The Great 2001-D Penny Spill

This article originally appeared in THE COIN COLLECTOR as "The Latest Lincoln Cent News," issue 126, March 2002.

In October 2001, "a tractor-trailer was traveling from the United States Mint in Denver to a branch of the Federal Reserve in San Antonio, when it crashed on a desolate stretch of highway in West Texas. Patrol officers found a grisly scene, and something else: 7.6 million pennies.

"The newly minted 2001-D pennies had fallen from the truck and spread over a roadside ditch like an orange shag carpet. Then, in another unexpected occurrence in arid West Texas, it rained. The ditch became a pudding of mud and pennies, a slop that hardened into copper mud pies."

The story, in The New York Times, February 18th (sent in by reader Victor Annaloro), stated that a local entrepreneur, Robert Massengale, had been "hired to clean the 7.6 million pennies and, by default, to count them."

Seeking information, Massengale went on the Internet, to find that "all these articles came out about salt and vinegar."

Horrors! Just to think, people with valuable coins searching the Internet might ruin them with salt and vinegar. We suppose it doesn"t make much difference with the 2001-D coins.

At last word Mr. Massengale is still working with 20 tons of mud-caked pennies. "He tosses many big clumps into a pit and breaks them up with a rototiller. He sifts the dirt through a mesh screen. One separated, the pennies are rinsed in a cement mixer, first with water and then with salt and vinegar..."

Now, we expect to see some nationwide advertising with these coins in special holders as part of a "fantastic hoard!" Actually, it might be fun to have one of these little souvenirs.