[Conan the Librarian]

There was an older gentleman at our church who had some pennies he had dropped into lava. He told us it was from Vesuvius.

[Calvin Locke]

Uh, how did he retrieve them, and in what shape were they? US pennies, copper or WW2 steel pennies?

I suppose he could have dropped them onto a glob of still-hot spewed lava.