[Vision2020] Red Kettles Yield Odd Treasures

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of today's (December 26, 2008) Spokesman Review -

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Red kettles yield odd treasures
Salvation Army reports donations of rare coins, jewelry, more
By MITCH STACY / Associated Press 

TAMPA, Fla. – The volunteer emptying Salvation Army kettles in southwest 
Florida recently came across something that stood out from the piles of 
spare change and crumpled up bills: a 1911 Liberty Eagle gold coin worth 
around $1,000.

The person who quietly deposited it outside a Fort Myers supermarket last 
week continued a holiday tradition of using the iconic red pots to make 
valuable and unusual donations.

“It’s a welcome gift, believe me,” said Maj. George Hood, a national 
spokesman for the charity, which has seen total donations drop around 25 
percent in the tough economy.

People might be plunking in less loose change this season, but the 
Salvation Army is still coming across exotic kettle donations.

Earlier this month, a rare 1910 gold coin worth thousands was dropped into 
a kettle in Berlin, Vt. Someone in Uniontown, Pa., deposited a diamond 
ring worth about $2,000. In northeast Kansas, a gold American Buffalo coin 
worth at least $1,000 was slipped through a kettle slot.

And every holiday season for the past seven years, someone has dropped a 
Krugerrand, a gold coin from South Africa, into a kettle in Waterloo, 
Iowa. The one left last weekend was valued at $678, Hood said.

Nationally, the Salvation Army collects about $118 million a year from its 
25,000 red kettles.

As far as the charity knows, the first time a valuable coin was dropped 
into a kettle was in 1982 in a Chicago suburb. Since then it’s happened 
about 300 times across the country.

It was the third year in a row that a rare Liberty Eagle coin was left in 
Fort Myers, apparently by the same person, said Megan Spears, a 
spokeswoman for the local chapter.

Like the two previous years, the coin was in a small plastic case with a 
note printed neatly on plain, unlined paper: “In memory of Mimi.”

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho
 
"For a lapse Lutheran born-again Buddhist pan-Humanist Universalist 
Unitarian Wiccan Agnostic like myself there's really no reason ever to go 
to work."

- Roy Zimmerman


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