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The New Zealand Five Cent Coin

2017-11-09 · story · John · 2:59 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Personal life (also: Economics) · mode: Personal essay · tags: calendar ritual, self promotion

In his last Pizzamas video John tells how, anxious before Turtles All the Way Down came out, he sought New Zealand's tuatara five-cent coins as tour gifts, and how strangers rallied by a teacher named Megan sent thousands; kindness, he says, can spread too.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Last Pizzamas video; John's difficult, anxious months before the book came out

  • ★ John says this is his last video of Pizzamas. — 00:00:00 · Pizzamas
  • ★★★ The months before Turtles All the Way Down came out were difficult for John: overwhelmed by worry about its reception, the tour and publicity, and how to talk about his own mental illness. — 00:00:04 · Turtles All the Way Down, mental disorder

00:00:23 — The tuatara five-cent coin: minted until 2006, costs more than it is worth

  • ★ John notes that tuatara play a role in his new book. — 00:00:23 · Turtles All the Way Down
  • ★★ John believes the New Zealand five-cent piece is the only coin ever minted featuring a tuatara. (hedged) — 00:00:29
  • ★★ John shows a 1972 coin and says New Zealand minted five-cent pieces until 2006, then stopped. — 00:00:34
  • ★★ John calls stopping rational: money exists to facilitate the exchange of goods and services, which five-cent coins don't do very effectively. — 00:00:37
  • ★★ John says it costs more than five cents per coin to mint five-cent coins. — 00:00:46
  • ★ John adds, as a tangent, that some countries still mint coins worth one fifth of a nickel. (playful) — 00:00:52

00:00:57 — Buying coins on eBay, the tour-gift plan, Megan's newspaper letter and the flood of coins and letters

  • ★★ One night, fighting dread with eBay shopping, John found he could buy New Zealand five-cent coins and bought 23 for 22 US dollars. — 00:01:02

    “trying to fight the creeping sense of dread with temporal things”

  • ★★ John thought that with a couple hundred coins he could give one as a gift to everybody who left a gift for them on the tour. — 00:01:17

  • ★★★ eBay lacked enough coins, so John reached out to Kiwi nerdfighters; the project was led by Megan, a librarian and teacher who wrote to her local newspaper asking for coins for an American author. — 00:01:24 · Nerdfighteria
  • ★★ The letter ran online and in the newspaper, and a lot of people responded; most who sent coins to Megan had no idea who John was. — 00:01:38
  • ★★ Coins came three or a hundred at a time, with letters about mothers' collections and coins going on an adventure, and letters in Maori on the importance of tuatara. — 00:01:49

00:02:02 — The effort strangers made, John's tears of gratitude, kindness spreads, little things matter; sign-off

  • ★★★ John notes the effort: people read the letter, found coins, paid at least a dollar postage or went to Megan's school, all for a stranger in America, only to be kind. — 00:02:02
  • ★★★ Not knowing what John was going through, the senders couldn't know he would dissolve into tears of gratitude when thousands of tuatara coins arrived from Megan. — 00:02:19
  • ★★ They gave many coins out on tour; John will try to give the rest over his life to those who need a physical reminder of how kind people can be. (hedged) — 00:02:36
  • ★★★ John says that just as cruelty and mistrust can spread, so can kindness. — 00:02:43
  • ★★★ John thanks the Kiwis who made it happen: they will say it was a little thing, but little things matter. — 00:02:48

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says Pizzamas is ending and its items are available only until tomorrow. — video description · Pizzamas

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: kindness · Megan (person, mentioned from 2017) · New Zealand · New Zealand five-cent coin

Also: eBay · gratitude · mental disorder · money · Pizzamas · tuatara · Turtles All the Way Down

Only in the description or credits: The Mess Inside · The Mountain Goats

Also centred on kindness: Kindness · The years start coming and they don't stop coming!

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