The family that found 800,000 copper pennies in the basemen of a house have decided that instead of searching through them all they’re going to sell the whole lot.
You see, if they searched through each one of the thousands of coins - initially thought to have been over a million - they might have discovered a rare one that could be worth as much as $1,000,000, but it would obviously take them a lot of time and effort to sift through literally hundreds of thousands of coins.
So, if you’re not 100 percent sure what we’re talking about here, we’d better take things back to the beginning, hadn’t we?
John Reyes and his family were shocked to discover a huge cache of copper pennies whilst clearing out an old family home in Los Angeles, according to local news.
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In a crawl space in the basement, they discovered a huge stash of pennies that had been kept by Reyes’ father-in-law – he thinks – because the US government reduced the copper content in pennies.
He thought that they might increase in value, and – to a certain extent – he may still be right.
It took them a whole day to lug the coins out of the basement, and after threatening to bring them down to a bank, they were told not to because there simply isn’t space in the vaults for the whole lot of pennies.
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Instead, the bank manager told them that there’s a chance that one of the pennies in the huge load might be valuable, and one that a collector would pay seven figures for.
“You probably have a million-dollar penny in there,” the bank manager teased.
She’s not wrong – some pennies can sell for as much as $1.7 million, and there might be others that are worth more than a grand.
After hearing that, Reyes’ interest was piqued, but eventually the enormity of the task at hand started to set in, and he gave up after around 300 pennies, according to the Washington Post.
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"We had no clue what we were looking for," he admitted.
So, now they’re hoping that someone might be willing to pay $25,000 for the whole lot, which would pay for them to renovate the house to rent out for future generations, and would also represent more than three times the face value of the coins.
Or – at least – if they’re only worth a penny.
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They might be worth a lot more than a penny, remember?
Reyes is now chatting to a ‘really serious buyer’ about the coins, so we’ll have to see what comes of it.
Will he kick himself if someone does find that million-dollar penny in the stash?
Is it worth the gamble if you are a coin collector?
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How long would it actually take to examine 800,000 coins, and would you lose your mind in the process?
Perhaps we’ll find out in the not so distant future.
Tom Wood