California family finds 1 MILLION copper pennies while cleaning out old home
· Jun 14, 2023 · NottheBee.com
John Reyes

One Los Angeles family is rolling in the dough after finding approximately 1 MILLION pennies stashed in bags in the crawlspace of an old family home.

John and Elizabeth Reyes came across the oversized coin collection while cleaning out the home which belonged to Elizabeth's late father. They figured the amount of coins by weight and estimate the number of pennies to be "at least one million."

The home was built in the early 20th century and was believed to have been a bed and breakfast at one point.

The pennies are from prior to the 1980s, when the U.S. switched away from using copper, and since the odds of finding a rare valuable coin in such a large collection are pretty good, they could potentially be worth a lot more than their face value of $10,000.

Unsurprisingly, it was a bit of a challenge to get the coins out of the crawlspace and estimate how many there were.

Getting the coins out of the house was its own ordeal. "Literally bag-by-bag, we had to take them out of the basement, up the stairs, and into the trucks … it took hours," Reyes said. "It took a whole day just to get them out of the crawlspace."

DUDE 💰

The family has been trying to exchange the coins, but it's harder than you might think to get rid of $10,000 in change. They initially thought to take them to a Coinstar, but paying an 8% fee on that much money wasn't ideal, so they called around to a few banks to no avail. The banks all said that they just can't handle that amount of coinage.

The owners are currently attempting to sell the coins on OfferUp for $25,000 so someone else might have the chance at finding a rare coin among the pennies.

Anyone feel like gambling?


Ready to join the conversation? Subscribe today.

Access comments and our fully-featured social platform.

Sign up Now
App screenshot