
                         THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
                 Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, June 16, 1994                    TAG: 9406160482 
SECTION: LOCAL                     PAGE: B3    EDITION: FINAL  
SOURCE: BY KERRY DOUGHERTY, STAFF WRITER 
DATELINE: 940616                                 LENGTH: Medium

DON'T BE TOO PENNY WISE; USE YOUR COMMON CENTS

{LEAD} Uncle Sam is trying to head off a penny crisis by urging bank customers to stop hoarding the copper coins.

The Washington Post reports that U.S. Treasurer Mary Ellen Withrow is asking banks to encourage their customers to put their pennies back into circulation.

{REST} There are 170 billion pennies - $1.7 billion - in the economy, Withrow said, and the U.S. Mint has been producing more of them as economic growth has spurred penny demand.

With that many coins, the problem is more than penny ante but not quite a ``shortage,'' Withrow said.

Hampton Roads penny hoarders may get rid of their coins in several ways:

Almost all local banks will accept coins from their customers - provided the coins are rolled and each roll is labeled with the customer's account number.

To facilitate the tedious job of coin rolling, Office Max sells several plastic coin-counting machines. Prices range from $5 to $25.

Several banks have simplified the penny problem. First Virginia and NationsBank customers, for instance, can take loose coins to their branch offices. The coins are put in cloth bags with the customer's deposit slip and shipped to the main office. The bagged coins are then put through a central coin counting machine and the funds are deposited into the customer's account. The only drawback is that it can take a week or two until the money is actually credited to the account.

The folks at the Virginia Marine Science Museum welcome pennies. The ponds and fountains outside the museum on General Booth Boulevard at the Beach are so popular with coin tossers that a volunteer group called the Pond Collectors Committee regularly dons high waders and retrieves the money tossed into the pools.

The coins are then dried and rolled and deposited in the bank. The money helps fund various volunteer programs at the museum.

``Those pennies really help us out; they help fund the docent training, pay for honorariums for speakers and help pay for other events,'' says Kathleen Reed, the museum's volunteer coordinator.

Another way to unload pennies is to throw them into automatic toll machines.

A spokesman for the Norfolk-Virginia Beach Expressway says all the toll baskets - the 10-cent and the 25-cent machines - are designed to count pennies.

``It just takes a few seconds longer for the machines to count pennies,'' he said.

by CNB