#A penny for your thoughts cards series#
Soon, I discovered entire series of “postals” (as they were often called) written by a single individual and addressed to the same person or family time and again, as the sender traveled from one place to the next. News from afar, weather reports, travel tales, and humorous anecdotes filled dozens of postcards, many with handwriting so beautiful, it rivaled the artwork on the front. Instantly, I was intrigued by the lives of the individuals who had both written and received the cards. When I first began sorting through the 3”x5” printed cards, most of the examples I cataloged were blank, but I soon encountered postcards with handwritten messages. Over the past several months, I’ve had the privilege of working with a few (hundred) postcards from our large collection at The Strong. For just a penny, anyone could send a postcard offering best wishes, documenting travels, or just to say hello. During the early part of the 20th century-from the late 1890s through the late 1920s and even the early 1930s-postcards were a primary form of communication. Rewind nearly a century, long before the invention of computers, cell phones, emails, and text messages. You know, when someone wrote you a message, adhered a stamp to it, and placed it in a mailbox, just to let you know they were thinking of you? Chances are you don’t receive this sort of mail nearly as often as you once did, likely due to the influx of digital technology, which facilitates faster, cheaper, and more instantaneous methods of communication. Not letters from credit card companies enthusiastically informing you that you’ve been “pre-approved!” Actual mail-a letter, a note, or a card. Penny for your Thoughts is also the title of a song written in the late 1800’s by Stephen Foster, known as the ‘Father of American Music.Do you remember getting mail? Not email. There are also other English expressions which use the word penny to refer to thoughts. Similar expressions to ‘penny for your thoughts’ have existed such as pennyworth of wit ( penn’orth of wit). At one time, the word was commonly used as a synonym for ‘coin.’ This gave rise to many expressions, such as “a pretty penny,” which would refer to a great sum of money, as opposed to an attractive penny. Although the British pound was not divided into 100 equal parts like our American dollar, its smallest unit was called a penny, which is where we got our word for 1/100th of a dollar. This was a monetary unit of currency having two denominations, the greater at one-fifth of a shilling, and the less, as one-twelfth of a shilling. The word penny itself dates back many hundreds of years, coming from the Anglo-Saxon word pening or penig. This gentle prodding knocks Sam out of his reverie and he says with an apologetic smile “Oh, I’m just distracted by this big deadline at work. He’s not quite being his jovial self, Sara doesn’t want to make a big deal out of it, so she says, “A penny for your thoughts.” Sara is telling Sam about what happened with her sister, but Sam seems lost in his own thoughts, hardly paying attention.
Examples Of UseĪ couple, Sam and Sara, are out for dinner in their favorite restaurant.
When you say ‘a penny for your thoughts,’ you probably don’t have these rare 1909 Lincoln wheat pennies in mind, which can be worth hundreds of dollars. It means simply “what are you thinking,” and we are not actually offering any monetary compensation in exchange for another person’s thoughts.
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