A family from Los Angeles found copper coins hidden in the basement of a house dating back to the twentieth century during its cleaning and restoration, as their value exceeds one million dollars, according to the British newspaper The Guardian, Saturday, June 10, 2023 .
According to KTLA , John Reyes, a real estate broker in the Inland Empire, was helping his wife, Elizabeth, clean out her father’s turn-of-the-century house last year when they discovered copper pennies worth more than $1 million in the property. A narrow space in the basement.
The family believes the house belonged to Reyes’ father-in-law, Fritz, and was once used as a bed and breakfast. Fritz and his brother, who were German immigrants, lived in this house for decades, until Fritz died and his brother moved out.
Since then, the family has been cleaning the house as part of plans to restore it for the next generation.
“They kept it all,” Reyes told KTLA, adding that the house was full of things of varying importance.
Home renovation adventure
This home renovation adventure led the family to dig in the back of the basement, where they discovered discarded coins in loose rolls, The Los Angeles Times reports. With further searching, they discovered dozens of bank bags filled with copper coins.
“There are [names of] banks on the bags that I’ve never heard of, or they don’t exist anymore,” Reyes said. Then they found dozens of cardboard boxes and a few wooden ones, all of which were filled with pennies.
The penny coin was initially made of pure copper, until the US Mint switched to zinc-coated steel in 1943, due to the need for copper in World War II. By 1982, pennies were made primarily of zinc.
Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, Reyes noted that Fritts likely began collecting pennies once the United States began switching from copper pennies to zinc pennies.
“You’re talking about two German immigrants, they arrived very young, and it was these two great men who thought they had to have things that held their value,” Reyes explained. “They didn’t know much, except for the value of precious metals.”
The price of copper coins
After confirming that the pennies were the copper version, the family did an estimation and concluded that the set was worth a million dollars, but what would the family do with it?
Reyes spoke to the manager of his local bank, and the banker couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“I showed her a picture,” Reyes continued. “I’ve been with Wells Fargo (banking services) for a long time, I’ve never seen anything like this. You can’t deposit this money. There’s a chance you might have precious pennies.”
Reyes searched on TikTok for penny hunters, and finally posted the coins to sell on Offer Up, asking for $25,000. But he has received requests from people who want a part of the collection, when the family wants to sell it all together.
For now, the family has pulled the pennies out of the vault and trucked them to Ontario, California, near Reyes’ home, and is waiting for more offers to buy the coins.
The local bank advised the family to search the collection for any rare coins among the coins.
Reyes wryly agreed. “You see all this news about people finding $2 million worth of pennies,” he said, speaking with KTLA TV. With over a million chances to find such coins, chances are good that this family will get lucky.
