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A friend was showing me an Eisenhower dollar coin she got in change today and it reminded me of one of the most dumbass things I ever did as a kid. In the 3rd or 4th grade my dad started collecting U.S. Mint sets. Similar to sets issued today by the U.S. Mint, these were annually issued sets of coins in mint condition, encased in a plastic container and comprising all the coinage currently in circulation. I don’t remember now if these sets included the above-mentioned Eisenhower dollar but they included the Kennedy half-dollar and the rest of that year’s issue of standard coins from penny up to quarter.
I didn’t know this Mint Set was anything special. I just thought it was some money. So I swiped a few of the sets from my dad’s den and took them to school. I cracked them open and used the coins to buy potato chips and Fanta from the vending machines at school. I might have spent a few dollars in actual coins but the value of the mint condition monies was considerably higher.
When I first learned of my stupidity I had a notion that those coins were worth thousands of dollars but I quickly was relieved of that fear by the laughter that took over my father and mother as they told me I had the world’s most expensive potato chips.
What has stayed with me most about this incident was how quickly my thoughts about the matter changed. My innocent childhood mistake suddenly became an alarming debacle. I remembered dropping the coins into the slots of the vending machines. In my mind I repeatedly re-created that moment like one might replay surveillance video of a crime being committed. The simple gesture of dropping coins into a vending machine slot turned into a horrid crime, an abject act of criminal assholery, and I stayed away from vending machines for some time after this happened.