$10 Million Worth Of Pennies

Can you imagine carrying $10 million in pennies? Well
maybe if you had the coin collection that was recently
sold in Long Beach, California, it wouldn’t be so
difficult.

288 pennies brought that $10.7 million in an auction.
The collection consisted of 301 rare, early American
pennies. Often referred to as "large cents", these
antique copper coins are about the size of today’s
quarters. They were minted during the time of George
Washington and Thomas Jefferson, roughly 1793 to 1814.

At the end of the auction, there were 13 pennies left.
These remaining coins were expected to be sold within
a week of the auction.

The auctioneers were as surprised as the collection
owner at the prices the coins were bringing. Two 18th
century pennies broke the record for the highest price
received for a rare penny. A sweet price at $632,500.
Hopefully the new owner feels like he got his 2 cents
worth.

Other coin collectors had been waiting decades for
these coins to come back on the market. The pennies
are well known, and the owner had been holding onto
them for years.

The auction officials said a sale like this one
happens once in a lifetime. The turn out was
exceptional. About 200 collectors were there with
hundreds more placing their bids over the phone and on
the internet.

The collection owner guesses he had spent a little
over $5 million on the pennies, so that was a nice
return on his investment.