June 29th, 2019: Penny Building Fool

Cory Nielsen aka the Penny Building Fool, has completed all by himself a record-breaking penny pyramid.
Stacking 1,030,315 pennies over the course of 3 years won the award.
In real-time his total is 1.8 years building it.
He took approximately 425 days off during construction.
It measures 65 stacks by 65 stacks by 65 stacks high.
Each stack contains 11 pennies.
It’s free stacked, meaning no glue, welding or anything.
The pyramid weighs 6,360 lbs or 2,884 kg.



Built in his home in Phoenix, Arizona, one report says in his cellar and another says his garage, but probably not saying more than that.
Can you imagine how many people are salivating at the thought of breaking in and kicking that pile of pennies to hell.
Just from cussedness my Granny would say

I want to know what now? How long would it take to roll a million pennies?
It can’t be moved intact so I has to come apart, give it to charity and tell them to come get it?
After the Guinness people and the press move on what does he say?
Will he say, “That’s over $10,000”, or will he say, “That’s only $10,000.”

Time lapse of the build...

For someone with *that* kind of itch, that looks very satisfying.

A man eats a lot of pickles on a job like that.

It looks like it took 3 years.

You can see how at times he thought the grease stained floor looked bad, and he tried covering it with poster board. He would alternate between hanging sheets on the walls and having the boxes as the background.

The whole thing looks like it proceeded organically. Like he built the pyramid, and then decided he wanted it bigger. So he added on. I wonder what makes him think he is done now? Why not add another row on two sides to make it a little bigger?

I figured I would just glance at the time-lapse video, but watched all the way through.
The patterns of old and new ones are the most impressive part.
Good for him.

Why have I never seen or heard of a box of pennies? Or other coins?

Nice IOTD!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Griff A man eats a lot of pickles on a job like that.

At one point there looked to be a big jar of pickles on camera which emptied pretty rapidly.

Besides the shiny new ones and the oxidized old ones, I think I saw a few steel ones slip in.

A strong magnet will take care of those; but, how do we get that Canadian penny out?

Are there really steel pennies left in circulation?

Not unless someone breaks open a really old piggy bank or gumball machine.

My uncle had 11 peanut butter jars full of them before his house was burglarized about 8 years ago. I wonder what they did with all of them, sell small batches to different dealers, or to individuals? Certainly not roll them and go to the bank.

It wouldn't be hard to sell them to dealers since many people hoarded them; but, another sales technique is to electrochemically remove the zinc plating and re-plate them to make them look like they're shiny-new and sell them wherever novelties are sold. When I was a kid you could get the "reprocessed" steel cents from mixed-prize machines that operated like gumball machines. They dispensed little novelties in plastic capsules that would drop out as a gumball would. They could be found at many store entrances. I suppose unscrupulous people might try to pass them off as high grade examples.

Sounds like a lot of work for a small return, plus too complicated if these were stolen by who I think they were.

I still have my hand-me-down jar of 1943 steel pennies, all pretty well banged up.
When my granddaughter was in 4th or 5th grade. we picked out the best ones and she took them to school to give to each of her classmates and teacher.
Her teacher confiscated them and told her to bring them back, that her Papa Jim was obviously too addled to know the value of his gifts.
While it is true that a really nice one might go for ten bucks or more, most of the ones I sent were in the two bit range and I had to call the teacher to assure her I could afford the ten dollar handout.

Now if I had sent a 1944....

That is one serious case of O.C.D

I may have found some of your steel pennies. They're now golf ball markers.

Of course, everything of value or interest flows to the dregs on the golf course.