LONG BEACH, Wash. – A penny saved is a penny earned.

Recently Phil Norman proved the point by making a down payment on a new car for his wife, Jenny, with 174,000 pennies he has been saving for the past 18 years.

“Collecting pennies is just something I do for fun. I enjoy separating them by date each year in December,” Phil Norman said. “Everyone in town knows I collect pennies and buying the car for my wife was my joke to her.”

The Normans purchased a 2006 Honda Accord in Aberdeen, Wash. “My new car has heated seats, satellite radio, just about everything,” Jenny Norman said. “I never have owned a brand-new car before and it’s kind of exciting.”

The couple drove their one-ton van to Aberdeen with the pennies. Phil Norman had saved 12 boxes with $105 worth of pennies in each that he had carefully put into 50-cent rolls. He also had two larger boxes with $216 and $164 in pennies.

“I took along my hand truck so that they could get all the pennies inside,” he said. “I let them borrow it because I didn’t think they would be ready to handle that many coins by themselves.” The couple had shopped for their new dark-gray Honda a couple of weeks before and Norman had warned them he was going to have the down payment in pennies.

“I don’t think they believed me at first,” he said. The dealer called news stations in Seattle and soon the Normans were on TV newscasts statewide. “We’ve gotten calls from as far away as Sacramento,” Norman said. “The car dealer got a lot of free advertisement from us, but we didn’t think it was that big of a deal.”

Norman began collecting pennies in 1988 when he and Jenny purchased Mary Lou’s Tavern located in downtown Long Beach. “I buy them from customers and people put pennies in a jar I have at the tavern,” he said. Every December he takes all the coins he’s gotten during the past year and puts them into rolls by the date of the mint mark. “I use a big magnifying glass and sorting the pennies becomes automatic after awhile.”

Jenny Norman said, “You would think getting a one-cent tip would be an insult, but not to Phil.”

Now he has started over. “I’ve already got about $10 worth of pennies saved up for who knows what,” Norman said.