A penny saved is a penny ... that must be counted and cashed-in.

• Position: Marketing News

One day not long ago, Ed Knowles discovered that he had a serious penny problem. Ed, for those of you not acquainted, is the owner of Ed's Gas Station in Flomaton, Ala. You see, Ed was in the habit of collecting pennies. He has been doing this since 1966. You could say that he had accumulated quite a few coins in 39 years.

Ed had a notion that he would take the pennies to Escambia County Bank (assets: $95 million) and cash them in. The bank is located just down the road a bit from the filling station.

But first, he gave the bank a telephone call. You know, to sort of warn them that he was coming. As he explained, this was no simple transaction. It seems that his horde of coinage was unusually large--more than 1.3 million pennies stored in his garage in four 55-gallon and three 20-gallon barrels.

All those Lincoln heads weighed more than 4.5 tons.

Well, the folks down at the bank had never seen so many pennies in their lives. Coincidentally, the bank was in the process of acquiring one of those new-fangled self-service coin-counting machines. They suggested that Ed wait a while until the machine was installed, and then he could bring in his pennies and run them through the gizmo himself.

And that's exactly what he did.

Jim McCutchin, vice...