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When Thomas Daigle moved into his home in Milford, Mass., 35 years ago, he began saving pennies, vowing that he’d eventually use them to make his final mortgage payment. This April, he followed through on his pledge when he delivered two boxes containing 62,000 pennies to the local loan office.

Daigle always wanted to make his last payment “memorable,” he told the Milford Daily News. He and his wife Sandra moved into their current home in 1977, and from then on, he began saving just a few pennies a day. After a few years, the coins’ original container — a grape crate — began to budge, so Daigle purchased two military rocket-launcher ammo boxes to hold his bounty.

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As the years went on, collecting the coins and rolling them into packs of 50 became something of a hobby for Daigle, who kept them stored in his basement. When it finally came time to make the last payment, Daigle estimated that the pennies weighed in at more than 800 lb. (360 kg). He alerted Milford Federal Savings and Loan Association, where he’d purchased the mortgage; his lenders approved of his unorthodox payment method.

Now that Daigle, an optician, has made his final payment, he said he’ll continue to pick up pennies he sees on the street. But no more of that basement-storing stuff — now he plans on turning them in for cash.

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