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See A Penny, Pick It Up (Superstition / Luck Related To Money Found)

There are a few references in my superstitions book to it being considered unlucky to pick up found money, from the 16thC to early 20thC. Especially sixpences, for some reason regarded as the unluckiest coin - unless it was crooked or bent. That's a completely different superstition.

Swifty - That seems to be a US website judging by the coin in the photograph. I wonder if this is one of those superstitions which have 'flipped' as they crossed the Atlantic, like black cats versus white cats for luck.
 
rynner2 said:
Now I'm old and fat, I'd only bother picking up 50p or more!
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What you need is one of those retractable magnet gadgets. You clip it in a top pocket like a pen and whip it out and stretch it to reach discarded loose change. I do this a lot at work! ;)
 
I might be able to pick it up but I'm likely to get stuck in that position.
 
I've only heard the see a pin version myself. No idea what the significance of a pin would be with regard to good luck.
 
Swifty said:
I still pick up every penny I see. The rhyme has older roots apparently ..

http://psychiclibrary.com/beyondBooks/penny-superstition/
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Whenever something giving you 'good luck' appears in folklore, someone will always say it has something to do with warding off evil spirits. Perhaps it's just about getting good luck.

I'm a removal man, and frequently find pennies when I move folk's furniture. Out of ingrained superstition, I have to pick them up, but because I can't bring myself to steal even a lost penny I then put them on a windowsill.
 
JamesWhitehead said:
I found a £2 coin the other day. I was chuffed.

Finding the person who would chuff me for £2 was the hard part. :D
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My finest hour I've ever known, was finding a pound on the underground :D (I've never done that, I just like the song)
 
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Old people. Show everyone you've still got it. If you see a penny on the floor, drop your pants and pick it up with your precise and muscular butt cheeks.
Don't ruin the cool attitude by following through though.
 
PeteByrdie said:
Whenever something giving you 'good luck' appears in folklore, someone will always say it has something to do with warding off evil spirits. Perhaps it's just about getting good luck.

I'm a removal man, and frequently find pennies when I move folk's furniture. Out of ingrained superstition, I have to pick them up, but because I can't bring myself to steal even a lost penny I then put them on a windowsill.
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I heard you pick up the penny but to extract the luck out of it, you have to give it to a friend.
 
jimv1 said:
I heard you pick up the penny but to extract the luck out of it, you have to give it to a friend.
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Aye, but all my friends are thieves. I can't trust them to put the penny on the windowsill. They'd pocket it and genuinely feel they've made something out of the Universe. And then the Flying Spaghetti Monster will smite them with his noodly appendage. And perhaps me for assisting their felony.
 
Off-topic, I know, but relevant to this thread. I don't spend much time looking at the statistics but those Trophy Points are weird! I have got 113 and jimv1 has got 113 and so has Swifty along with GNC, rynner, davidplankton and escargot . . .

edit 16.10. Add Ulalume to the list!
Perhaps we have all, quietly, at different times reached the maximum? :huh:
 
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JamesWhitehead said:
Off-topic, I know, but relevant to this thread. I don't spend much time looking at the statistics but those Trophy Points are weird! I have got 113 and jimv1 has got 113 and so has Swifty along with GNC, rynner, davidplankton and escargot ...
Perhaps we have all, quietly, at different times reached the maximum? :huh:
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I don't think you get them in ones and twos - they arrive in great chunks of 8, 25, 72-and-a-half, so there's hardly any chance of getting 112 or 114, as far as I can tell. I'm only posting this to check how many I've got, of course...

EDIT: 83. Stupid game, anyway!


As for pennies, I always pick them up (from the pavement, not other people's drawers, I hasten to add), but more from avarice than the hope of good luck. My view is, if it costs me nothing to pick it up, why not?
 
rynner2 said:
Now I'm old and fat, I'd only bother picking up 50p or more!
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Once, a co-worker did an experiment - he put a pile of pennies on the sidewalk, then checked every day for a week to see whether anyone had collected them, or even some of them. At the end of the week only a few were gone.
Seems many people feel the same way you do, Rynner.

PeteByrdie said:
I'm a removal man, and frequently find pennies when I move folk's furniture. Out of ingrained superstition, I have to pick them up, but because I can't bring myself to steal even a lost penny I then put them on a windowsill.
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Ah, so that's what a removal man does. I'd always wondered what a removal man was removing (but had been too lazy to look it up.) I learn something new every day on this forum! :)

I do pick up pennies when I see them (unless they clearly belong to someone else) but it's dimes (ten cent coins) that are lucky for me.

ETA just remembered the "see a penny..." rhyme Swifty quoted was used in the movie "Grease". It was a plot point toward the end of the film. I have a vague recollection of asking about this superstition as a child, and being told it really ought to be "pin". I have no idea which version was in more common usage in the US before this.
 
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Ulalume said:
Once, a co-worker did an experiment - he put a pile of pennies on the sidewalk, then checked every day for a week to see whether anyone had collected them, or even some of them. At the end of the week only a few were gone.
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Hang on, was this several pennies placed as one pile on the sidewalk, or a pile of pennies individually distributed in different places?

I am aware of a test that smacks of little league Bullingdon Club. If you suspect that the pub you are drinking in is in an area that has hit hard times, you drop coins of different value into the urinal and see which is the lowest denomination that people are willing to pick out. It's not exactly burning fifty quid notes, but to me it seems to originate in a similar part of the psyche...
 
Most of the coins I pick up I find both inside and outside our local shop, the school kids can't be bothered with them and just chuck them on the floor. I save them in a plastic skull shaped glass on a shelf in our dining room.

The boss asked if I could do him a favour one day by getting him some change for the till which would have meant me walking to town and back ... I just walked to his shop instead with the skull glass full of coins and got about four pounds for them :).
 
Krepostnoi said:
Hang on, was this several pennies placed as one pile on the sidewalk, or a pile of pennies individually distributed in different places?

I am aware of a test that smacks of little league Bullingdon Club. If you suspect that the pub you are drinking in is in an area that has hit hard times, you drop coins of different value into the urinal and see which is the lowest denomination that people are willing to pick out. It's not exactly burning fifty quid notes, but to me it seems to originate in a similar part of the psyche...
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It was a single pile of pennies on the sidewalk, just where people would be likely to step over them. This was during the time there was talk (again) of abolishing the one cent coin as US currency. He wanted to see if people found enough value in pennies to bother with picking them up or not.

I was surprised by the result, since pennies do add up, eventually. The office was in a downtown area with a quite a few vagrants around, so as a test of relative poverty, I'm not sure it's valid - unless the vagrants didn't want to encumbered by lots of small change.
 
JamesWhitehead said:
Off-topic, I know, but relevant to this thread. I don't spend much time looking at the statistics but those Trophy Points are weird! I have got 113 and jimv1 has got 113 and so has Swifty along with GNC, rynner, davidplankton and escargot . . .

edit 16.10. Add Ulalume to the list!
Perhaps we have all, quietly, at different times reached the maximum? :huh:
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Add me to the list too!

113 is the maximum. http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?help/trophies
 
I think the list must be quite a long one. I was struck by the concentration of 113ers on this particular thread but maybe the pattern is similar on others. Time for a group-chuff! :grouphug:
 
:grouphug: <--- Yes...what ARE they doing? :eek:
 
Ulalume said:
It was a single pile of pennies on the sidewalk, just where people would be likely to step over them.
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Yes, that's how I read it originally. But I asked as I found it exceedingly odd, given that you said at the end of the experiment only a few had been taken. Surely, if you bend down to take one, you'd actually take them all? I genuinely struggle to think of a plausible reason why only a few went.
 
Ulalume said:
Ah, so that's what a removal man does. I'd always wondered what a removal man was removing (but had been too lazy to look it up.) I learn something new every day on this forum! :)
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Either,
a) They are called something else in the States.
b) You, and everyone that you know, have never moved house.
c) Everything you own fits into one backpack.
 
JamesWhitehead said:
Off-topic, I know, but relevant to this thread. I don't spend much time looking at the statistics but those Trophy Points are weird! I have got 113 and jimv1 has got 113 and so has Swifty along with GNC, rynner, davidplankton and escargot . . .

edit 16.10. Add Ulalume to the list!
Perhaps we have all, quietly, at different times reached the maximum? :huh:
Click to expand...

See a point and pick it up and all day long you have fuck all.
 
Can we all have ceremonial robes to wear if there's a 113 club please ? .. or a free copy of FT or something. I'd be happy with a mug ?
 
Way back, when I was the first - or saddest - poster to reach a then-amazing four-hundred posts, we joked about a prize toaster!

I suspect the 113-club mugs will take the same time to arrive. :p

So far, all I know about the 113-club is that we get first dibs to chuff the cute new arrivals. :evil:
 
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