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Comment by jaredwiener | Hacker News Reader

"People" can include toddlers, etc.

Yeah, two-year-olds love to put random found objects in their mouths, often accidentally inhale them, and often lack the correct throat motions to unstick a round object.

If memory serves, pennies are the most common object for young children to choke on, coupled by the fact that anemia makes them “tasty”. Perhaps we need to consider adding holes in coins to reduce that.

I choked on a penny when I was a kid, had to be taken to the hospital and got it out.

They said that most just pass though the digestive system, I was special

I'm curious, if you were choking on a penny how did you even survive long enough to get to a hospital? Going without air will kill you in a matter of minutes, tops.

It only partially blocked my airway. I got to the hospital in minutes also, I was a toddler, my parents took me. Luckily we lived less than 2 miles from the hospital.

Coins used to have holes in them more often so that they could be put onto a string for counting/storage.

Holes in coins have many other advantages, including reduce material volume, potentially tactile feedback if we could have them different shapes, and so much more.

Would there be downsides outside of manufacturing cost and having to design with the hole in mind ?

In my humble experience, by far the best usage of holed coins such as the old 25 spanish pesetas coin (https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archivo:Pesetas_fin_siglo_XX.j...) is the ability to serve as a stopgap for spinning top launching rope (see https://www.ionlitio.com/images/2017/08/la-peonza-moneda.jpg). Fond memories!

Ha! That unlocked some child memories! Gracias :-)

Between most metals tasting "sweet" and the mouth being a baby's foremost sensitive way of accruing information about something, babies and small kids are instinctively driven to put anything and everything in their mouth if it fits and consider metals as food until sternly educated otherwise.

It takes a long time before any of the other senses become mature enough to be (more) useful avenues of accruing information and parents can finally stop worrying about it.

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