The "Thousands And Thousands Of Pennies And No Takers" Story

 It was an ordinary day.  Checking out my morning LNP LncasterOnline newspaper when I came upon a story titled "A million pennies and no takers," with a sub-head that read "California family stumbles upon a $10,000 treasure."  Story told of Mr. John Reyes, the head of the  California family who happened upon the $10,000 -- but it wasn't so simple to collect the treasure.   It came in the form of an estimated 1 million pennies stored in dozens of bags and boxes.  That was nine months ago and the family is still trying to find a way to cash-in the coins.   Sounds funny, but it really happened and trying to get to all those crates of pennies is almost next to impossible!  The initial plan was to haul the pennies to Coinstar, but the coin machine service charges a percentage of the total amount as a processing fee.  So, you can't take hundreds of pounds of pennies to a local bank.  One branch manager told them they didn't even have room for all those bags of pennies in his bank.  Another bank official told them not to bring them to a bank, since they may have a million-dollar penny with one of the pennies being a rare coin.  The U.S. Mint initially made pennies of just copper.  But, because copper was essential to the war effort during WWII, the coins became zinc-covered steel in 1943 with the pennies eventually being made primarily from zinc with some copper.  The U.S. Mint struck a  limited number of copper pennies and some have turned out to be valuable.  According to the Mint, very few 1943 copper-alloy pennies, made in error, are known to remain in existence, and one sold for $82,500 in 1996.  Another sold in 2022 for nearly $300,000.   Reyes an his family have decided to sell the entire lot, which takes two or three trucks to move it in it's entirety, and listed the pennies on Offer-Up, an online sales marketplace, for $25,000.  Mr. Reyes and his family are not interested in sifting through the pennies for rare finds.  On a recent past Thursday, the discovery of the coins was covered by a local television station, and Reyes was inundated with queries from potential buyers and, so far, around 300 offers.   What has happened to the coins as of today I do not know.  I'm sure you can't miss a big truckload of bagged coins if they pass your house one day soon. I'll be anxious to see what happened to the coins and how much they brought.  I read in my local newspaper that the discovery of the coins was covered by a TV station, but didn't say what TV station or the location of that station.  Should be a big truck with a bunch of bags full of pennies.  Keep an eye out for them!  Might see a line of pennies behind a truck along the road if one or more of those bags has broken open by mistake.  Love to have it happen in my neighborhood.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.