 
HOBBIES — The Magazine For Collectors, June,
1947
The OLD and NEW PENNY BANKS (See Cover) The cover of this issue pictures penny banks from the collection of Henry Stenger, Hoosier collector. Stenger's version of the highlights of his hobby of collecting goes something like this: Happening in a strange shop some five years ago, Mr. Stenger spied, squatting on a shelf, an intriguing Negro boy who, with encouragement, popped pennies in mouth and promptly gulped them down. Right then and there, he found himself a hobby. Today, 348 penny banks later, he's an expert in the specialized penny bank collecting world. The Negro boy, of course, was a penny bank, one of the many cast iron, wood, tin and cloth ones that line shelves in Stenger's home. Put a penny in the boy's outstretched hand, push a lever, watch the hand raise to the mouth, and that's where the money goes. Stenger corresponds with many other bank collectors getting leads on rare buys, and paid considerable for one bank. This was a "guessing bank" which, along with teaching the virtue of saving, also offered the penny saver a 5-to-1 shot for his money. The gadget was made in the form of a man seated with a dial in his lap. Put a penny in a slot and a horsehair on the dial spun. If one guessed the place it would stop he got five pennies for the trouble. Fortunately, Stenger sees no immediate danger of amassing all the varieties of penny banks there are in the world, thus wrecking his favorite hobby. As hard as he has looked, he has managed to acquire only some 80 mechanical, or moving part, banks out of what veteran penny bank collectors consider an easy 275 to get. That leaves him 195 — and lots of correspondence and interesting stores — to go. |
