# The last penny ![[last-penny.jpg]] When I was a kid, a penny was still (just barely) worth something. For a window of time, you could stick your penny in a slot, turn the knob, and get your very own gumball. That sense of wonder! That feeling of autonomy! That smooth sugary outside! That disappointingly hollow center! **And whenever you found a penny on the ground, you'd call it your "lucky penny" because, hey, free gumball!** Of course, in the ensuing years, pennies became rounding errors ("Take a penny, leave a penny"), and now I can't remember the last time I used one to make a purchase, much less carried any change in my pocket. And now that the US Mint has stopped making pennies, they're effectively relegated to the history books. So when I recently happened to see a penny lying on the ground, I realized that **it could conceivably be the last free-range penny I come across in my life**. I mean, there's a good chance I'll find another, but it's not guaranteed. I picked up that little penny, brought it home, and set it on my desk. A couple of days later, though, I realized that there was a non-zero chance that this penny would not only be the last penny I ever found, but it might get unceremoniously lost among other coins and eventually get taken to the bank, only to become a generic 0.01 on my bank statement. That led to this, the lucky penny keychain: I designed and printed a little widget where I can slide the penny inside and then pass my keyring through the hole, nicely locking it in. And, if I find another lucky penny in the future, I can just swap the old one for the new, last, lucky penny.