By Gerald McKinstry for The Journal News 

For Jeff Haber and son Danny framing pennies makes sense.

For decades, the elder Haber stashed the often-overlooked or unwanted copper coins. More recently, he decided to put them to good use. “I had a ton of pennies,” Jeff Haber said. “I have 30 years of collected pennies.”

Inspiration came in the form of a portrait of Abraham Lincoln made entirely of pennies that he saw at the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not museum in Florida about eight years ago. He and his son decided they were up for the challenge.

“What we saw in Florida was absolutely incredible,” Danny Haber said.

The first portrait they completed is hanging in their home. A second was purchased by the Ripley’s museum for $500. Now, the two have completed a third portrait, which they are donating to New Rochelle High School.

This one used 2,400 coins, or $24. The Habers said they spent nearly two months positioning and gluing the coins.

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By Andrew Pridgen for the Nevada Appeal

Even during the most difficult economic times, someone’s making money.

This adage couldn’t be more true, both literally and figuratively, than it is this week in Carson City. As area numismatists are already well aware, this is National Coin Week.

Whether you’re looking through loose change for a newly minted Nevada state quarter or you’re Rusty Goe, owner of Reno-based Southgate Coins – who last week purchased an 1871 gold piece from the Carson City mint for $414,000, this week is literally one for the books for coin collectors.

“I think it’s a (hobby) that’s really starting to pick up a lot of new enthusiasts,” Goe said. “We have just a wide variety of customers. We have children on a budget, and we stock items to get kids started. And we have long-time collectors who have coins worth tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

No matter the collector’s experience level, Goe said, one lesson is learned quickly for Northern Nevada hobbyists. (more…)

By Gabriel Elizondo in Maracangalha, Brazil

It was like a script from a Hollywood film. A small plane carrying millions of dollars in cash crashes right in the middle of a poor village in a remote corner of the world.

But this was no movie – this is what actually happened in the north-eastern Brazilian village of Maracangalha, and the event has since sparked a missing money mystery that provided an unhappy ending for the villagers.

The mystery began last year when a small plane, operated by a private security company on behalf of a Brazilian bank, transported about 5.56 million Reals in cash, the equivalent of about $3,300,000, across Brazil’s Bahia state. The plane encountered mechanical difficulties and crashed near the village, killing the three people on board and releasing a cloud of banknotes.

Three million dollars is a lot of money for anyone, but even more so when you consider many of the people of Maracangalha do not have running water and earn less than $100 a month as labourers on nearby farms.

When a local radio station reported the incident, people descended on the village in droves almost immediately, collecting as much of the money as they could find. (more…)