Philip Trippenbach

Fig. 1 – A Canadian penny on the sidewalk

In which are explained the various rules, and variations, of luck-obtention in the finding and picking up pennies on the street

When I was growing up, in Montreal, and old enough to just have learned where babies come from, I also learned about penny luck.

The idea is simple. If you find a penny on the street, and pick it up, it brings you good luck for one day.

Since then I’ve grown a lot older and learned a lot about the way the world works. It turns out that, like so many things, penny-picking-up-luck is more complicated and subtle than it appears at first. I’ve given this matter considerable thought and engaged in over 20 years of penny-luck experimentation. So I thought I’d clear up the rules.

Rule 1. Luck is redeemable at a rate of one day per penny. 

This one is pretty obvious. One penny = one day of good luck. One penny is worth one cent. Therefore if you find a five cent coin, it confers five days of luck. A quarter is worth 25 cents and so covers you for the better part of a month. If you find a loonie or a toonie, they convey 100 and 200 days of good luck, respectively. By the same token, I am still riding on the wave of the $10 bill I found in the parking lot of the Angrignon Mall Future Shop on the 10th of January 2011. (So far it has pretty much worked.)

Rule 2. Exchange rates apply.

As stipulated in Rule 1, luck accrues at a rate of one day per penny, or one day per cent. But whose pennies are we talking about here? It seems logical that the pennies you grew up with are the luck standard for you. Of course, I grew up in Canada, so in my case we’re talking Canadian pennies here. But I live in London now. If I went out in the street today and found a British penny in the street, that would count for 1.56113 days of good luck, at current rates. (Which is a bit of a bummer, ’cause when I moved to London in 2005 one British penny equaled 2.45 days of good luck. If I found a two-penny coin back then, I was set for like a whole week.)

Rule 2, Corollary: exchange rates apply in reverse, too.

If you grew up in Britain or the USA and you come to Canada and find pennies on the sidewalk, you’re sort of getting ripped off. At current rates, if you’re British, a Canadian penny only gives you 0.640563 days of good luck. That’s about enough to get you to three-thirty in the afternoon or so.

Rule 3. Luck is bankable until the finder decides to use it.

This one is a real surprise, but I assure you that the logic holds. This is Science here people, and we all know you can’t argue with Science. As the saying goes, finding a penny makes that day lucky. But what if you find another penny that day? (This has, in fact, happened to me several times during my years of experimentation.) Your current day is already lucky, so the second penny’s lucky day must fall on another date. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that it the luck should accrue on the next day. Logically, it follows that any luck past the first penny is bankable, and can be redeemed at a future date of the finder’s choosing. By extension, any penny luck is bankable – including the luck from the first penny. This is really convenient, because it’s a great idea to save luck up until you need it – for example, for a big presentation, a hot date, or an appointment with your bail board.

Rule 4. Luck must be redeemed consecutively.

Though luck is bankable and can be called on at any time, you can’t cut up luck from multiple-cent finds into smaller chunks. That means that if you find a dime, you have to use all ten days in one go. You can’t use one or two of them and keep the other nine or eight for later.

Rule 4, Corollary: luck need not be redeemed at a rate of one luck-day per calendar day.

If you’ve banked a lot of luck, and have something really big coming up, and you really really need a lot of luck, you can focus all your luck from a particular find into one day. For example, I found a pound coin on Carnaby street the other day. I’m saving that one up to use in one go – next time I play poker I am makin’ it, baby.

Rule 4, CoroCorollary: Focused luck has to all be spent on the same day.

Because seriously. You can’t go spending all your luck in some sort of like twice normal concentration or some random shit like that. That’s just silly. It’s one day per penny, or all at once. Your choice, punk.

Rule 5. Redeemed luck lasts 24 hours from the moment of redemption.

Because otherwise time zones would apply, and that would just be weird. And confusing. Like I’m supposed to keep track of where I’m from and use the time zone from there? But there are like 12 time zones in Canada. So that clearly doesn’t work. It has to just last 24 hours.

There, that’s all the rules that I’ve been able to determine from many years of observation and experimentation. I hope you find them useful.