See How Your Loose Change Is Worth Thousands

Growing up, I was a collector. I collected stamps, bugs, and baseball cards along with matchbooks, but it was coins that I really enjoyed collecting.

I would beg my parents to let me go through their change in the hopes of finding some rare coin. While I found plenty of valuable coins over the years, I never found anything like the penny that was sold for thousands of dollars in auction.

The History Of The Wheat Penny

The wheat penny has an interesting history in America. It first debuted in 1909 in celebration for the centennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth.

This marked the first time that an actual person would be featured on a coin that was in regular circulation in the United States.

The two stalks of wheat on the back would be the design of the penny until 1953, but it's a certain year of wheat penny that you need to be on the lookout for if you'd like a big payday.

The back of a wheat penny
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What Makes This Wheat Penny So Rare?

Most people know that zinc and copper are the materials that make up the majority of the pennies being made today.

However, during WWII there was a shortage of copper, and so in 1942 the change was made to have the pennies made out of zinc-coated steel.

According to the U.S. Coin Guide website, an accidental minting of the 1943 wheat penny resulted in a handful of pennies being made with bronze.

These bronze wheat pennies have recently been sold at auction for $85,000, with one very rare penny being sold for 1.7 million dollars.

Pretty soon we might need these rare coins to pay for our groceries.👇

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