Find a penny

[asakiyume]

Lesser-known lore relating to roadside coins.

If you find a penny and you *don't* pick it up, more good luck accrues to it. So, the more people walk by a penny (or other coin) and don't pick it up, the luckier it becomes--but only if they deliberately don't pick it up. If they simply fail to notice it, then it doesn't count.

So you can use this as a good-luck savings account: See a coin, but don't pick it up. Wait a number of days proportional to the amount of good luck you'd like to collect. As with all investments, there are risks. Someone else might pick up your coin.

littlemoremasks told me that it's only good luck to pick up a heads-up coin. It's bad luck to pick up a tails-up one. If you want to make good luck possible, you should turn the coin over--but you can't then pick it up. You have to leave it for someone else.

I'm not sure littlemoremasks is right about the bad-luck aspect of tails-up coins. It could be his way of ensuring no one picks up tails-up coins that he's investing luck in.

Comments

[heliopausa.livejournal.com]

I know it as "see a pin, pick it up, all the day you'll have good luck". This is the first time I've heard of "see a penny...".

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Isn't that interesting! A different sort of good luck: by picking up a pin, you presumably prevent someone else from potentially getting hurt, so the good luck is like a reward for a good deed done. Maybe. Or maybe it's that in the olden days, pins were as precious as pennies.

[heliopausa.livejournal.com]

Yes, I expect so. Pin-money. :)