Piggy banks:saving money or odd coins
Money Boxes
Piggy Banks are sometimes called penny banks, money box or coin bank that is often used by children. For collectors of these banks they may be called still banks to distinguish tem from mechanical banks that were popular in the early 1900’s.Most often they are in the shape of a little pig. Another theory that is popular in Germany is that in Germany and nearby countries the pig is a symbol of good luck, thus keeping money in a piggy bank will bring good fortune.
Often financial institutions have used piggy banks as logos for saving products. However with the encouragement of children to open junior savings accounts the piggy bank is less popular, according to Wikimedia.
This may be true to some extent but I remember as a child back in the 1949’s we had a “savings day” at school where we brought our dimes or whatever to by “war stamps” which were saved up to turn in for war bonds. After the change was brought in to put in savings accounts. Often the money to buy the stamps or put into a savings account was saved up between in a Piggy bank.
How did it happen?
Pigs have no reputation for saving, according to a children’s book “Mistakes that worked,” by Charlotte Foltz Jones. She points out hat dogs bury things to save them, Squirrels store nuts, camels store food and water but what do pigs save? Nothing!
It’s all because of a mistake back in the Middle Ages. At that time a clay called pygg” was used to make household utensils. A clay jar was used to drop spare coins into It was their pygg bank or pyggy bank. This term was used for the next two or three hundred years Eventually the people forgot the original term and when English potters got orders for Pyggy banks they made ones that looked like pigs Customers like them and children were delighted.
The oldest money box found dates from the 2nd century B.C. Greek colony Priene, Asia Minor that is shaped like a little Greek temple and has a slit in the pediment. Various money boxes were found in Pompeii and Herculaneum as well as on late ancient provincial sites, especially in Roam Britain and along the Rhine.
In Indonesia the figure of a wild boar is used in relation to domestic banks. Their word is celengan. Where the word came from is obscure but there is a 15th century Majapahit piggy bank. Wikipedia cites it as parallel evolution.
Famous Piggy Banks
The official mascot of Pike Place Market in Seattle Washington is a bronze cast piggy bank that weighs nearly 600 lbs. Rachael, as it is called, was designed by local artist Georgia Gerber and modeled after a pig named Rachael on Whidbey Island and won a 1977 island county prize. Rachael collects currency of about $9,000 a year and helps fund the Markets social services.
