COLORADO SPRINGS – A rare penny at the Numismatic Money Museum in Colorado Springs says it is worth one cent, but it is really worth one million dollars.
The rare penny on display was made in 1943. What makes it so rare is in that year, most pennies were made out of steel since copper and bronze were being held for the war effort. This particular specimen is made out of bronze.
There is estimated to be only between fifteen to twenty in existence, as they were a mistake from the mint.
Douglas Mudd, the curator of the Money Museum, explained how the mistake likely happened, “Some of the planchets, pieces of metal made into coins, got stuck into the old hoppers from the previous years. They were in these giant bins and they got stuck in a corner or something like that, and a few of them got struck in the 1943 run of coins.”
The rare coin is on loan from the owner to the museum for a couple of years.
