Take A Penny, Leave a Penny – Want That Penny!

You want something of a relic? Consider the “Take a Penny, Leave a Penny” dish. Generally found at cafes, coffee shops, sundry stories, and other places where purchases of small amounts are made, these little courtesy gestures are surely something of a throwback to a time when most folks still paid for their things with cash.

As a young coin collector in the early 1990s, I remember how much they caught my attention. They were still pretty prevalent in my neck of the woods during my adolescent days in the hobby. Perhaps they were all the more attractive to me because I collected Lincoln Cents – something I still do with great affinity. Ironically enough, I still see a few of these today, though mostly at mom-and-pop indies that cater to cash-friendly crowds.

As my mom and/or dad would pay the check at the local cafeteria or gift shop when I was growing up, I’d visually gander through the little Take a Penny, Leave a Penny dishes with great curiosity looking for any dates I needed for my collection. I stumbled upon plenty of Lincoln Wheat Cents over those optical travels, and a bevy of pieces I needed for my sets were spied by me.

But there was just one problem – I never had the nerve to take any of those “pennies” from the Take a Penny, Leave a Penny dishes. I remember feeling like I was stealing. I didn’t even have the courage to swap out pennies with those I carried with me as regular pocket change. Oye veh… Should I have? I didn’t think it would’ve been right to dig into those dishes as I wasn’t paying for anything – they weren’t mine to take, after all.

To this day, I still feel a little uneasy about swapping out a common penny or two for one of the occasional nice pieces I see floating around in the ever-scarcer Take a Penny, Leave a Penny dishes. Why, I hardly ever see a Lincoln Wheat Cent in those little cent repositories in the first place. It seems the most desirable of the Lincoln Cents I ever do see in such places anymore (when I do find these customer-friendly penny vessels) are the pre-1982 bronze pieces, which are worth closer to two or three cents apiece for their copper metal value. Lincoln Wheat Cents are becoming rare in the wild.

But this all begs a burning question – perhaps one of greater moral, ethical, or philosophical significance than numismatic… Is it OK to take a penny you need for your collection from the Take a Penny, Leave a Penny dish? What if you swap two, even three of your pennies for the single cent that you need or want for your collection? Ah, my personal penny predicament continues…