I’m still busting open boxes from the move. Today I opened up my coin collection to put the albums in a book case, and ended up playing with them all night.

The idea of playing with coins probably escapes most people, but here’s what I get from it: For a couple years now I’ve had a cigar box full of coins that Grandpa Fred hoarded, some foreign coins but mostly pennies, the old Lincoln cents with the sheaves of wheat on the back. Looks like he put them aside whenever he got them in change and rolled them up after he’d collected six or eight dollars’ worth. I’d pawed through the various coins he’d collected from other countries, but I never broke open the rolls until tonight.

I don’t collect what are considered valuable coins, I just snatch interesting coins out of circulation when I get the chance. If you keep your eyes open, you can still find coins in your pocket change dated from the forties and fifties. When I find one, it makes me think about where the coin might have been; American coins go around the world in the pockets of travelers; I’ve found them in the flea markets of every country I’ve been to. I wonder how many gumballs it bought, or how long it sat idle in a piggy bank before it went back into circulation again. And I always I think about all the other people who handled the same coins I have right now, and who’ll handle them after I’m done with them.

Collecting coins isn’t about the coins, as far as I’m concerned, it’s about things associated with the coins. Sorting through Grandpa Fred’s hoard was exactly like picking through his pocket change, as though he’d put them aside for this evening, when I opened up those rolls to find cherry-red cents from 1953, or the war-era steel pennies, or the 1911 penny with a face as smooth as satin from wear and a 90-year patina.