Penny

At the facility where I used to work, we did something similar, first with actual pennies, then with "virtual" pennies. That way, nobody would hold up the show counting out their pennies, and we saved oodles of time not having to recount/bag them! We had a list of names, and each person received 50 virtual pennies. A member of our management team would be the "banker" for us. It worked like a charm, and we got through more of our auction items doing it that way. This is a great activity! I'm working at a new facility now, and would love to bring it here - just need to find some folks who are willing to donate some goodies for the event!

One other thing we did - we took small styro-foam plates and wrote numbers on them with an over-sized black marker. We then stapled the plates to paint sticks, and voila! We had auction paddles! When residents checked in to the auction, they'd receive a paddle (we got our attendance this way) then had a few minutes to review the auction items to see what was of interest to them. It was great fun!