- An LA couple found one million copper pennies in the crawlspace of an old home.
- But now comes the hard part: What on earth are you supposed to do with one million pennies?
Finding one million pennies sure sounds like a good thing.
But for one LA couple, it's brought on a fair share of headaches — namely, trying to figure out exactly what you're supposed to do with one million pennies.
John Reyes and his wife were cleaning out his father-in-law's home in Pico-Union, Los Angeles, last year when they chanced upon crates, boxes, and old bank bags full of pennies in a tight corner of a basement crawl space, KTLA first reported. Based on the weight of the discoveries, they estimated that they'd found at least one million coins, or around $10,000 in cold hard copper.
"Some of the banks don't even exist anymore," Reyes told KTLA.
Getting the coins out of the basement was difficult: They were so heavy, and there were so many of them, that it took hours to move them, Reyes told KTLA. But then came the next problem: Finding someone to take the pennies, which are all copper, not zinc. Several banks — including a Wells Fargo branch — turned them down, and Reyes and his wife didn't want to pay the 8% Coinstar fee.
Reyes told KTLA that one bank manager said they didn't even have space for all the coins in their vault. "Don't bring them here," Reyes recounted being told.
For now, they've listed the coin collection on OfferUp for $25,000, which is more than twice their value, per KTLA. They're still waiting for someone to express interest in buying the entire collection.
At $25,000, the collection is more expensive than any other copper US coin collection currently available on eBay. The most expensive listing within those parameters on eBay right now is a $20,000 collection of assorted coins.
Individual pennies have fetched more than $100,000 at auction. In 2018, a rare 1972 penny headed to auction at $1.1 million — more than 100 million times its trading value, per Barron's. In 2022, a California auction house sold 10 pennies that it said were more than 100 years old for $1.1 million.
Reyes and his wife aren't the first to stumble across major coin discoveries. In 2014, another California couple found $10 million of gold coins buried in their yard. And in 2019, a couple in North Yorkshire, England, found $800,000 worth of coins under their kitchen floor.
Reyes did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours. The American Numismatic Society did not immediately respond to a request for comment.