A few months ago I gave a technical presentation for the local section of my professional organization. Speakers for these events usually get little gift bags as a “thank you.” Such is the state of my life with kids and everything that I never got around to looking in the bag until just recently (a sad waste of candy, to be sure). One of the things in the bag was particularly interesting to me as a coin collector.

The local section was founded in 1942. I don’t know what possessed them to found it in the middle of WWII, it seems like that would have been a bad time to try to start something up, less than a year after Pearl Harbor, but that’s when it happened. So, in 2017 we had our 75^th anniversary – Our Diamond Jubilee.

I did not get active in the organization at the time and so I didn’t attend the dinner and I didn’t get any of the swag associated with it, but apparently they had leftovers and some of it has been used in some of these gift bags. One of these items was a 1942 penny in a little holder with a sticker on it celebrating the Diamond Jubilee. It’s just an old, brown, circulated cent. Nothing special, but still an interesting and funny thing.

I’m wondering how they went about getting enough 1942 pennies to fill these things. I don’t know how many of these were made but I’m guessing it was at least 75-100. I’m both amused by the thought and having a hard time believing that they searched rolls or did something similar until they had enough. I’m tempted to ask the Treasurer about it since she made the goodie bag and she was involved when this was being done.

It's also amusing to me to think that, having started the organization in 1942, we only just barely missed needing ’43 Steel pennies for these things.

Maybe I’m a stinker, maybe I’m a bit of a coin snob, but I’m half-tempted to open it up, take out the circulated, brown penny and replace it with a mint state, red, cent.

We’re also coming up on Sam’s first birthday. I was at a meeting for this group the night Sam was born. I only got home about 15 minutes before things started going south and we headed for the hospital.