Wooden Nickels Increase in Value

Parents,

A Friday thought for you today....

Wooden Nickels Increase in Value
Did you know that the value of wooden nickels is going up?  It actually hasn't happened yet everywhere. But it could happen any day now.  So I'm giving you a heads up in case you want to invest in some wooden nickels while there is still time.  I would pay at least $20 each, maybe even more.  I'm sure this seems a little odd, but I discovered a secret about wooden nickels yesterday.

I read where a guy I follow online, Reggie Joiner, was traveling around Memphis trying to find a BBQ place that he used to eat at as a kid in the 1970's.  That's when it happened.  Out of nowhere, he remembers the wooden nickels that they would give out when his family would pick up their meal.  It's hard to explain, but he suddenly became obsessed with finding the same restaurant that used to give him wooden nickels.  So, Reggie goes on a quest to find one of the rare wooden coins.  He drove to an antique mall outside of town, asked his parents about them, googled relentlessly, and even called some of his old friends he hadn't talked to in years.  Finally, a 70-year-old father of one of his child-hood friends told him that he thought he remembered a BBQ fast food place giving out wooden nickels over 30 years ago.  That was all the confirmation Reggie needed to continue on his mission.

Those wooden nickels have definitely gone up in value, or at they did for Reggie..(not just any wooden nickels, but the specific wooden nickels from BBQ places in Memphis.)  I'm sure this probably seems like a strange quest, but those nickels were pretty important to Reggie as a kid.  Evidently they weren't as significant to his parents, because they have no recollection of the wooden nickels whatsoever.  In their world of trying to raise and provide for a family, a wooden nickel wasn't worth much.  It couldn't pay for the groceries, the mortgage or help them save for a college education.  So it wasn't as meaningful to them as it was to Reggie when they handed him a simple token that came with his BBQ sandwich.

Isn't that how it is sometimes?  What doesn't seem very important to us as adults, can potentially be huge to our kids?  Reggie is an older guy with kids who also has aging parents....and he's talked about how now he can't stop thinking about wooden nickels.  They represent all those countless times when his parents did something in their ordinary routine of parenting and didn't realize how valuable it was.  They had given Reggie a lot of wooden nickels over their lifetime.  During his teens and twenties, he didn't really recognize how valuable those deposits were.  But somewhere, in his thirties and forties, he started realizing how much those wooden nickels were really worth.

Maybe his new interest in those old wooden coins is connected to the fact that his mom discovered she has lung cancer 2 months ago.  The prognosis is good and surgery happened a few weeks ago.  But it reminded Reggie and it reminded me about the every-day investments my parents made in my life for so many years.  Wooden nickels may not get you the same return as gold in this economy, but as a parent don't underestimate the potential they can have in your kid's life over the long haul.

Just remember whenever you

Go for a bike ride,
Cook a favorite meal,
Host a party,
Go fishing,
Play cards,
Throw a ball,
Write a note,
Take a walk,
Sing a song,
Watch them play,
Tell a story,
Laugh together,
Tuck them in,
See a movie,
Go to church,
Take a trip

you are handing your kids wooden nickels that one day may be worth more to them than you could possibly imagine.

Have a great weekend and hope to see you all Sunday!

Heffe