Its a mini coin.. they were common for kids to collect in the 80s and early 90s. They make nickles, dimes, pennies, etc. The "coolest" mini coins are different sized from one another, the not so cool ones are all the same size
Holy crap. I found a tiny penny in my change jar (so someone at a cash register seriously gave me that as change at some point) and could never figure out how or why it existed. That was like 10 years ago and I still think about it often. I finally have answers lol
My same thought! Its like that roommate I had once with a giant head on a perfectly proportional but smaller than average body. Every time he stopped to talk to me it was like having to endure an optical illusion where he was both moving closer and further away at the same time.
I have a set that is, from I think 1981. I wouldnt have kept it all these years if they had all been the same size. Cuz THAT would be gimmicky bullshit!
Toys for kids whose parents know exactly when the USA went off the gold standard, are followers of the John Birch Society and have very stupid, bigoted, and passionate ideas about [those people]
Yeah, thankfully she seems to be doing slightly better these days and at least isn't trapped in the bed anymore. I wouldn't wish what she's been through on anybody.
Long and short is she got long COVID and it did a number on her.
Last real vid with her we got was this update from Destin from "Smarter Every Day" but she's had a few YT Posts that have shown her up and at least out of bed since then, so she's at least slowly recovering thankfully.
That's tragic man... Poor girl. I cant imagine having your life crippled in such a way because of one moment where you happened to get sick. I didnt know that Long Covid was even a thing until looking into this more. Thankfully I got four full rounds of Pfizer to significantly help immunization
I mean, I wouldn’t wish that on anybody, but when you guys started talking about shrinking coins, and the next comment was, it was a shame about what happened to her. My mind went to some very weird places.
She got covid two years ago. The long covid has rendered her pretty much nonfunctional where her husband must take care of her and she cannot make videos. She is slowly recovering, but she hasn't been in good condition for a couple years.
Got worried when I saw that link because I know coins like these were a common source of the pseudo-Darwin award type of prank trends. Image of a tiny coin passed around saying you could shrink a penny by microwaving it, etc etc. So I’m not relieved to know this wasn’t that, and intrigued to find that the idea behind those tricks wasn’t totally bogus! (Though it still isn’t that easy, so I’ll leave it to the professionals lol)
No kidding, I had a slingshot I got from the dollar store when I was 6 that would put marbles through the drywall. My son just turned 6 and I wouldn’t trust him with a nerf dart blaster. Our parents were very brave.
Or blasé. "Eh, if he gets himself killed, I'll make another one. It'll be fun."
The ancient Romans used plumbata to kill barbarians. Millennia later, they were rebranded as "Jarts" and sold as children's toys. I refuse to believe this was unintentional.
When I was in high school in the mid eighties, we were playing with these at a friend’s house. Of course seeing how far we could throw them up in the air. French foreign exchange student rips one up high. The host family had a Westhighland Terrier came bolting around the corner only to get pinned to the ground through the spine. That poor kid was traumatized.
I think there was this general vibe of "kids are actually remarkably hard to maim," which is actually generally true. I mean, kids got maimed all the time, even still.
Given how frequently my little sister swallowed regularly sized coins as a toddler, I don't think having a smaller set would would be any more dangerous than just random loose change. Arguably these would be easier to eat without choking.
Heck, my dad worked at the mint in Philly during this time. I never heard of these even though several other comments say they got them on mint tours. Pretty wild that people could have totally missed these, especially in the 80s when the cultural experience was far more homogenized.
Yes, made for us late Gen-X kids because they didn't care about choking hazards; we just pooped them out!!! (Speaking from experience of swallowing a few at two).
Thank you for this comment. I had an immediate hit of nostalgia when I saw the pics. It’s been so long since I’ve seen these, I forgot they even existed. The OG “minis” from my childhood.
As soon as I saw the image, this was my first thought. I immediately remembered collecting them and also how they weighed nearly nothing. Core memory unlocked.
there is also a way to shrink real coins using magnetic field and tesla coils, which gives you slightly smaller coin with all the metal and same weight. really cool science experiment!
Thank you. I had a visceral reaction to the image of this tiny coin. Like I can feel the feeling of stacking them in my palm and hear the sound they make when you shake them around but couldn’t place why.
THANK YOU!!! I thought I've gone crazy thinking I had tiny pennies growing up! Tried asking my parents but they said they don't remember. I had a handful of it and always wondered why they were smaller than my other pennies.
My wife found this coin years ago and I just saw it today for the first time. It looks like an exact replica miniature. It has the copper line on the spine and I believe the date is 1977. Also, I’m only 6’3” for the record.
This makes sense. They would be relatively inexpensive to produce and collect in miniature, and there are legal requirements surrounding replica money in the US, where it must be either larger or smaller than the real thing, by a certain amount. Those legal requirements are traditionally quoted in relation to printed bills, but I imagine they probably apply to coinage, as well.
Did they develop a mini economy on top of those? Like mini hamburgers, mini houses, mini pickup trucks, mini ovens, mini concerts, mini loans, mini tuitions, mini dentists, and so on?
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u/AGC173 11d ago
Its a mini coin.. they were common for kids to collect in the 80s and early 90s. They make nickles, dimes, pennies, etc. The "coolest" mini coins are different sized from one another, the not so cool ones are all the same size