When Rob Schwartz learned his granddaughters were collecting pennies at school for a fundraiser, he thought he might have a few lying around.
But he may have been underestimating the amount.
Schwartz said he has been saving pennies for more than 40 years. Every day, the Seymour resident empties his pockets and throws all the pennies in a 5-gallon water jug.
“I was in my early 20s when I started saving them,” he said.
“He’s been saving them since before we were married,” his wife, Theresa Schwartz added. “He would get mad at me if I spent pennies.”
He used to have them in a glass jar, but after it broke and he had a mess of pennies to pick up, he switched to the plastic one.
Although he cashes them in every so often, he still had plenty to donate recently to Heather Wirtz’s third-grade class at Emerson Elementary School for the school’s Penny Wars competition.
Schwartz’s granddaughters, Nola Grube and Miriam Boyd, are both in Wirtz’s class. The girls were excited when Schwartz and their uncle, Landon Hickman, loaded the penny jug up and brought it over to the school.
Although he and Theresa could have taken the pennies to the bank and traded them in for cash to buy Christmas presents, they decided it was better to help support a good cause, Schwartz said.
All of the pennies and other monetary donations made to the school went to Seymour High School’s Riley Dance Marathon which supports Riley Hospital for Children at Indiana University Health in Indianapolis.
“He would never let me cash them in anyway,” Theresa said.
She also worried that one day pennies would become obsolete and they would be stuck with so many of them.
Wirtz estimated Schwartz’s donation to be around $300 or 30,000 pennies. They had to use a dolly to transport the jug, because it weighed a couple hundred pounds.
“After weighing it, we figured between $300 maybe $400,” Rob said. “I figured it would be a good memory for (Nola and Miriam).”
A final count was not available, but the donation put Wirtz’s class ahead in a competition to raise the most money. The winning class was to receive a doughnut party.
SHS’s Riley Dance Marathon ended up raising a total of $21,669.38.
Although it was a lot of pennies to part with, Schwartz said he has another 5-gallon jug full still sitting in the garage.
“Miriam looked at me and said, ‘Papaw, where’s the other one at?’” Rob said.
He plans to continue to save his pennies, as he has two young grandsons, Axl and Jaxon Hickman, who will have school fundraisers in the future too.
“I’ll always save them,” he said.
But it might take longer to get as many as he had because he doesn’t seem to have as many pennies to throw in the jar at the end of a day.
“I used to pay cash for everything, but now I use credit card mostly,” he said.