What Would You Do With This Half Penny (Or Any Other Coin You No Longer Want)?

Back in Moscow I had been trying to assemble a lowball date set of the Bun Head pennies - the date was sufficiently recessed on those that a lot of them had almost nothing but the date still legible. I was still missing a few scarcer dates as of last attempt (plus a bunch of later dates in the 1880s/1890s, where most of the examples I could find were way too high grade for my set).

I have been considering branching out into halfpennies... but, yeah, a lot less of those available.

I feel like I would want to be more deliberate than slipping into circulation were it would almost certainly be lost these days.

Just so you know, I originally posted this in the Main Coin Forum instead of this UK coin forum on purpose because I was looking for suggestions on how to give away coins anonymously in such a way that might inspire a youngster to become a coin collector. The fact that it happened to be a UK half penny was just incidental. Nonetheless, I can see how including a picture of a particular UK half penny might have caused a moderator to move this thread. Would it be possible to move this thread back to the original forum?

Put it in the coin reject tray of a Coinstar machine....make somebodys day.

I'd never just leave a coin sitting around out in the open air, hoping someone finds it. Either (a) someone finds it, which will probably result in yet another "I found this weird old coin what's it worth" thread on a coin forum somewhere, or (b) nobody finds it, or they don't find it until after it's turned into a little green rock, in which case a cheap-but-nice coin has been ruined.

Personally, I don't obtain coins I don't want to keep. Even if I "don't really want it", in terms of expanding the core collection, I don't get rid of it. The only exception is obtaining a duplicate. In the example above, if I didn't already have an 1866 halfpenny, I would keep it and put it in the British predecimal date collection next to all the other Queen Victoria halfpennies. If I did already have one, and the coin I had was worse than this one, I'd keep it and dispose of it. I would only dispose of this coin if the 1866 halfpenny I already had was better than this one.

Now to define "dispose". For a relatively cheap common coin, I would toss it into my "duplicates box", a tote tray full of miscellaneous world coins. I'd then take this bucket down to the coin dealer whenever it got too full or heavy. Nicer, odder or more valuable coins would go to my coin club for auction. This specific coin is probably nice enough to try to auction for a couple of dollars. I'd rather let a friend in the coin club have it for a few dollars than give it away to a random for free.

Maybe keep it in your pocket until a random encounter presents an opportunity to reward a child for an act of kindness?

We have a local coin club, so I regularly donate there.

A number of coin shows have giveaways for kids. I know both the ANA and RCNA set up tables for kids. I have donated to those in the past and have been gathering some more to donate again. Last year I did a presentation on coins at the local school my kids attend. I let everyone in the class pick a couple coins from a bag I had at the end. They were mainly old Canadian nickels that I purchased for face value, but also put in a few pre-67 silver coins as well.