8 Brilliant (?) Uses For Your Spare Pennies

See that pretty table? See that beautiful floor? All tiled with worthless pennies! How fun! Go ahead, click on the pics for a better look...

However, THIS blog is about common, ordinary, albeit brilliant solutions to use all those thousands of pennies we’ve been collecting all these years…

Save a Glass of Stale Wine 

First of all, “stale wine” implies “leftover wine” which is an oxymoron. If you can’t finish off a bottle over dinner, there is no hope for you IMHO. However, should there be some left and you want to drink it the next day, drop a penny in your glass, swirl it around a bit then remove. That apparently will make it taste like new. But to work, the penny has to be dated 1982 or earlier because they were made with more copper than later ones, and it’s the reaction of the copper with the wine that makes this magic possible.

Repel Garden Slugs 

After you’ve freshened up your wine, take the penny out and put it around your prized plants, along with several others. Again, you need the older pennies for the copper reaction to the slug slime, which I’m told is VERY unpleasant for the slug.

Build a Ruler 

Line up 16 pennies on a flat surface and you have exactly 1 foot. Although in the time it takes to scrounge in the couch cushions and your nightstand drawer to find 16 pennies, you probably could have made the run to the dollar store and gotten a ruler. I could probably come up with at LEAST 4-5 cheap plastic rulers and 3-4 wooden ones at any given moment. I guess this wouldn’t help, though, if you were at a store or yard sale and wanted to measure something to be sure it fit in the house before buying it. Maybe you could borrow 16 pennies from the store clerk.

Drive Some Screws 

Depending on the screw, of course. I read an article claiming that by putting the penny at a 15-20 degree angle you should get enough torque to get the job done. Or undone, if what you want to do is loosen that screw. Again, if you don’t have at least 3-4 screwdrivers in your junk drawer you are hopeless. Grab a butter knife…

Diagnose Your Tires  

Now this one I’m familiar with. Stick the penny in the tread with Lincoln’s head upside down. If most of the forehead disappears, you’re OK for now. If you can see all of his head, replace the tire. All you need is 9,999 more pennies…

Stabilize a Wobbly Table  

I almost didn’t include this one because it’s so stupid. The article I read even suggested gluing the pennies to the leg of the table. If you’re going to go to that much effort, for heaven’s sake get a shim of wood or something! Those little felt pads that self-stick to table legs work well, too.

Make a One-Cent Washer  

Another one that almost didn’t make the list. The article pointed out that zinc washers cost about 11 cents. So you are saving TEN WHOLE CENTS by making your own out of pennies that you drill or punch a hole in. SMH

Collect Valuable Treasures 

Two words: wheat pennies. Yes, that wheat penny in your hand might be valued at THREE CENTS instead of one! Meh. You know what I do with wheat pennies?? I SPEND THEM!