Tag Archives: Coin

Coins on the Ground

Context:                                                    

O is a Pre-med biology major at USC, currently a freshman. O is a Vietnamese American who grew up in Vancouver, Washington — a short drive from Portland, Oregon. 

Text:

Me: Do you have anything you collect or do for good luck?

O: Yeah, actually I collect coins. Not just pennies, but like all kinds of coins.

Me: Really? How do you find them?

O: It’s really ridiculous, I just pick them up from the ground and keep them in my pocket, because I think they will bring me good luck.

Me: From the ground?

O: Yeah, they would be lying on the ground while I’m walking and I’ll pick them up, put them in my pockets.

Me: Do you keep the pennies forever?

O: No. I take them out and put them back on the ground once I think I don’t need the luck anymore. Like, the luck can go to someone else. 

Analysis:

O demonstrates some form of sympathetic magic. He connects receiving luck to picking up coins from the ground, both how lucky he is to find the coin and the luck the coin itself gives him. The luck O has that initially gives him the coin is somehow transferred into the coin, where there is some exchange between him and the coin that gives him luck with the penny as a conduit, collecting and releasing luck for anyone to pick up. The idea of quantifying luck or magic seems like contagious/contact magic, where magic or superstition can transfer from one person to the next with the penny is added as a middle man. Keeping the coin is somehow magic that ensures the luck will be sustained in him while giving it away is also magic, ensuring that luck will be passed on to the next person. If luck was the contagion of magic, the coin would be patient zero.

Coin in the Cake

Background: The informant is a 75 year old female. She grew up in Illinois, attending both high school and college in the state. Her parents were immigrants from Greece and she grew up in a predominantly Greek neighborhood. Her religion was Greek Orthodox which is where she picked up many different traditions.

Context: Upon calling for Easter, the informant was in the middle of dying eggs, but she gave multiple examples of what is good luck for Greek.

Text:

MC: A tradition I used to do in the Greek Orthodox Church when I was younger was that a yeast cake would be made. Sometimes people would put eggs around the cake, to symbolize Easter, but that wasn’t always the case. However, there was a very important step when baking the cake. In the dough was placed a single coin. Then after the midnight mass, we would be cutting up the cake, and whoever gets the gold coin would be given good luck for the rest of the year. We had many traditions giving luck.

Analysis:

Informant: She is very proud of her culture and traditions, and is especially happy that the Greeks have many traditions for good luck.

Mine: The ending statement stands out and brings up the question as to why there would be so many traditions surrounding good luck, especially for the Greeks. It could be that since civilization has been around for so long, they have undoubtedly faced many hardships, and by focusing on good luck rituals, it allows for a more optimistic view on the world, rather than focusing on the past. Additionally, the two most notable good luck Greek traditions surround Easter, the red egg and the coin in the egg. The hope coming along with Jesus’s resurrection may help contribute to an overall feeling of good luck.

To see another variation, Stanonis, A. J. & Wallace, R. (2018). Tasting New Orleans: How the Mardi Gras King Cake Came to Represent the Crescent City. 6–23.

Good Luck Coin

AW is a 19 year old college student. She is an undergraduate computer science major and is from Los Angeles County. She is Chinese American and has lived in LA all of her life.

Context: AW is a good friend of mine, so we sat down after dinner to discuss folklore she picked up across her life. She picked this practice up from her parents.

Transcript:

Collector: You have a thing with coins right?

AW: Ah yes!

Collector: Tell me about it.

AW: Coins, not just pennies, can bring good luck. But only if it is turned on heads. So if I am walking down the street and spot, let’s say, a dime or something. I will only pick it up if it’s on heads. Then it is good luck.

Also if I drop a coin in you guys’ apartment then I leave it there for good luck haha.

Collector: I picked up on that. Whenever we see a coin on the ground we just leave it.

AW: Yes for good fortune!

Thoughts/Analysis: This is a great twist on the typical finding a penny for good luck belief. I had never heard of leaving coins for good luck, only picking them up. I think this shows that both taking and giving money is necessary for good fortune. It might even mean that you cannot take and take without giving. Coins in general being used in this belief rather than just pennies might make someone believe they have more good luck because other coins are more valuable and you are likely to see them more.

For a variation of the lucky coin, see:

Brianna, and Brianna. “Find a Penny, Pick It Up and All Day You’Ll Have Good Luck.” USC Digital Folklore Archives, May 15, 2021. http://uscfolklorearc.wpenginepowered.com/find-a-penny-pick-it-up-and-all-day-youll-have-good-luck/.

Healing Coin

Nationality: Arab American
Age: 20
Residence: Glendale, CA
Performance Date: April 19, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Arabic

Form of Folklore:  Folk Belief (Medicine)

Informant Bio:  The informant was born and raised in Glendale, California.  Most of the folklore he has been exposed to comes primarily from his father, who is of Arabic decent.  Other folklore has been attained either through media sources (i.e. Reddit) or through personal life experiences in America.

Context:  The interview was conducted on the porch of another informant’s house in the presence of two other informants.

Item:    In Arabic culture, if you get a bump or a cyst or anything that creates a bump on your arm, one thing you can do is to get a large coin, put it on the bump and wrap up your wrist (or wherever the bump is) really tight.  And this makes the bump go away.

Informant Comments:  The informant’s father told his older brother to use this folk medicine to get rid of a bump he had on his wrist.  After a day or so, the bump did, in fact, go away.  The informant does not know if this folk medicine will always work, but based on what he has seen, it seems to work most of the time.  Either way, he believes trying this remedy could not hurt.

Analysis:  This folk belief (medicine) is common among Middle Eastern cultures.  The act of placing a coin on a bump or cyst and tying it tightly may be construed as having an implied focus on the power of the coin to heal (possibly by some sort of magical aspect).  On the contrary, the coin is of little essential importance; any flat hard object would suffice.  It is, in fact, the constant pressure which helps the bump or cyst disappear.  Not always, but most of the time, cysts will pop and bumps will become less inflated when pressure is applied to them.  It seems that people had realized the correlation between placing pressure on a bump and having that bump go away; thus, they came to the plausible conclusion that they should place a large coin on the bump before tying it in order to increase pressure even more.  This folk medicine is rooted in this rational progression.  Whether it always works or not, it is a method of healing developed through logical thought and passed on from generation to generation.

Penny Superstition

Nationality: Japanese American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Garden Grove, CA
Performance Date: March 12, 2012
Primary Language: English

If I see a penny on the floor and it’s tails, I have to flip it over and leave it there or else I will get bad luck.

My informant told me about this superstition while we were walking.  I had spotted a penny on the floor and was going to pick it up until he stopped me.  Then, I asked him where he had got this idea from.  He told me that he was sure that somebody had told him but was unsure about who the specific person was.  Nest, I asked him whether he really believes that picking up a tails penny would be bad luck.  He said that he did not but it does not hurt to listen to this superstition.

I feel like this superstition derived from the other superstition that finding a penny that is heads up is good luck.  Somebody might have wondered how to respond if they were to find a penny that was tail side up, and simply come to the conclusion that the opposite side should provide good luck.  Following this, the whole act of flipping the tails coin to heads helps increase the chance that somebody else will find the good luck penny.  For me, I believe that this superstition is a way for people to feel good about themselves in a small way.  By flipping the coin to heads, a person would feel like they have first of all vanquished the potential for bad luck and at the same time, saved somebody else from it.