A Los Angeles family found a million pennies while cleaning out the home of their father who died.
The huge pile of coins was found in a crawl space in the German immigrant’s home.
The family’s theory is that he began collecting the coins after the U.S. switched from making copper pennies to using zinc during World War II, and that he hoped to make a profit on the value of the metal.
The man’s son-in-law, John Reyes, said NBC LA that “they’ve literally been untouched for decades, and I think that’s the super unique part of it.”
The family also believes the pennies could be of interest to collectors, meaning they could potentially be worth millions.
A 1943 penny sold for $1.7 million in 2010. Other rare pennies have sold for thousands.
The family listed their pennies, stored in boxes, sacks and crates, on OfferUp for $25,000 — more than double their $10,000 value.
“We started going through the difficult process of looking at the pennies, and it quickly turned into, ‘We don’t know what we’re doing.’ And then we decided to open a few beers and drink them instead,” Mr. Reyes said.
Initially, when they tried to deposit the coins in a bank, they were told that the vault was not big enough to hold such a huge amount of coins.
The family is now seeking expert advice on what to do next.
“I’ve had quite a few collectors tell me that this is something that shouldn’t be sold until we know what’s going on,” Mr. Reyes told NBC LA.
Mr. Reyes, a realtor, made the discovery with his wife while they were preparing the house for renovation.
“A lot of these bags are actually sealed, they’re lead sealed directly from the bank,” Mr Reyes said KABC. “When we start looking, we see some of the big banks, like Bank of America, and at the same time, we also saw banks that we haven’t even heard of, maybe banks that don’t even exist anymore. So we were just like, ‘Wow, this is amazing.’