Why are pennies put on a grave?

Answer 1

Leaving Pennies on a Grave

There are many traditions that involve placing objects, specifically money, on graves. These traditions are usually regional or customary practices and do not necessarily have religious connotations.

In American tradition, pennies are left on Benjamin Franklin's grave. There is a photo of his funeral in Philadelphia; his grave is adorned with pennies, no doubt placed there as a token by some of the 20,000 people that came that day to pay their respects. This custom was eventually associated with good luck and may have spread to graves in general in America. Some use pennies as a prayer token for the line "In God we trust" which appears on the American penny.

Some people hold to the tradition of leaving something of yourself when visiting a grave. If nothing else, a coin from your pocket serves as a marker of your passage and esteem for the departed. It also signifies to any that pass by that the grave was visited, and that the deceased is well loved and esteemed and has not been abandoned or forgotten. Coins are also an older form of leaving flowers, a practice prompted by the heavy Romanticism of the Victorian era. Some believe that to leave a coin on a grave brings good luck. Students in some areas are known to leave pennies on the graves of their school's founder in the hopes of good luck with exams. Some are, perhaps unwittingly, mimicking the ancient tradition where gold coins were buried with the corpse in order to pay the toll charged by Charon, the boatman of the Underworld, for passage to the other side of the river Styx. It was considered impious not to leave this toll with the dead as it would condemn them to forever wander the shores without cease. It started as an old tradition to leave a penny at the grave site of a loved one as a gesture of deep love and missing. However, when tourists pay their respect to Benjamin Franklin, pennies dot his tombstone, as a local tradition claims that such a practice will bring the penny-tosser luck. Of course he is a a man famous for the line, "A penny saved, is a penny earned,".

Answer 2

It may be the same thing as when people throw coins in a fountain or wishing well.