These Coins Are More Than Pocket Change Collectors Hope Stunt Raises Interest In Hobby

Like a one-in-a-million blue lobster thrown back to the sea, 10 rare coins - four of them from a collection assembled by a New York subway clerk - will be returned to the money supply beginning today.

For 10 days, officials including U.S. Treasurer Mary Ellen Withrow and the incoming president of the American Numismatic Association will spend the coins, which have a total collector value of about $1,000, at New York businesses like delis, newsstands and the post office.

After that, it’s finders’ keepers for anyone who cares to study his or her pocket change.

It’s a stunt to promote coin-collecting as a hobby.

The 10 coins include four 1914 Lincoln pennies with a rare D mark. The D stands for Denver; the mint there struck just 1.2 million of the approximately 80 million pennies made that year. The four D pennies are valued at $165 each.

They come from the Subway Hoard, a collection of rare coins assembled between 1940-1960 by Morris Moscow, a token clerk for the New York Transit Authority who combed through the change he handled each day.

Moscow died in 1993. His 23,000 rarities were bought by the Littleton Coin Co. of New Hampshire for $250,000. Littleton is donating the D pennies.

The stunt is an effort to publicize the American Numismatic Association’s 106th annual convention, which will be held in New York from July 30 to Aug. 3.

People don’t realize that change is “history in their hands,” ANA spokesman Steve Bobbitt said. “People should stop … and look at the money in their hands.”