A Mass­a­chu­setts man said he col­lected pen­nies for 35 years so he could make his final mort­gage pay­ment with 62,000 of the coins. Thomas Daigle said he decided to make the final pay­ment “mem­o­rable” when he and his wife, San­dra, moved into their Mil­ford home in 1977 and pur­chased it with a mort­gage from Mil­ford Fed­eral. “It was some­thing I wanted to do,” Daigle said. “I always fol­low through.” “I was just pray­ing I didn’t die.” Daigle col­lected an aver­age of 2.5 pen­nies per day and at first he kept them in a grape crate, but he had to move the change to a pair of steel mil­i­tary rocket launcher ammo boxes when the wood of the crate began to break under the weight of the coins. Daigle deliv­ered the pen­nies April 24th, the same day as his 35th wed­ding anniver­sary. He gave Mil­ford Fed­eral notice that his final pay­ment was going to be in penny form. “They were 100 per­cent for it,” he said.

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