Taking Care Of The Threepences

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28324, 9 July 1957, Page 2

Taking Care Of The Threepences

A North Beach housewife, Mrs N. R. Harris, decided in 1954 to go to the Olympic Games in Melbourne in 1956. She immediately began to save three-pennies for “pin money.” After each day’s shopping she would sort out the threepences from her purse and put them into a beer bottle.

Because of illness in the family the visit to Melbourne was cancelled last year, but she continued to add to the collection and squeezed in the last threepence recently. The . bottle was then jammed full. With the help of her two sons, she tipped out the money on the kitchen table for a tally. Thay looked like atory-book

adventurers who had just discovered a pirate’s hoard, counting out the silver pieces. No fewer than 2640 coins (£33 worth) came out of the bottle. It took the three of them about an hour to count the money which had been saved over a period of nearly three years. So far, Mrs Harris has not decided how she will spend the collection.

“But for the drain on my threepences for parking meters, the bottle could have been filled a year ago,” Mrs Harris said. The picture shows Mrs Harris putting in the last 3d into the bottle, which is standing on a shopkeeper’s scales. The full bottle weighed 101 b 7os.