A family who found 800,000 pennies in their basement tried to find a million-dollar coin, but gave u

[RichardInTN]

A family who found 800,000 pennies in their basement tried to find a million-dollar coin, but gave up and now want to sell the lot for $25,000
^{Mia Jankowicz
Thu, June 15, 2023 at 9:04 AM EDT}

After stumbling across a hoard of 800,000 pennies in the basement of an old family home, a couple set out to find a million-dollar penny — but gave up after an hour and listed the whole lot for $25,000, news outlets reported.

The needle-in-a-haystack search began when John Reyes and his wife were clearing out her old family home in Los Angeles, KTLA reported.

In a basement crawl space, they found an unusual trove that belonged to Reyes' father-in-law before his death: a stash of roughly 800,000 copper pennies.

The US reduced the copper content in its pennies in the 1980s, prompting Reyes' father-in-law to save the older coins, with the belief that they would appreciate in value, The Washington Post reported.

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news.yahoo.com/family-found-800-000-pennies-130453931.html

[RichardInTN]

If they can find anyone to buy the lot for $25K, they are still going to profit more than the pennies are worth at face value (100 pennies to the dollar, 800,000 pennies = $8,000).

[Deleted]

Even at todays price for copper, they are only worth about $16,500.

Not $25,000

[RichardInTN]

Jul 2, 2023 10:42:56 GMT -5 @jma23 said:

Even at todays price for copper, they are only worth about $16,500.

Not $25,000

That's if they were all copper. Pennies haven't been 100% copper since 1982 when they went to a zinc(97.5%)/copper(2.5%) alloy (not including the steel pennies of the War Years).

[ladyloonatic]

I was assuming from the post that the reason the old man stashed them in the first place was because they were all copper.

Wonder how they knew there was 800,000 of them?

[RichardInTN]

Oct 24, 2023 9:32:09 GMT -5 ladyloonatic said:

I was assuming from the post that the reason the old man stashed them in the first place was because they were all copper.

Wonder how they knew there was 800,000 of them?

That's a good question... would have to be either a guess or they weighed them. I can't imagine the tedium of trying to count out 800,000 pennies... one... two... three... four... five... six... 

[joltsandjabs]

what was the valuable penny they were hoping to find?

back in early 70s, i was a recent college graduate who couldn't find a teaching job. i worked in a 5 & 10. at that time, there were double die/struck pennies in circulation that people were paying some serious $$for. since i ran the cash register, i kept some change in my pocket. over time i found 2 of them. i found 2 people willing to give me $50 each.

i'm no coin collector, but knew that once a coin goes into circulation, it's gotta be wildly special to be worth much.