A penny is a coin worth just 1 cent, and it costs more than 2 cents to make one! But some pennies are worth a lot because the machines made the first few pennies wrong, with crooked letters or the wrong mix of metal. Once they fix the problem, there are just those few messed-up pennies, and suddenly those coins are special. Some can sell for thousands of dollars!
Lace up: If you have 3 regular copper pennies and 1 special 1943 steel penny, how many do you have altogether?
Jog: If you have what looks like 7 dimes, but a magnet picks up 2 of them (which means those are 1943 steel pennies), how many real dimes do you have?
Sprint: Dimes are worth 10 cents each. What are the 5 real dimes worth?
Hurdle: On some 1955 pennies, the design shows double – but only on 24,000 of them. What is the face value of all those pennies in dollars? (Reminder: there are 100 pennies in a dollar.)
High Jump: If you have a nickel that’s worth 131 times its face value of $0.05, and a quarter that’s worth 26 times its face value of $0.25, which is worth more?
Answers:
Lace up: 4 pennies total.
Jog: 5 dimes.
Sprint: 50 cents.
Hurdle: $240 dollars.
High Jump: The nickel is worth more, since $6.55 is $.05 more than $6.50.
