Lucky Irish Coin
LUCKY IRISH COIN – March 17, 2025 – New York City, New York, USA
Katie Coughlin had a love-hate relationship with the laundromat below her apartment. She loved that it was so close that she only had to carry her clothes down two flights of stairs. She hated that no employee was there to solve problems with the aging machines. When one of the washers or dryers broke, she had to hope a working spare was available.
Katie also hated that the coin operated machines always seemed to steal at least one quarter every time she did a load of laundry. And their slots were constantly jammed with misfit Canadian quarters without anyone around to unstick them. Katie’s weekly laundry excursions required her to always keep a jar of quarters on hand (staying clear from any Canadian ones) in case the laundromat’s cash-based change machine ran dry.
When signs appeared in the laundromat’s window announcing it would close for refurbishment, Katie rejoiced. The closure was scheduled for only two weeks and she hoped the owner would replace the old machines with newer, larger models. She dreamed of washers capable of accepting credit card payments instead of quarters and comfortable chairs replacing the cracked, hard plastic ones in the waiting area.
Katie watched with anticipation as workmen covered up the laundromat’s windows and hauled machines in and out. During the two-week closure, Katie piled up her dirty clothes instead of bothering to find a more distant place to do laundry. On the morning of the grand reopening, she hauled nearly every piece of clothing she owned downstairs.
The laundromat’s interior remained mostly unchanged. The walls got a fresh coat of paint and security cameras. The worst of the broken chairs were replaced by models with softer plastic. More importantly, all the washers and dryers were new. Upon closer inspection, Katie realized they still required coins, but now they accepted dollars instead of quarters.
Katie looked at the plastic bag of quarters on top of one of her laundry baskets. “Where am I going to find dollar coins?” she asked herself. Then she spotted a new large-capacity coin dispenser on the room’s far wall. It accepted cards instead of cash and delivered the dollar coins demanded by the washing machines. Katie smiled at the thought of no longer worrying about quarter collecting. She purchased $20 worth of coins and listened to them clang into the dispenser’s bottom tray. She shoved them all into the pockets of her jeans.
Katie started two loads of laundry with no problems. When she got to the third and fed in coins to turn on the machine, one of the coins fell directly from the inlet slot to a reject tray without registering on an electronic counter. Katie grabbed the coin and tried again. Reject. She tried twice more before carefully inspecting the coin. It was the exact diameter and thickness of the others in her pocket, but had a darker copper color. Instead of the outline of a U.S. President, the coin was decorated with the image of a harp. On one side were the letters “eire”. On the other, “2P” and a strange design that looked like a tangled octopus.
“What in the world?” Katie said to herself. “2P? Is that supposed to be two pesos?”
She held the coin next to a genuine gold-colored dollar. Based only on their size, they could easily be confused. Apparently, the washing machine was smart enough to distinguish one from the other.
Katie used one of her dollar coins to start the wash cycle and retreated to one of the laundromat’s plastic chairs to wait. She used her phone to take a picture of the bronze imposter coin and soon identified it as an Irish two pence piece. They were supposed to be removed from circulation in 2002.
“Two pence? That’s like two cents,” Katie said to herself. “This thing is practically worthless.” She shrugged her shoulders and chalked it up to bad luck, but the more she sat there, the more it bothered her. For the past two years, she had regularly lost quarters to the old version of the laundromat. She was not going to let the retooled version make her a victim on its first day. She hunted around the room and finally found a phone number on the coin dispenser, printed in small characters. She called the number.
“Alex Ramirez speaking.”
“I found your number in a laundromat. On the dollar coin dispenser. It just got installed but I want you to know there’s a problem.”
“Are you there now?”
“Yes.”
“I’m coming right over. I’ll be there in forty-five minutes.”
In the time it took Alex Ramirez to arrive, Katie finished drying her clothes and returned them to her apartment. She stood next to the coin dispenser when a gaunt man walked in wearing a felt hat and long wool coat. He had the chilled and serious face of an undertaker. Katie shuttered and straightened her spine as if she was singled out during a college lecture. The man glanced around and then walked stiffly toward her.
“Are you the girl who called about the coin dispenser?”
“Yes, I used it for the first time today. I paid for $20 dollars’ worth of coins. I got nineteen of the dollar coins and one of these.” Katie held up the two pence piece hoping she would at least get compensated for the dollar she was owed. And maybe Alex Ramirez would feel generous and give her some type of reward for pointing out the problem.
Alex snatched the coin from Katie and handled it with boney fingers. “What is it?”
“I looked it up. It’s a two pence piece from Ireland.”
“You expect me to give you a dollar for this? Is that why you called?”
Katie could tell from his sneering tone she was not getting a reward and would need to fight simply to get the dollar she deserved. “It did come out of your machine,” she answered defiantly.
“How do I know that?”
“Why would I go to the trouble of calling you if it didn’t?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you’ve got a scheme going.”
“A scheme?”
“Trying to swap dollars for these worthless two pence things.”
Katie forced a laugh. “I’m no criminal mastermind, but if I hatched a scheme, I think I could come up with something better than trading Irish coins for dollars. You think I’m going to waste my time to make a grand total of nighty-eight cents?”
“This is how it starts. Today it’s one. Next week you’ve got a whole bag of Irish money you expect to trade.”
“How can you possibly think like that?” Katie asked in disbelief.
“I’ve seen it all in this city. You’re not going to take me for a sucker. You can keep your pence.”
Alex tossed the coin back to Katie and she automatically grabbed it. She decided there was no use arguing further, so she put the coin in her pocket and said, “I’ll keep it as a memento of how cheapskate this place is.”
Katie sidestepped Alex Ramirez and stomped to the laundromat’s door. The encounter left her agitated for the rest of the day. She was so distracted, she forgot about her plans to meet some friends at a comedy club. By the time she remembered, she had to rush to change her shirt and dab on some light makeup. With no minutes to spare, she ran downstairs hoping to jump into an available taxi. To her pleasant surprise, one sat only steps away from her building’s exit.
As Katie jogged for the cab, she did not see Dylan Murphy angling for it from the sidewalk’s opposite direction. They reached for the back door at the same time.
“Go ahead, you can take it,” Dylan said in an interesting accent Katie could not quite place. He wore a loose-fitting tie and tan jacket. His eyes were an unusual shade of gray-blue.
Despite her hurry, Katie suddenly thought more about this stranger than herself. She said in a friendly voice, “We got here at the same time. Maybe we should flip for it to be fair.”
Dylan laughed in surprise and said, “I really think you should take it, but if you want to flip a coin, I’m game.”
Katie reached into her pocket and pulled out the two pence piece. “Okay, this one has a harp on one side and something strange on the other. Say harp or no harp.”
Dylan carefully studied the coin in her hand. “Hey, that’s a two pence piece.”
“You recognize it?”
“It’s been a long time, but we used to have them around when I was growing up in Ireland. Where’d you get it?”
“It’s a long story. Well, actually it’s not that long.” Katie smiled and pulled her hair back from her face.
Dylan took a long, interested look. “You know, maybe we’re going the same direction and we can share the ride and you can tell me the story.”
It turned out they were going the same direction. Dylan enjoyed Katie’s story and many stories after that. In the future, when people asked them how they met, Katie usually replied by pulling her lucky two pence coin from her pocket.
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