Magic Number

In these inflationary times, $1 million may be worth only half as much as ten years ago, but it is still a nice round, magic number. To find out just how big it is, the 31 pupils in Catherine Swiger's fifth-grade class in South Portland, Me., are collecting bottle caps. Since October, the children have accumulated nearly 140,000 and rather optimistically expect to reach their goal of 1 million by June 1980, when they will cash in their hoard with a scrap dealer and throw a class party.

Students in Sykesville, Pa., meanwhile, have gathered 350,000 pop tops from beer and soda cans. The Sykesville scavengers intend to pile up 1 million of them in a corner of the school gymnasium, then sell them for recycling and donate the proceeds to charity.

Edwin Rommel, 50, of Utica, N.Y., on the other hand, already knows what a million looks like. In 1958 Rommel and lis family started collecting pennies in a glass jar. By last Thanksgiving he reached his goal of 1 million, which he stored in rolls of 50 in a footlocker. Last week the penny pincher deposited the 3 1/2 tons of coppers in a bank, and promptly wrote out a check for a $7,500 Cadillac.

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