THE ERROR COIN ENCYCLOPEDIA (LITTERING EDITION)
You never know what you might find when you pick up litter, and I recently decided to pick up and save ANY money that I found on the ground while picking up litter for a full year, and here is all the money that I found...
basicTable.html
COINS
|
TYPE |
NUMBER FOUND |
| 1. |
PENNIES |
4,372 |
| 2. |
NICKELS |
274 |
| 3. |
DIMES |
431 |
| 4. |
QUARTERS |
293 |
| 5. |
HALF DOLLARS |
2 |
| 6. |
SILVER DOLLARS |
0 |
|
TOTAL |
$174.77 |
basicTable.html
DOLLARS
|
TYPE |
NUMBER FOUND |
| 1. |
$1 BILLS |
54 |
| 2. |
$2 BILLS |
1 |
| 3. |
$5 BILLS |
19 |
| 4. |
$10 BILLS |
3 |
| 5. |
$20 BILLS |
10 |
| 6. |
$50 BILLS |
3 |
| 7. |
$100 BILLS |
1 |
|
TOTAL |
$631 |
GRAND TOTAL = $805.80
PIECES OF MONETARY LITTER = 5,463
Some of the money I found was so damaged that I seriously doubt that I could just walk into a store and spend it, and it inspired me to make a special "Error Coin Encyclopedia" which documents some of the ways that money can get damaged when it ends up on the ground as litter...
Pennies get dropped on the ground so frequently, that I actually found quite a few of them that were stuck in the road due to getting dropped on the ground during the brief time that fresh pavement was drying.
I found silver coins stuck in the pavement as well. (The dime in this picture has been run over so many times that it made me wonder, "When was "Freddy Krueger" president?)
Each of these half-cent coins were originally a full penny, and a full penny costs two cents to make, so maybe it's time to stop making pennies since so many of them just get discarded.
During the "Great Depression", some states actually produced 1/10th of a penny coins that were made out of inexpensive materials like tin, plastic, and even cardboard, and I actually found a 1/10th of a penny while picking up litter.
Here is a stack of 50 pennies that I found that were still in near-mint condition next to a stack of 25 pennies that I found that were in not-so-near-mint-condition.
Silver coins can also get bent up if they end up as litter in the streets, and sometimes they can even end up getting completely folded in half like a taco!
I found lots of pennies that were completely scratched up, and it didn't take long for me to notice that it was just newer pennies that had this problem.
Because newer pennies are made out of zinc, they are prone to what is known as "zinc rot".
As zinc pennies rot from the inside out, they start to look a bit like the moon.
In addition to monetary coins, I also found lots of gaming tokens and other coins that would say "NO CASH VALUE" on them, and here is a coin I found that is good for "one massage visit".
I also ended up finding some foreign coins littered on the ground, and even though some of them are still in decent condition, it might be hard for me to spend one of these coins without having to spend about 10,000 times as much money on a plane ticket first.
This poor one-cent coin has been through a lot.
I think I'll save these pennies just in case I ever get an outrageous and unjust fine and I want to pay it with money that is still technically "legal tender" but that no one would want to have to deal with.
This "Buffalo Nickel" could very well be the oldest coin that I found, but the date is no longer readable.
When I first found this penny, I put it in my pocket and spent the rest of the day thinking that I might be walking around with a coin that was worth a fortune!
But as soon as I got home, I did some research and found out that this coin is worth about $10. (Which is still 1,000 times more than a normal penny, and was still an interesting find!)
A lot of people have been talking lately about the benefits of using cell phones less often and the benefits of less "screen time" in general.
And although I might end up in the "Guinness Book of World Records" someday for having the largest collection of cell phones if I don't stop finding them littered on the ground, the truth is that I don't even know how to use a cell phone because I have a condition known as "telophonobia" (which is a silly-sounding but very real phobia of phones) so I've never had a cellphone, but I would like to share my perspective on this subject anyway.
Back when I first started doing these clean-up projects, I started by just picking up litter that was in my own neighborhood because that was where I lived, and because I had never been to a lot of the other neighborhoods in my area.
But I found that the more that I did this kind of work, the more that I wanted to do it, and I eventually found myself going beyond my own neighborhood and into neighborhoods that I had never been to before. (Including the ones that I had always heard were "bad neighborhoods".)
Then to make things more interesting, I started using the city bus system for the first time, and I started making it a point to go someplace new that I had never been to before whenever I picked up litter. And after going through a big stack of monthly bus passes, and walking down just about every street in the city (and doing it alone and without a phone) I want to say that not only has nothing bad ever happened to me while doing these projects, but I've encountered a lot of strangers who were almost "too nice" to me...
Because these clean-up projects involve a lot of walking and lugging around heavy stuff, it seems that no matter where I go, strangers will keep pulling over to offer me a ride. And because I do these projects even during extreme weather, the more intense the weather gets, the nicer people will become.
During the summer, strangers will keep pulling over just to ask if I'm going to be OK working outside in the heat and if they can go and buy some cold water for me, and sometimes people will even try to give me an umbrella when it's raining or an extra coat when it's snowing.
And because I made it a point to pick up ANY money that I saw on the ground for an entire year (even if it was just a penny) there were times when I would be trying to pick up a penny that was in the middle of a busy street, and I guess it would give passers by the impression that I really needed money, because sometimes strangers would actually pull out their wallet and start trying to give me money!
Strangers will also come up and thank me for what I'm doing, and sometimes they will end up talking to me for a long time, and I've ended up meeting a lot of friendly people this way.
I have been shown such a good side of people, that it simply wouldn't make sense for me to go back to being fearful of strangers and automatically imagining the worst-case scenarios about them. (Like I tended to do back when I didn't get out much and my view of the outside world was being shaped by watching the News.)
I don't doubt that there is crime in my area. (After all, "littering" itself is a crime, and there are MILLIONS of examples of this crime in plain sight where I live.)
But thanks to these clean-up projects, I've spent more time outside and less time looking at a screen in the past few years than I have at any other time in my life. And I know that what I am about to say will probably sound crazy to anyone who did the exact opposite of that and who spent the past few years locked in their homes and being bombarded all day long by the media with stories about crime, riots, racism, sickness, and war, but I honestly have never felt safer going outside than I do today.
I started picking up litter in my neighborhood because I wanted to help make the world a better place, and because it got me to get out more and start to base my view of the outside world on my actual experience in the outside world, the world actually is a much better place to me now, and that is the priceless treasure that I found while picking up a zillion pieces of litter.
BONUS
ONE MAN'S TRASH IS ANOTHER MAN'S TREASURE
This project also helped me realize that even even the litter in my neighborhood could be recycled / converted into activism-based art to make a statement, and below are some more projects that I did with litter to help bring awareness not only to the problem of littering, but to other big problems that I see in the world that I believe we can all do something about...
STOP FOOD WASTE
WATER IS LIFE
SAVE THE TREES
HEALTH IS WEALTH
"EARTH DAY"
MOVING TO MARS
WINNING THE LOTTERY
HOME