If a penny saved is a penny earned, then Eugene Sukie earned
$10,480.13 in his three-plus decades of thriftiness.
Over the years, Eugene Sukie, a retired glass plant supervisor,
rolled the pennies in wrappers and stored them in 575 cigar boxes
organized by year and mint. He had them counted Tuesday -- by a
machine, of course.
The pennies, over one million of them and weighing 3 1/2 tons,
were trucked from Sukie's home in Barberton to a coins-to-cash
machine at a suburban Cleveland supermarket.
Sukie, 78, was worried that he and his wife were getting old and
eventually wouldn't be able to get the pennies out of their
basement.
"In the evenings, I'd go into the basement and count them," Sukie
said. "It was relaxing for me."
Coinstar Inc., of Bellevue, Washington, which operates
coin-counting machines, charged Sukie an 8.9 percent service charge,
or $932.73, but paid him $1,500 for the right to tell his story.
That means that, in all, Sukie pocketed more than $11,000.
