What people say
Only lucky if heads up; tails up should be turned over for the next person.Luck · 70 searches a month
Finding a penny
Only lucky if heads up; tails up should be turned over for the next person.
When it actually starts
How old is this one
First recorded
The rhyme printed from the 1840s
That makes it
about 186 years old
Rank by age
30 oldest of 40 dated here
Category
Luck
Searched
70 a month
Metal was scarce and any found metal was a small windfall. The rhyme — find a penny, pick it up — dates from the Victorian period, when a penny still bought something.
Why it stuck. The rule requires the coin to be heads up, which halves the qualifying finds and makes each one feel selected rather than random.
What is going on
A penny now costs more to mint than it is worth in several countries, including the United States, which makes finding one a net loss for the mint.Where it applies. Britain, Ireland and North America.
Other luck superstitions
Recorded around the same time
Finding a penny is the 30th oldest of the 40 dated superstitions here. Of those, 6 are younger than a century and 5 predate the common era.
First-recorded dates are the earliest documented appearance in written sources, not the earliest possible origin — an unrecorded practice can be older. How the dating works and where it is uncertain →