A penny for your thoughts? How about $7.7 million for your pennies?!!

Your pocket change could be worth a whole lot more than you realized according to a California-based auction house, GreatCollections, which last January sold a collection of rare Lincoln pennies for millions.

Ian Russell, president of GreatCollections, says his house sells up to 5,000 coins a week, but his most amazing auction was the sale of the collection of the late coin enthusiast Stewart Blay. His collection of 276 mint-condition Lincoln cents dating back to 1909 with a combined face value of only $2.76 sold for $7,731,811 in a series of six auctions by GreatCollections that ended last January. Russell also sold an 1804 silver dollar for $12 million, a world record.

The moral of the story? While it’s true that a penny saved is a penny earned, it may be more important to save the right pennies in earnest. Of course, that’s just our two cents worth.

Penny Wise

A collection of mint Lincoln cents sold for $7.7 million in a record-breaking auction overseen by GreatCollections. Courtesy GreatCollections.

3 responses to “Uncommon Cents Worth Millions”

  1. Joseph Christman says:

    Same question
    I have many of these coins and I want to sell them. What makes them valuable

  2. Scott Irvin says:

    I’m pretty sure the pictured penny is nothing more than a representation of the article and not the actual penny (and year) shown. 1909 was the first year of the “Lincoln Wheatback” penny, 1958 the last year of this ‘reverse’ design. In 1959 is when the reverse design changed to the Lincoln Memorial cent of modern day. A few different reverse design versions have since been released. Some of these recently minted changes and have become collectible and sought after for their increased value for the reason of known errors and oddities that occurred during the minting process. These are the ones a coin hunter-collector is most likely to find in pocket change. Nowadays, finding a wheatback penny in your change is as rare as finding a silver minted American coin. Silver coins minted for circulation ended in 1964. 🙂

  3. takeachance says:

    Why are these pennies worth so much? I have a few (6) of these 1958 pennies.

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