The person who looks closely at every penny might not be cheap — he might be a numismatist, a coin collector, looking for old or rare coins that somehow got into the mix.
To correctly pronounce numismatist, accent the third syllable: "new-miz-MUH-tist." It literally means "someone who studies coins." These aren't the coins you have in your pocket right now. Instead, a numismatist studies and collects coins from other places and time periods. The word comes from the Latin word numisma, meaning "coin, currency." The word numismatist was coined — no pun intended! — in 1799.
