Gotta nickel?

Nickel

Can you spare a nickel? I’m kicking off an experiment to see if I can raise enough money to buy myself a Macbook. But here’s the catch: I’m planning to raise the money entirely in nickels. Doing the math, the roughly $1,600 it will take to buy a Macbook works out to 32,000 nickels. So far I’ve got 6 nickels sitting in a cup on my desk. Hey, it’s a start!

So here’s the deal: I’m shamelessly asking you to toss five cents into my PayPal account. This money will not go to charity or a non-profit of any kind and is most certainly not tax-deductible. It will go straight into my pocket. You’ll get nothing in return for this, but hey, why do you care? It’s only a nickel. And that’s the whole point: I’m not asking for much—just a few seconds of your time and a nickel.

So, what are you waiting for? If you’ve got a PayPal account with a positive balance, please use this button right now to throw a nickel in my change cup:

Thanks! End mark

Update: I’ve blogged about this again since this initial post. To follow my progress, see the following posts.

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9 Comments

  1. Debi
    Posted Tuesday, July 22, 2008 at 10:03 pm | Permalink

    You’re so funny…I had to donate a nickel!
    I love you,
    Debi

  2. Posted Tuesday, July 22, 2008 at 11:28 pm | Permalink

    I can has no PayPal. :-(

    Also, don’t they skim a bit off the top?

  3. Joey
    Posted Wednesday, July 23, 2008 at 12:55 pm | Permalink

    James: They only skim off the top if you have a “Premier” or “Business” account. This is a brand new “Personal” account I’ve opened for just this purpose (and PayPal does allow an individual to have one personal account and one business account, so I’m not violating any rules having two accounts). The downside of keeping it a “Personal” account is that I can’t use the API and I can’t take credit cards. This is why I specified that you must have a PayPal account with a positive balance in order to donate.

  4. Posted Friday, July 25, 2008 at 12:26 am | Permalink

    I’m jealous that you’re popular enough to be able to probably succeed in this.

    (throws 6 Australian cents your way)

  5. Joey
    Posted Friday, July 25, 2008 at 9:24 am | Permalink

    Sam said:

    I’m jealous that you’re popular enough to be able to probably succeed in this.

    Don’t be so sure. I’m really not that popular and 32,000 nickels is a lot of nickels. If it succeeds, it’ll probably take me a while.

  6. The Mu
    Posted Monday, July 28, 2008 at 7:00 pm | Permalink

    A MacBook? You can do better than that Joey. (Start with anything that’s not Mac.)

  7. Posted Wednesday, August 20, 2008 at 9:37 pm | Permalink

    And what’s the head count (no pun intended) so far? How many nickels?

  8. Posted Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at 11:13 am | Permalink

    I had to donate a nickel!

  9. Posted Sunday, January 25, 2009 at 1:01 pm | Permalink

    keisi Says:
    January 14th, 2009 at 11:13 am

    I had to donate a nickel!

    Yes? of cource!!

2 Trackbacks

  1. By Janene on Monday, July 28, 2008 at 2:32 pm

    [...] Read his post for more information on how to donate. [...]

  2. By Joey Day : Syzygy » A nickel update on Thursday, August 21, 2008 at 7:30 pm

    [...] Aaron asks: And what’s the head count (no pun intended) so far? How many nickels? [...]

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  • What’s this?

    Joey Day is a thirty-something IT professional (read: big nerd) living in Salt Lake City, Utah. When he grows up he’d like to be a Seminary professor (read: even bigger nerd).

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