I have to admit, I love the "filler" stories from LIFE magazine. There's dramatic, insightful, though-provoking photo-essays... and there's tests on cooperation in cats, pet lemurs, and Parisians drinking Coca-Cola. Most of these kinds of stories would only have a few pictures in the published magazine, somewhere in the middle to back, surronded by ads-- but thanks to the online LIFE archives, we can enjoy the silliness/banality to its fullest!
This picture story is apparently concerned with pennies, and what you can do with them.
Photographs from 1953, taken by Nina Leen.
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| Nina Leen, LIFE © Time Inc. |
A store receiving their week's worth of pennies, with police escort. Source
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| Nina Leen, LIFE © Time Inc. |
Tea bags you can buy for one cent each. Source
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| Nina Leen, LIFE © Time Inc. |
Boxes of matches 2 for a penny. Source
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| Nina Leen, LIFE © Time Inc. |
A drink (of an unspecified kind) for a penny. Source
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| Nina Leen, LIFE © Time Inc. |
A scale that will weigh you for a penny. Source
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| Nina Leen, LIFE © Time Inc. |
A woman digs for her 2 cent bus fare (my city's bus fare is $3. Just not fair!) Source
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| Nina Leen, LIFE © Time Inc. |
A one cent parking meter (again, not fair!). Source
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| Nina Leen, LIFE © Time Inc. |
A penny chocolate machine in the New York subway. Source
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| Nina Leen, LIFE © Time Inc. |
One cent fortune-telling games. Source
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| Nina Leen, LIFE © Time Inc. |
Peanuts from a machine, a handful for a penny. Source
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| Nina Leen, LIFE © Time Inc. |
Though the caption doesn't make this explicit, presumably this is an assortment of things you could buy for a penny (of all this, I think the New York Times has gone up the most in price!). Source
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| Nina Leen, LIFE © Time Inc. |
Poker game being played with pennies instead of chips. Source
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| Nina Leen, LIFE © Time Inc. |
Mother counting out allowances for her children. Source
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| Nina Leen, LIFE © Time Inc. |
A little girl (posed) with "her" smashed piggy bank. Source
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| Nina Leen, LIFE © Time Inc. |
A man removing the change from his pockets at the end of the day (says the caption; looks more like he already did that and has moved on to his cuffs...). Source
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| Nina Leen, LIFE © Time Inc. |
A man looking for a penny change (something us Canadians no longer have to do!). Source
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| Nina Leen, LIFE © Time Inc. |
A collection of pennies worth more than one cent (each, presumably, or else the photo caption is the laziest ever). Source
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| Nina Leen, LIFE © Time Inc. |
A bag of pennies worth $50, sitting dramatically in a field of pennies. Source
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| Nina Leen, LIFE © Time Inc. |
Closing the circle--bags of pennies being taken to the bank. Source
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| Nina Leen, LIFE © Time Inc. |
Still, even in the days you could actually buy stuff with it, the penny goes unnoticed on the city street. Source
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