A picture may be worth a thousand words but sometimes a coin may be worth far more than the face value it would normally have. According to the Associated Press, a rare U.S. coin from 1793 may have been worth 1 cent when it was among the coins minted the first year the U.S. did so, but at a recent auction it brought much more.
The rare coin that was in excellent condition brought $1 million at a Florida United Numismatics coin show and convention. The penny featured a Lady Liberty face and a wreath on the back and showed little or no wear, making it especially valuable to collectors. Apparently it was so valuable that an unknown someone was willing to pay the enormous price for the coin.
High prices for coins aren't new and recent news has seen more examples. A Jan. 4 auction in New York brought $25 million for a collection of rare ancient Greek coins, as reported by The Financial Times. In total, there were 642 coins that were collected over 30 years by a British collector.
One lot in the grouping sold for $3.25 million. That amount was a record for an ancient Greek coin and it was a piece that hailed from an ancient Greek colony on the Black Sea known as Pantikapaion. The coin featured a bearded satyr head and a winged griffin.
The priciest single rare coin ever sold occurred in 2002, when CNN reported that a rare and illegal 1933 gold Double Eagle was sold at a Sotheby's auction and garnered $7.6 million. The Double Eagle was originally minted after President Franklin Roosevelt took the U.S. off the gold standard and all of the Double Eagles were melted down rather than put into circulation -- except for 10 coins that were purloined by a cashier at the U.S. Mint.
For years, Secret Service agents sought to round up all 10 of those Double Eagles and the 10th coin took on a life of its own. That particular coin was in the possession of Egypt's King Farouk until he was overthrown in 1952, at which time a claim was made upon it by the U.S. government. The U.S. requested the return of the coin as technically it was stolen property but it somehow disappeared.
It reappeared in 1996 in the possession of a British collector name Steven Fenton. Fenton brought it to New York to sell it to an American collector but the coin was confiscated and Fenton was arrested. After a lengthy court battle, during which time the Double Eagle was stored at the World Trade Center and moved just a few weeks prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Eventually, the Double Eagle was sold at auction and the proceeds were split between Fenton and the U.S. government.
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