So, what happens when you stumble upon a million pennies?
That's the predicament John Reyes, a realtor from Southern California, finds himself in. While assisting his wife with clearing out her father's house in Los Angeles, the family came across over a million copper pennies hidden away in a tiny, crowded crawlspace.
These pennies were stored in numerous bank bags and could be worth anywhere from $10,000 based on their face value, or potentially even more.
From Fox News:
The family believes the 1900s-era home, once owned by John's father-in-law, Fritz, was used as a bed and breakfast. Fritz and his brother, both immigrants from Germany, had lived in the home for decades until Fritz passed and his brother moved away.
Since then, the family has been working to clean out the house and renovate it for modern use. But that's proved to be a difficult task.
"They kept everything," Reyes told KTLA, adding that it has taken several years to remove items of various levels of importance.
He said the crawlspace was packed so tightly with stuff family members had to get on their knees to reach into its deepest corners. And that's where they made the centacular discovery. First they found loose pennies, once held by paper rolls that had long since disintegrated. Beyond the pennies were crates, boxes, and dozens of coin bags filled with an unknown amount of copper pennies from decades ago.
"Some of the banks don’t even exist anymore," Reyes said.
The family grabbed handfuls of pennies and had them tested, confirming they were made of copper.
Modern pennies are made of copper-plated zinc. The U.S. Mint began making zinc-coated steel pennies in 1943 because copper was needed for World War II. Since 1982, pennies have been made primarily of zinc.
Based on the weight of the bags, the family estimates they found around 1 million pennies. But cashing in on that value has proven difficult.
Reyes told KTLA he initially wanted to take the pennies to Coinstar, but then thought better of it after remembering there's an 8% fee to use that service. They started to contact banks but were told there were far too many coins for their vaults to handle. Besides, somewhere in the dozens of coin bags might be a rare coin worth millions by itself.
This is why it's important not to get too upset with older folks for hoarding stuff.
You never know when one of their treasures could end up being worth thousands or maybe even millions of dollars
