Change

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"Hey, dad, what's with this penny?" Mark held up one of the coins from Anthony's wallet. "It's got these weird things on it. None of the other ones look like that."

Anthony took the penny from his son and looked at it. "Oh, it's one of these," he exclaimed. "They made pennies that looked like this, for a while. It's called a wheat penny; see, those things are stalks of wheat."

"Huh. Why'd they change it?"

Anthony exhaled sharply, shrugging. "Now, that I don't know, sport. I was never into collecting coins. My guess is that people just got tired of the old one."

Mark tilted his head. "Did they make them when you were a kid?"

"Well, no, I'm not quite that old," Anthony laughed. "Wheat pennies are from... I don't know, the 1940s, somewhere around there -- "

"This one says nineteen forty-seven," Mark interrupted.

"Well, there you go; that's long before I was even born. There were probably still a lot of them floating around in people's wallets, but really, when I was your age, money was for buying things with, not looking at."

"Joey at school showed me this penny once," Mark said with widened eyes, "and there was this Indian on it, with the, you know, the feathers in his hair and everything, even though Missus Frank the afternoon teacher says that they're not 'Indians', they're 'Native Mericans', and that they don't go around with feathers and teepees and all that stuff." He crossed his arms. "Joey says his penny's not a fake, but I think it is."

Anthony ruffled his son's hair playfully. "Actually, Joey's probably right, kiddo. Your great-grandpa had a couple of those in a box, and he showed me them once. With the feathers and everything." He smiled a little. "Granddad -- your great-grandpa -- he did like collecting coins. I think he wanted me to feel the same way, but I never did, any more than my dad did."

"They're kind of neat," Mark ventured.

"Yeah, they kind of are," Anthony agreed. He began putting the coins back in his wallet, then, though he made sure to hand the wheat penny back to Mark first.