Every year, all over the world, we pepper everything from fountains to wells to even
theme park rides with our coins.
We do it because we want good luck.
We do it because we want a wish to come true.
In some cases, we do it to marry someone in Rome.
It is a timeless tradition, but where does it come from?
The practice of throwing coins into water dates back thousands of years and as is often
the case when you go back that far, it’s extremely difficult to pinpoint an exact moment.
Some of the earliest writings about the topic however come from a man named Gaius Caecilius,
also known as Pliny the Younger.
He was a Roman official and writer, born in the year 61.
Right towards the beginning of the second century, he published nine books comprised
of letters he had written.
Those letters covered all sorts of topics.
It was kind of like an Ancient Roman blog.
In one he mentions ‘several separate springs converge into a broad still pool.
There the water, clear as glass, allows you to see gleaming pebbles on the bottom and
the coins that people have thrown in…’
You see, back then clean water was extremely valuable and important.
I mean, it still is extremely valuable and important today, but technology has made it
easier, especially here in the first world, to get access to clean water.
Back then, not so much.
So it’s believed that people began to throw offerings into clean springs as a form of
tribute and thanks to the gods for the clean water they were given.
Now today it might seem pretty antithetical to do something like this.
I mean, why would you throw your dirty money into that clean water as a thank you for the water
being clean?
But this predates germ theory by quite a bit.
The practice would eventually spread and, like a big game of telephone, the concept
would change little by little depending on where you were and what god or goddess you
were reaching out to.
Coins were joined by pins and buttons and pebbles, and eventually those tributes evolved
from a means of giving thanks to a means of asking for something from those gods.
In Wales, the Well of Pen Rhys was believed to have curative powers for those who threw
in a tribute and then bathed in it.
The concept even worked its way into mythology.
For instance, Norse mythology had its own well, guarded over by Mimir who was thought
to be especially wise.
As the myth goes, anyone who drank from his well would gain wisdom.
Odin, paying the price to drink from that well, sacrificed his right eye to Mimir, robbing
Anthony Hopkins of his depth perception for three whole films.
Now one of the most popular singular examples of all this, and perhaps one of the major
contributors to this still being a thing is the Trevi Fountain in Rome.
Built between 1732 and 1762, the fountain was the mostra for the Acqua Vergine aqueduct.
Like I mentioned earlier, clean water was a pretty big deal.
So it was tradition for each of the aqueducts in Rome to have a big fancy fountain commemorating it.
That fountain was known as the terminal fountain, or the mostra.
As the story goes, a little over a hundred years later a German archaeologist by the
name of Wolfgang Helbig, who had been living in Rome at the time, adopted and tweaked the
old custom of throwing coins into a fountain for visiting friends who were leaving the city.
Instead of good luck or health or fortune, throwing a coin into the fountain over your
shoulder would help ensure a future return to the city of Rome.
It was further popularized in 1954 with the 20th Century Fox film, Three Coins in the
Fountain, which uses the superstition to kick off a romantic comedy.
The extension of that tradition is that if you throw a second coin in you’ll find love,
and if you throw a third coin in you’ll have a Roman wedding.
Since the 1950’s the tradition has continued, and that means a lot of spare change.
According to an NBC report from 2017, the Trevi Fountain sees up to $1.5 million in
change a year, all of which is collected by the city and donated to charity.
The fountains at Minnesota’s Mall of America see up to $24,000 each year, which is donated
to various non-profits that can apply for a piece of the change. Back in 2014 Disney
had collected $18,000 from the fountains and water rides around the parks and donated it
to a Central Florida organization called Community Based Care.
Even smaller fountains in major tourist destinations like Vegas can sometimes end up with over
$10,000 in change every year.
Often times when the fountain is less lucrative, the money goes directly towards funding the
upkeep of that fountain.
What started as a unique thank you gesture nearly two-thousand years ago has become a
worldwide tradition.
And while throwing that coin into the fountain might not always get you that wish or Roman
wedding it often goes towards one good cause or another.
So in an interesting twist, the next time you toss a coin into that fountain, you might
just be granting someone else their wish.