Tag Archives: Penny

Picking up a Penny and Good Luck

Age: 19
Greenwich, CT
Location: N/A

Context:
This is a folk belief regarding good luck that I learned from my friend here at USC. She grew up in Connecticut and came to Los Angeles for college. She told me that she learned this belief from her friends from childhood, and not necessarily her family.

Content:
Interviewer: “You were telling me you have a certain belief around picking up pennies, can you elaborate on that?”

Interviewee: “Yeah, when you drop a penny on the ground, only pick it up if it landed on tails. If it landed on heads it’s a sign of good luck so you should leave it.

I think there is just like a common association with pennies being heads up being good luck. So you’re kind of leaving that luck for someone else to find but yeah, just when you drop a penny only pick it up if it’s tails.”

Interviewer: “Interesting! Where did you first hear about this?”

Interviewee: “It’s something I think I just learned from friends and not necessarily from family.”

Analysis:
This folk belief centered on good luck and everyday activities utilizes pennies as a symbolic object. It is a simple rule, but it makes something random feel like a decision. Instead of luck just happening, it feels like you’re kind of controlling it.

The idea of leaving a heads-up penny for someone else to benefit from creates a sense of community and communal luck instead of purely individual gain. Overall, it shows how small everyday actions help reinforce a sense of order, meaning, and community in otherwise random and unpredictable situations.

Find a penny, pick it up, all the day you’ll have good luck

Text: “Find a penny, pick it up, all the day you’ll have good luck”

Context: Informant is 79, white, female, living in North Idaho. To this day if she sees a penny she’ll pick it up and smile, thinking of the old phrase. She can’t remember where she learned this but thinks she was very young. 

Analysis: This is folk speech that invokes magic “supersition”, picking up the penny means good luck and the specific outcome is having that luck all day. Coins are often used in magic superstitions, tossing a coin in a well, a penny having a bad luck side. It’s especially interesting because coins operate in a weird state in our economics, they are our most tangible form of money but have little in the way of monetary value especially now to the point of becoming almost obsolete. I believe it’s this inbetween between worthlessness and value that makes it the perfect thing for superstition to focus on. It has value, thus is special, but not enough to covet or protect Thus we assign them superstitious values. But more than that it’s something that clearly brings my grandmother joy, it’s an event you can’t control and thus that superstition brings that joy almost randomly. The rhyme in the saying also makes it feel whimsical, which could be a reason it’s stuck around for my grandmother.

New Years Penny

Text: 

The informant’s family and friends trade pennies with every other person at their New Year’s Party and wish them good luck for the New Year. 

Context:

The informant is from Texas and his family now lives in California every year after the New Year starts they trade pennies with one another.

Analysis:

To me, there are a few things at play with this tradition. The choice of the penny is meant to represent money. Similar to how Professor Thompson mentioned champagne is drank to show wealth and wish for wealth for the new year, and pennies are used to wish the other person financial fortune in the year to come. In addition, this is done to force everyone at the party to wish the other good luck which stops them from carrying any feelings of ill will toward the other into the New Year. 

Lucky Penny Magic

Text

“I believe in lucky pennies. I have a bunch right here; I have some in my window. They’re only lucky if you find them heads up. But if I find one that is heads down, I’ll flip it so it’s lucky for the next person.

“Sometimes if I know someone’s having a bad day, or they have an exam and they need some luck, I’ll give them one of my lucky pennies.

“But there have been times when I’ve found a lucky penny, and I’m like, ‘Ok, this is the day that I have to do something ballsy and brave. This is a sign.’ And then it won’t go well. And I’ll be like, ‘The lucky penny magic isn’t real,’ and I’ll swear off lucky pennies. But I never seem to stop myself. I always continue doing it anyway.”

GR said she couldn’t recall an experience when a lucky penny actually gave her good luck. “Unless I have incredibly spectacular, amazing luck, I’ll never recognize good luck. I only really recognize when I’ve had really bad luck.”

Context

GR is a 21 year-old college student from Portland, OR, currently living in Los Angeles. Her grandparents were Irish immigrants.

Lucky penny belief is performed mostly in public spaces where one is likely to have dropped loose change, such as a place of business, a parking lot, or the sidewalk. As a resident of a large urban area, GR often encounters such spaces. It is likely that the frequency of finding lucky pennies influences her belief.

Analysis

Lucky penny magic reflects the values of American capitalist society, in which money is the main mechanism of upward mobility and survival. Under this system of values, coming into any amount of money by chance is genuinely good luck.

GR’s belief goes further, however, claiming that the pennies are not merely an instance of luck but a token of it, a good luck charm. Lucky penny belief for some is merely a sign superstition, a form of belief that requires no action; one merely encounters a sign of good or bad luck.

However, GR actively takes part in the belief, choosing to collect the lucky pennies, give them to her friends, and flip a heads down penny over for the next person. This action is what makes her belief magic. Specifically, GR believes that lucky pennies are a form of contagious magic in their ability to bring good luck to whoever possesses them.

Additionally, her choice to collect the pennies out of belief that they may bring luck in the future reflects the future-orientation of American culture, as described by folklorist Alan Dundes.

Pennies from Heaven

Context: Pennies are a form of American currency equaling 1 cent. Their low value makes them adaptable since people are generally not worried about conserving them. because of this, pennies have also become a common object of folklore-ish discussion.

Background Information: Informant’s grandmother died young, and the informant’s mother and father died when informant was in their twenties. Informant and Informants family are/were Christian and very relationally close to one another. The loss of their family has been very difficult for informant.

Informant: “My mother used to tell me that when my grandmother- her mother- died, that she would send pennies to her as kisses from heaven. Whenever we saw a penny on the side of the street, she would tell me grandma had sent it. When my own mom died, I went to the funeral, and I had paid a parking meter. When I came back to my car, the meter had broken and all these pennies littered the ground. I just bawled and bawled and bawled. Completely broke down crying.”

Thoughts: The presence of pennies is common folklore, and is often perceived as a sign of some sort when found accidentally. Whether or not the parking meter was a coincidence or not, the folklore surrounding the penny stands firm. The penny in this situation connects a member of a family group to the other members, even after death. The folklore is a unifying front, which unifies the member of this group and gives credence to the belief that the members of the group will continue to embody their group identity even after death.