Took it to an appraiser in midtown, who took one look at it with a magnifying glass, said it was a 1917 penny, and mumbled something about its worth.
"It's what?" I said.
"A penny, a penny," he said real fast, not wanting to waste one second on it. "It's a penny and it's worth a penny."
Here's the original post:
This morning I was pulling some change out of my pocket, to dump into a little coin jar we have in the house. I'd just come back from grocery shopping. As my hand was going toward the jar, I just happened to notice that the penny on top - back side facing up - had wheat leaves on it. That automatically means it's an older coin. They stopped the wheat leaves design in 1956.
It first, I couldn't even make out the year, so faded were the numerals. I had to actually take a picture of the coin, and magnify the picture. As you can see, it's seems to be "1914."
I did a quick Google search, and found a pretty good piece about 1914 pennies. The bottom line is I don't think my penny is worth all that much more than a penny.
There were three series that year, from mints in Denver, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. The Denver pennies have a D under the year, and are the rarest. They have the most value. The San Francisco pennies have an S under the year, and are also valuable. The Philly pennies don't have a marking, and are the least valuable.
It's possible that my penny has an extremely worn D or S on it, but I can't see it at all. Which would make it a Philly penny, and worth about 60 cents. I also found a coin appraiser just a few blocks from my office, so I'll bring it over there just out of interest.
Still, it is absolutely wild to me that this penny is 101 years old, and that it's been in circulation all that time and is still in circulation.
