An early American one cent coin that was discovered in a plastic bag has been sold for more than a triple of its estimate. The coin went up for auction at Duke’s in Dorchester, UK. There were record numbers of bidders on the two-day auction where around 150 lots were sold for more than £400,000.
This rare cent was displayed and sold at the American coin section, a part of the auction that featured a range of American coins dating from the early 18th century through to the 1920s. The 1794 coin was discovered by auctioneer Timothy Medhurst when he was asked to check out a carrier bag full of coins. Most of them were without any big value but this one, stuck at the bottom and nearly missed, was a real treasure!
The single cent is also known ‘penny’, even in the US. It dates from the earliest days of The United States as a country. This particular ‘penny’ is 221 years old and it has been made only two years after the first penny was introduced by the congress. As part of American wage today, it would be worth $41, or £26, but if you consider it as a 221-year old coin, it is worth 430 times that.
This penny was sold for a staggering £11,224 and it managed to overpass its estimate of £2,000. Coin specialist and lucky finder Mr Medhurst said: “The market for American coins is at an all-time high, with some examples fetching record prices.
Earlier this year, at an auction in Baltimore, one of the ten existing “first U.S. penny” coins was sold. It reached a price of nearly 1.2 million dollars! It also known as the “Birch Cent,” and was made in 1792, only a few months after the one-cent denomination was first authorized by Congress.
Source: dorsetecho, westerndailypress, wqad