps even having to clean the driveway to get out, etc., etc. A 10-minute drive to the store can become a 30-minute endeavor that can tire you out for an afternoon.


But, to look at the obverse of that coin, the beauty of a snowfall is something awesome to behold in itself. I recalled this aspect of the white stuff when I left work last night at midnight and walked to the car. The snow piles around the parking lot where I work glistened in the lights from the high light poles as if they contained thousands and thousands of glittering diamonds embedded in them. The night was quiet and frosty and my breath steamed in the cold air as my boots crunched their way to the car. On the drive home I marveled at the moon-drenched snowscapes on either side of the car as I drove through the rural countryside.


So I again sit here at work and watch another storm wend its way through the area. The work is light tonight and I have time to ponder various topics as they occur to my questing mind.


Such as pennies.


For instance, did you know that United States cents are now biodegradable? I'm pretty sure that they aren't supposed to be. But I've discovered that they are. Here's how I discovered that fact: One of my hobbies is metal detecting, the pursuit of which, as my faithful readers may recall, entails my retrieving lost coins from the ground. Generally nickels, dimes, quarters and cents. Occasionally a half might appear or one of the newer US dollar coins. Rarely silver, but it's not unheard of.


But it's usually a pocketful of common coins when the day's done.


Now I suppose it's time for a history lesson. In the “old” days, cents were made out of primarily copper. Here's how they evolved over time. Let's just go back to World War II for simplicity sake. 1944-1946 the cent was made of 95% copper and 5% zinc. This composition is better known as brass. 1946-1962 the cent was composed of 95% copper and 5% tin and zinc, better known as bronze. 1962-1982 it was made of brass again, the same as the '44-'46 ones. But during 1982 the composition was changed again and not for the better. It became 97.5% zinc and 2.5% copper plating. This was ostensibly because the value of the copper in the cent began to rise above one cent.


Let's look at what Wikipedia says about the “new” zinc cents. “It should be noted that the post-1982 cents, since copper and zinc form a galvanic cell in the presence of electrolytes, are much more susceptible to corrosion and pitting than the bronze cents made prior to 1982. Many collectors lament that even perfectly preserved post-1982 cents protected in Mint sets have begun tarnishing, developing bubbles beneath the copper coating's surface, or even corroding.”


If the zinc cents are deteriorating even in sealed mint sets, you can imagine what they do when they're buried in the ground! I estimate that about half of the cents that I've recovered from the ground recently have been of the zinc variety and half of those cents are pitted and corroded so badly as to make them unspendable. I recently cleaned a number of dirty coins I'd dug the past year or two and it was sad to see the way the zinc ones looked. They appeared as if they'd been exposed to hydrochloric or sulfuric acid or possibly some other highly corrosive media. The pre-1982 ones are, almost without an exception, in decent shape and only need a bit of cleaning before placing them directly back into circulation after cleaning. I ended up picking out the bad ones and keeping them for novelty sake. When the final tally is taken it's only going to result in the loss of a couple of dollars, but when I think of the effort that went into retrieving those cents, the hours of bending and digging, it's sad to see the end result being veritably worthless.


Out of curiosity I've checked out the Internet to see if I could trade in the bad cents for good ones. I knew you could do this with ripped and mutilated paper currency. And I found out you can. But you have to either send them or carry them to the US Mint in Washington to do so. Hardly worth the effort.


Another big downside to the zinc cent is this, and I again quote from Wikipedia: “Zinc, a major component of post-1982 US pennies, is toxic in large quantities. Swallowing such a penny, which is 97.5% zinc, can cause damage to the stomach lining due to the high solubility of the zinc ion in the acidic stomach. Zinc toxicity, mostly in the form of the ingestion of US pennies minted after 1982, is commonly fatal in dogs where it causes a severe hemolytic anemia. It is also highly toxic in pet parrots and can often be fatal.”


And so it goes.


I suppose a conspiracy theorist might surmise that the change was a government plot to poison our children, our dogs, our parrots and to devalue the currency. I hardly think that. I believe a mistake was made when the composition of the cents was changed and that it's now high time to rectify that error.


So, from this day forth let your battle cry be “Bring Back the Copper Cents!” Or “Let's Pitch the Pathetic Pennies and Bring Back the Old Time Cents!”


The coin collectors will thank you. The handful of us treasure hunters will thank you. And you'll again be content that the cents in your pocket will last almost forever and are worth at least a cent again.


Even if you can't buy anything with them.