[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.

[Conan the Librarian]

What I can remember was they were melted into pockets in the rock.

I was a kid, and, he could have been pulling our leg, it could have been Etna, or, something else.

It was 40+ years ago that he told me this.