In 2017, wife-and-husband documentary filmmakers Jamie Kovach and Zach Edick embarked on an epic eight-week road trip across North America. Their quarry? The most worthless thing you can find in a cash register or a coin purse: the penny.
If you enjoyed my recent columns on the lowly penny, this delightful film is for you.
Jamie and Zach met when they were students at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Jamie is from Silver Spring, Md., a graduate of the magnet programs at Eastern Middle and Blair High schools.
Zach is from Ohio. His mother is an accountant, so money’s in his blood. When the couple saw a magazine article about seigniorage — the difference between the cost to produce a coin and what it’s worth — they thought the back-and-forth over whether to abolish the penny might make a good subject.
“It’s not particularly controversial, but it would literally affect every American in every walk of life,” said Jamie, 34. “It’s a fun way to do a portrait of America as a whole through the lens of a really simple issue.”
They did some research, decided whom to interview, set up meetings, then set off. At the end of every interview, they would ask if there was anyone else they should speak with, a trick Jamie learned when she was at Blair’s Silver Chips newspaper.
“There’s a wonderful community of people that work within the field of coinage,” said Jamie, who lives with Zach and their daughter, Lucy, in Austin.
They wound up talking to such diverse figures as the chief executive of Coinstar and a New York City ornithologist who says that spotting birds is good practice for finding coins on the sidewalk. And the couple stopped in Canada, which got rid of its penny in 2012 and suffered no apparent ill effects.
Also in the film is Julian Leidman, a numismatist who runs Bonanza Coins in Silver Spring.
“I remember going in there as a kid,” said Jamie. “Montgomery Donuts was nearby. We’d get a doughnut and look at coins at the coin store. I’d buy a wheat penny.”
Their movie debuted in September at the Columbus Film Festival. It went up on Amazon Prime two weeks ago. Fun fact I learned from the film: Americans throw away $62 million in change every year.
More cents-ible ideas?
Carl Yaffe is a coin collector in Rockville, Md. He says the U.S. Treasury is storing over $1 billion in uncirculated dollar coins, all those Susan B. Anthonys, Sacagaweas and Presidentials.
Carl’s suggestion for solving the current penny shortage: “Sell these to the public in exchange for, say, 92 pennies each, and place a one-year moratorium on banks accepting the dollar coins for deposits, thus effectively forcing them into active circulation,” he wrote. “Of course, the best idea would be to eliminate the penny as a circulating coin altogether, and mint new ones each year for collectors only. This should have happened years ago.”
Andrew Mays, of Westminster, Md., has a different solution to our coin shortage. “One day have Trump and Pence call for all loyal Republicans to bring their coins sitting around the house to the bank, or even just pay for their purchases at the store with coins,” he wrote. “Then have Joe Biden and Ms. Harris call for all loyal Democrats to bring their coins in so they are not outdone. Problem solved!”
Given the problems with the post office and mail-in ballots, that might be the easiest way to choose the next president.
In my previous column about pennies, I mentioned the “penny walk,” a Depression-era perambulation that relied on flipping a penny to determine a serendipitous route. Margaret Minton, of Frederick, Md., has a different memory associated with that term.
About 30 years ago, Margaret was trying to make a difficult decision. She decided to be guided by chance. If she saw a penny resting heads-up on her lunchtime walk, her decision would be yes. If it was tails-up, her decision would be no.
“I went a long way without finding any pennies, even though I cruised near all the local parking meters, where people frequently dropped change,” Margaret wrote. “After a while, I realized I was not just hoping for a penny, I was hoping for a heads-up penny. Decision made!”
And that’s how Margaret agreed to drive the vanpool.
Twitter: @johnkelly
For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/john-kelly.
