Sunday, November 30, 2003

After four decades of pinching pennies, a million in all, a Mifflin County man decided that it was time to cash in his collection.

It took several months of bank visits to bring in 37 buckets of pennies to be cashed but by the end, Lynn Wagner ended up with $10,060.

"I thought that it'd be interesting to have a million of these so I thought that I'd try," he said.

Wagner, 53, collected one million pennies in August. The pennies were stacked along a wall in Wagner's garage in 41/2-gallon buckets.

"I can get 30,000 of them in one bucket if I shake it so that they settle to the bottom," he said. "That's $52 per gallon."

Along with saving his own pennies, he also received contributions as word of his collection spread.

Friends and family began passing along a year's worth of pennies at Christmas. A waitress at the Honey Creek Inn, where Wagner and his wife Brenda eat breakfast every Saturday, saved pennies for him that customers left.

"I had people whom I didn't even know calling me. They'd say that a friend or brother had told them about this guy who collected pennies," Wagner said.

"Some people think that pennies don't add up to anything, but this is proof that they do," Brenda Wagner said.

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