This huge stretch of coins you see are over a million dollars in pennies! I don't think I've ever seen this much coinage in one place before (except that time my family cashed in our buckets of change to go to Disney World. I think we single-handedly caused the national penny shortage of 1999.) This is probably one of the best things about working at Rockefeller Center; I never know what I'm going to find as I make my way into work each day. One day it's gymnasts on balance beams, another day it's an entire cranberry bog, today it's a field of pennies.
The coins sit in the Penny Harvest Field sponsored by the charity group Common Cents (how clever) and will be there until the end of the year. The exhibit is an effort to draw attention to their charity efforts and hopefully gain more donations and volunteers.
The money was collected by New York City school children and so far over 100 million pennies have been piled up in the field. How they transported that much coinage to Rock Center is beyond me, but I'm assuming they used some sort of truck. The money collected will be used to enhance the community where the children live, their schools and help the homeless. Not a bad idea.
Common Cents is always looking for volunteers to help out with the Penny Harvest, which I'm assuming means shoo-ing away greedy homeless people who want to help themselves to the loot. Wait- isn't the whole point to help the homeless? Maybe they should just leave it unguarded for a night. Either way, it's still a pretty neat sight to see.
