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Feel good coin (and beer) story

WeissWeiss Posts: 9,942 ✭✭✭✭✭
in U.S. Coin Forum

Like many of us, I periodically comb through my local B&M's "melt" bucket--stuff they're sending to the smelter. It's separated by fineness with little regard for what it is other than not being marketable. I routinely find Victoria- and George V-era silver, some older Mexican, even colonial Spanish. I've got maybe 30 or 40 pieces in this "interesting melt" box.

I've become friendly with the manager at a local liquor store. They're one of the few places that stock a beer I'm fond of: Lost Coast's Indica IPA. It's a sharp, hoppy IPA with a really flowery bouquet. The local distributors have been spotty, but he tries to get it for me when he can. The beer's logo is Ganesh, the Hindu god of luck and the remover of obstacles. Not coincidentally, the manager is Indian. So we've discussed Ganesh, beer, his relocation to the midwest from Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay).

A few weeks back I went through my interesting melt looking for something I could take him. Unfortunately all I had from Bombay were a couple of 1/4 rupees of George IV from 1943. They're small, about the size of a dime. But they're pretty. So I picked the best of the two (AU/BU with nice luster), put it in a flip, printed out the KM info, mintage, weight, etc. Here's the worst of the two I kept, for reference:

Unfortunately, they didn't have Indica the last time I stopped in. I handed him the coin and said no worries, I'll check back in a week or two. Stopped in yesterday and he had a case set aside for me. Before I could pay, he asked me how much he owed me for the coin. I said it was a gift, and not an especially valuable coin. Then he said "I took the coin home the day you gave it to me and showed it to my grandmother, who is visiting from India. She got choked up. When she got married in the early 1960s, friends and family gave her 1/4 rupees from her birth year--you guessed it: 1943. She'd kept and cherished them. But somewhere along the way, she'd lost one of them." He gave her the coin and said she cried and laughed the rest of the night. She came all the way to the US to find the coin she'd lost 40 years ago.

The moral of the story: Hand out inexpensive obsolete coins to Indian liquor mart managers, and they'll find the beer you love.

Or conversely: A small gesture can have big consequences. Don't be afraid of being nice to people :)

We are like children who look at print and see a serpent in the last letter but one, and a sword in the last.
--Severian the Lame

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