Family Finds One Million Pennies Cleaning Parents Basement

A million pennies from heaven?

Cleaning out our parents' house after they pass away can be tough. It can certainly bring back a lot of memories. and and for some it can be like navigating a junkyard - or maybe a gold mine. For one couple in LA, it was a COPPER mine.

A couple in L.A. were cleaning out their parents' house, and they discovered a TON of pennies in a tight crawlspace in the back of the basement. There were loose pennies, boxes of pennies, crates of pennies, and dozens of bank bags filled with pennies.  They estimate that there's a MILLION of them, if not more.

They don't know exactly how old they are, but the pennies are copper, not zinc, which the U.S. switched to in the 1980s. The problem is:  What do you do with one million pennies? Or a large amount of ANY coinage?

How about Coinstar? But they didn't want to lose 8%, and logistically, it probably wouldn't work, since it would be a pain to get the pennies there, and just a bag or two would probably jam up the machines.

Not so long ago, Las Vegas residents were able to take coins into casinos to cash them in, but the few that even accept coinage don't take pennies and dimes.

They called around to banks, but none of them were interested in a million pennies.  One bank manager even warned them not to bring them in, saying they didn't have room in the vault to accept bulk pennies.

In case you're wondering, one million pennies would be $10,000. But the couple thinks there's probably more "value in the uniqueness" of the collection.  And they said that it's possible that there are rare pennies in there somewhere.

Even ads online, saying they'd part with them for $25K, haven't helped. They've only received low-ball offers back so far.  One person offered the copper value, but that proved to be impractical.  So, for now they're holding onto them.

By the way, it's unclear why the home owners had stashed all the pennies, but the family thinks they intentionally converted paychecks to copper pennies, believing that their value would be worth more over time.

And, yes kids - pennies used to be made of actual copper. And, yes kids - we used to USE pennies. And - oh, forget it...

We forget how to spell certain words, Google Trends has revealed the top-trending "how to spell" search in all 50 states.

A few easy words we struggle with include "sugar," "quarter," "science," "daughter."  Nevada? Well Nevada has a real problem - with the word "problem!" Really, silver state?

Pretty sure you probably won't see any of THESE words pop up at the Scripps spelling bee, but these are the words that each state can't remember how to spell, so they googled it.  They came up with them by looking at searches for "How to spell [BLANK]."

I suppose a few of them are kind of tough.  For example:  "Shenanigans" in Michigan, "miscellaneous" in New Mexico, "embarrassed" in Kentucky, "kindergarten" in Minnesota, and "professional" in Wyoming . (Google, how do you spell AAAUGHHH?)

There are a lot of others are words it seems we SHOULD be able to spell.  We won't list all 50, but here are the highlights . . .

1.  People in Kansas can't remember how to spell "Tennessee".  Other nine-letter words we struggle with include "beautiful," "efficient," and "etiquette."

2.  Seven- and eight-letter words dominate the map.  North Carolina can't spell "awesome,"  Missouri can't spell "February," Iowa can't spell "Thursday" - really, Iowa?? Arkansas and Illinois can't spell "tomorrow." My head kind of hurts at this point, but we'll go on - 

Alabama can't spell "daughter - which is surprising on many levels (maybe just me...), North Dakota can't spell "science,"  New York can't spell "quarter," Texas can't spell "pyramid," Idaho can't spell "sentence,"

3.  16 states struggle with five- and six-letter words.  Delaware can't spell the word "those" (help me understand, Delaware...), Utah can't spell "chose,"  Tennessee can't spell "sugar,"  Georgia can't spell "queen,"  people in Pennsylvania can't spell "people" . . . and "how to spell GEORGE" is the top-trending search in Arizona.  (???)

4.  And finally, two states struggle with four-letter words.  Colorado can't remember how to spell "ally."  And Mississippi keeps googling "how to spell gray."  (G-R-A-Y is more common in the U.S.  G-R-E-Y is how they do it in the U.K.)

Google, and the internet in general, have made life so much simpler for us all. Now go learn how to spell THURSDAY, Iowa!

Here are a few more words you be googling.

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