Evidence status: WELL SUPPORTED custom — exact origin unknown
“Find a penny, pick it up.
All the day you'll have good luck.”
It is one of those childhood rhymes that seems to have existed forever.
Except the penny may not have been there at the beginning.
Earlier versions told you to pick up something else.
A pin.
The Short Answer
Finding pennies has been associated with good luck in Britain and North America for generations, but there is no single known event that created the superstition.
One particularly useful American source is Clifton Johnson's 1896 collection What They Say in New England. It states that finding a penny is especially lucky and advises the finder to keep the coin as a “lucky penny” rather than spend it.
But the familiar rhyme probably belongs to an older family of found-object superstitions.
A nineteenth-century English rhyme already said:
“See a pin and pick it up…”
The pin version appears in James Orchard Halliwell's Nursery Rhymes of England in the 1840s.
Exactly when the lucky pin became the lucky penny is unclear.
What We Know
Found objects have attracted luck beliefs for centuries.
That makes sense.
You did not earn them.
You did not buy them.
You simply happened to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.
A small unexpected discovery already feels fortunate before anybody adds magic.
By the end of the nineteenth century, New England folklore explicitly treated a found penny as unusually powerful.
Clifton Johnson's 1896 collection says that finding something valuable is lucky, but finding a penny is especially so.
The finder should not spend it.
Instead, it should be carried as a lucky penny.
Johnson also records old-fashioned cents being carried as lucky “pocket pieces” and describes bright new pennies as possessing similar fortunate qualities.
This is excellent evidence because it predates the modern childhood version of the rhyme.
The coin itself was already lucky.
How It Became a Habit
A penny is almost perfectly designed for this superstition.
It is money.
So finding one is already a gain.
But it is such a small amount of money that nobody needs to feel guilty about keeping it.
Finding a wallet produces a moral problem.
Finding a penny produces a smile.
That helps explain why the belief could move so comfortably into children's culture.
A child sees a coin.
An adult repeats the rhyme.
The child picks it up.
The lucky object becomes associated with a memorable piece of verse.
Repeat that over generations and nobody needs to remember where the belief came from.
The Story Everyone Tells
A common explanation says coins became lucky in ancient times because metal itself was believed to repel evil spirits.
Others connect lucky pennies with ancient offerings, sacred metal or the idea that finding money means greater wealth is on its way.
These ideas are plausible within the much wider history of magical metals and lucky coins.
But they do not give us a documented origin for this particular superstition.
There is another surprise.
The famous rhyme did not always contain a penny.
What the Evidence Actually Says
James Orchard Halliwell's Nursery Rhymes of England records the older verse in the 1840s:
find a pin, pick it up, and you receive good luck for the day; leave it lying and the day brings bad luck.
Clifton Johnson found the same pin rhyme still circulating in New England in 1896 — alongside a separate belief in lucky pennies.
That is fascinating because we can see two traditions existing together:
pick up a pin = good luck
and
find a penny = good luck
At some point, the familiar modern rhyme increasingly attached itself to the penny.
Exactly when or where that substitution happened is difficult to establish.
There is also physical evidence that “lucky penny” was already familiar language by the start of the twentieth century.
The Smithsonian National Museum of American History holds a 1901 Pan-American Exposition souvenir coin explicitly labelled a “LUCKY PENNY” and “POCKET PIECE”.
So:
DOCUMENTED: Finding and keeping pennies was considered lucky in New England by 1896.
DOCUMENTED: Lucky pennies were being manufactured and sold as souvenir pocket pieces by 1901.
DOCUMENTED: The older “pick it up” rhyme originally circulated with a pin by the 1840s.
WELL SUPPORTED: The modern penny rhyme developed within an existing family of lucky found-object traditions.
PLAUSIBLE: Money's inherent value made a found coin especially easy to interpret as good fortune.
UNKNOWN: We cannot identify the moment when the penny replaced the pin in the familiar rhyme.
The Heads-Up Rule
Then folklore added another complication.
Apparently not every penny is equally lucky.
A widespread American version says a penny is lucky only when found heads up.
A tails-up penny should be ignored.
Or turned over and left for somebody else.
The James T. Callow Folklore Archive records a Michigan version learned in 1974 stating that a penny should only be picked up if it is heads up; otherwise, picking it up brings bad luck.
Modern USC folklore records show that the rule remains alive, although people disagree about the consequences.
For some, tails means bad luck.
For others, a tails-up penny is simply neutral.
And some people ignore the rule entirely and take the free money.
No reliable historical evidence identifies why heads became lucky.
That looks like another rule added later to an already existing superstition.
Different Elsewhere
Even the British word penny can create confusion here.
The familiar rhyme is particularly strong in American children's folklore, where the penny is the one-cent coin.
Britain also has a penny, but lucky-coin traditions historically included many different coins and “pocket pieces”.
Coins have also been:
thrown into wells,
placed beneath ships' masts,
carried as charms,
given at weddings,
and buried with the dead.
Humans have repeatedly decided that money remains useful even when nobody intends to spend it.
Why It Stuck
Because the superstition rewards you immediately.
You bend down.
You pick up money.
You have already gained something before the luck is supposed to begin.
And the rhyme is almost impossible to forget.
Even as pennies become less economically important, that may actually make them better lucky charms.
A valuable coin is money.
A nearly worthless coin found unexpectedly can become something else.
A tiny message from chance.
Related Curiosities
Why Are Horseshoes Supposed to Be Lucky?
Why Do We Cross Our Fingers for Luck?
Why Do People Throw Coins Into the Trevi Fountain?
Why Were Coins Placed Under a Ship’s Mast?
Sources & Further Reading
Library of Congress — Clifton Johnson, What They Say in New England (1896) — primary folklore collection documenting found pennies, lucky pennies and lucky pocket pieces.
James Orchard Halliwell, The Nursery Rhymes of England — nineteenth-century documentation of the older “See a pin and pick it up” rhyme.
Smithsonian National Museum of American History — Pan-American Exposition Lucky Penny (1901) — surviving “lucky penny” pocket-piece souvenir.
James T. Callow Folklore Archive — Lucky Penny — twentieth-century record of the heads-up lucky-penny rule.
USC Digital Folklore Archives — Lucky Penny traditions — modern oral evidence showing continuing variation in the rhyme and heads-up rule.
Last checked: 19 September 2026