Boxes full of money: Man finds coin treasure in basement – and wants to get rid of it

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John R.* (41) is lucky and unlucky at the same time. The American found an estimated one million pennies when cleaning up his deceased father-in-law’s house. But nine months later, R. just finally wants to get rid of his sweetheart, reports the “New York Times”.

The reason: the change is in a crawl space. When R. and his cousin tried to lift the boxes full of coins, they started to work up a sweat. Moving the crates, bags and boxes left “prints on our fingers because they were so heavy,” says R. in a telephone interview.

The problem: dividing the coins into different boxes doesn’t work. Experts advised him not to open the boxes, as this would reduce the value of the coins.

R. actually intended to take the coins to a currency exchange company. However, this requires a processing fee and an additional percentage of the value. R. would therefore lose a large amount.

A penny is not worth a penny

R. estimated the face value of $10,000 by adding up the amounts on the boxes of coins. But the old pennies are worth much more than what is written on the front – they are made of pure copper!

This sometimes leads to absurd collective prices. As the New York Times writes, in 2022 a penny was auctioned for $300,000. However, R’s collection shouldn’t add up to that much – because there are a lot of pennies, their value also drops.

R.’s father-in-law also speculated before his death that the value of the copper tokens would increase over time – and he hid his collection well.

Coins are for sale – pick up yourself

Apparently still not enough motivation for R. to dig up the treasure. The American eventually offered the coins for $25,000 on the selling platform “OfferUp”. The only condition: “You must be picked up from us”. Since then, R. has struggled to save himself from all offers. Because to connoisseurs, the copper coins are worth their weight in gold. (jwg)

*Name known

Source: Blick