In the next few days New Yorkers might want to take a closer look at the pennies in their loose change. The odds are long, but one of those lowly pennies might be worth more than $1,000.

That is because Scott A. Travers is going around Manhattan this week making a few routine purchases and deliberately spending three rare one-cent coins. Mr. Travers is serious about coins: he collects them, writes about them and is a former vice president of the American Numismatic Association. He hopes that the sharp-eyed people who find one of the three coins will be caught up in what Mr. Travers describes as the magic of coin collecting.

"I'm planting a seed and I hope that a new generation of people will come to appreciate the history that coins represent," said Mr. Travers, who is sprinkling around the pennies to coincide with National Coin Week, which starts Sunday. The pennies are almost a century old and are among the most coveted by collectors.

One was produced in 1909, the centennial of Lincoln's birth, the first time a United States coin showed a historical figure rather than a depiction of Liberty. The coins had the initials of the engraver, Victor D. Brenner, prominently displayed -- too prominently for public taste -- so they were hastily removed and the coin was reissued without them. The San Francisco mint, whose coins had a small S mint mark below the date, produced fewer than 500,000 pennies with the offending initials. They became instant collectors' items and most quickly disappeared from circulation.