The Library Penny
A hushed public library in Duluth, Minnesota at 3:47 PM, where the self-checkout machine's coin return slot has just dispensed a single wheat penny onto the scuffed linoleum.
The penny is a 1943 copper wheat cent — or it looks like one. If it's real, it's worth roughly $250,000. If it's not, it's worth one cent and they've been blocking the self-checkout for six minutes while a line of increasingly hostile retirees forms behind them. Double wants to leave immediately, drive 147 miles to the nearest coin authenticator in Minneapolis, and skip Bust's dentist appointment. Bust wants to pocket it, return their library books like adults, and google it in the car.
“Every second we stand here some grandpa with a Tom Clancy novel is memorizing our faces — we need to MOVE, this penny is our origin story.”
“It fell out of a library coin return in Duluth. The last treasure that came out of a Duluth coin return was a sticky nickel.”
Bust googled it in the car, discovered that real 1943 copper cents are non-magnetic, and stuck the penny to the magnetic phone mount on the dashboard where it held firm as a fridge magnet. It was a steel penny someone had copper-plated, likely as a middle school science project, and is now worth exactly one cent minus the emotional damage of Double already having canceled the dentist appointment from the library parking lot.
The plating was REALLY good though — that kid deserved an A, and honestly so did we for spotting it.
My rescheduling fee is $75, so technically this penny cost us seven thousand five hundred times its face value.