Today: Mar 29, 2024

Students say that pocket change does add up, big time

Jessica GuerrucciContributor

When it comes to coins, people save them up or toss them out. For some students at Southern, saving up their coins is how they pay for their everyday expenses, or to others, it is just some extra cash.

For Valentina Rrapi, an undecided student, saving up coins meant paying for part of her car, and she said it took her four years to do it. Rrapi used to work at MacDaddy’s, a macaroni and cheese restaurant, where she collected most of her coins from the tips that she received.

Whenever Rrapi cashes in her coins, she said she spends it quickly. She said she would change her coins into dollars whenever she ran out of money. She also said that it helped her avoid asking her parents for money.

Unlike the rest of her coins, Rrapi said that she has one coin that is worth five-hundred dollars, and she has no plans to cash it in any time soon.

“My dad says the longer I hold it then it will be worth more,” said Rrapi. “I’m probably going to pass that down.”

Michael Rider, a political science major, sees saving coins from a different perspective.A penny might just be worth one cent, but to him, it is worth more than that. Rider said that he specifically saves dimes and pennies because of their copper content. He has saved up over a thousand pennies in hopes that the value of copper will increase.

“Copper is worth money,” said Rider, “and I’m hoping that one day there will be a need for more copper, and I can transition those pennies into larger amounts of money.”

Rider said that his grandmother strips wires for copper, which is why he understands the value it may hold in the future. He also said that he believes pennies will eventually become non-existent, because in his opinion, they cost too much too make.

“Someday people might start paying two or three cents for them,” Rider said.

If Rider ever does cash his pennies in, he said that he hopes to spend them on a cruise or a vacation.

Patrice Tsopanides, a sociology criminology major, had a similar idea of what she might do with the few hundred dollars that she has saved up in coins when she cashes them in. She said if she saves up enough, she would like to spend her coins on a vacation, or just something special. On the other hand, Tsopanides said that she saves her coins for things she might need in the future.

Tsopanides said she has been saving up coins for quite some time. It all started when she was younger, she said. Then, she began the practice of throwing coins into a piggy bank, and she has been saving coins since.

Even though coins are worthless to some, she said that she looks at coins the same way she looks at any other currency. She said it is weird to her that people could just throw their change away.

“I feel like growing up a little less off, I value it more, so I see it as money,” said Tsopanides. “I feel like it’s silly to throw it away.”

Photo Credit: August Pelliccio

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