Pennies from heaven?

[NYLIBUD]

Apparently,there was a 1943 all bronze Lincoln penny that sold for one million dollars at a recent auction.And the reason it's so valuable is because of what's it is and what it isn't made of.During the war,there was a shortage of metal..So there were a certain amount of pennies that were made of Bronze,and not Zinc coated steel.I believe there are only four of these all bronze 1943 pennies left.Wow,and who would know you had one,except an expert.So who knows,maybe one of us had this extreamly rare and expensive penny,and used it to buy a piece of gum.That would be my luck

Edited January 9, 2019 by NYLIBUD

[ewetwo]

My luck too. Lol

[OldTrucker]

Ron, when I was in Jr High a friend of mine collected pennies (still does today) and he had one that was worth about 150 bucks back then. Went to his house one day after school and he was going to show it to me and it along with some others he had in a metal bandaid tin were gone!

He yelled for his little sister who told him she had went across the street and bough bubble gum with it out of the gumball machine in the lobby of a store in the shopping center.

We took her over and she showed us which machine it was so he went in to see the store manager who told him the machines belonged to a vendor and the phone number was on the machine!

He called and told the guy what happened and the guy said "any money put in a machine became HIS property and that he would not come and find his collector coins for him.

We took the machine and ran across the road to his house and hid it in the garage. His dad came home and he called the local police who came out and called the vendor to come and open the thing and let the kid get his pennies back. At first he refused but the Chief of Police was one of them and he informed him that with one phone call he would be collecting all his machines in town because they would revoke his permit!

He relented and after about 2 hours (with the help of his dad and two Police Officers) we had recovered his valuable penny and the other half dozen that were with it!

 

I have a couple of the old steel pennies but they are not worth much.

Edited January 9, 2019 by OldTrucker

[ewetwo]

What is there letter I=under the date. I can't figure it out. My mom had these old pennies in her dresser which are still there. Never could figure out why she kept them. A few have letters under the date.

[Bobdude]

Name	Mint Mark	City, State
Philadelphia	None or P	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Denver	D	Denver, Colorado
San Francisco	S	San Francisco, California
West Point	W	West Point, New York

[TomZ]

To expand on Bobdude's answer,we currently have four mints, located in the cities he listed. In the distant past we also had gold or silver mints located in Charlotte NC, Dahlonega GA, New Orleans, and Carson City NV. Each had its distinctive mint letter.

[Snake45]

My grandfather ran a tiny country store in countryside that would look familiar to anyone who watched Justified (or sound familiar to anyone who read Rocket Boys).  At some point in the '50s or early '60s he started looking for rare wartime pennies in the change he took in. He never found any of the real rare ones, but he saved out every steel 1943 penny he saw. To this day I still have rolls and rolls of the things. Last time I checked the most valuable of them was only worth 5 or 10 cents. 

[Tom Geiger]

My father and I collected coins together when I was in my early teens.  I collected pennies and dimes,  he collected nickels.  Still to this day I check my change out of habit. And I have a big mug on top of my dresser that I toss in anything interesting!

[TomZ]

4 hours ago, Snake45 said:

My grandfather ran a tiny country store in countryside that would look familiar to anyone who watched Justified (or sound familiar to anyone who read Rocket Boys).  At some point in the '50s or early '60s he started looking for rare wartime pennies in the change he took in. He never found any of the real rare ones, but he saved out every steel 1943 penny he saw. To this day I still have rolls and rolls of the things. Last time I checked the most valuable of them was only worth 5 or 10 cents. 

I believe you gave an excellent description of why the steel cents aren't worth much, they're not rare. Almost everyone I know hoards bicentennial quarters because you never see them. The mint made something like 1.7 BILLION of them, and you never see them because they all reside in jars or pillowcases in closets, and are not rare at all.

[SfanGoch]

The penny in question was one of twenty made from copper, not bronze. If you were referring to the recent auction, it didn't pan out as expected:

Rare World War II-era penny flops at auction