Coin Fest Offers Treasure Trove

DOVER, DE — Dozens of children took their turn wading in a pool filled with thousands of coins from the United States and abroad as they searched for the buried treasure Sunday afternoon outside the Howard Johnson’s on U.S. 13 in Dover.

Mixed somewhere in the sea of loose change was a 1922 penny without a mint mark worth approximately $600, and every child in attendance at the Coin Fest wanted to be the one to claim the prize.

“It actually ended up in there by mistake,” said Steve Bryan, owner of MidAtlanticCoins, one of the event’s sponsors, of the buried coin.

“It was purely an accident. I paid $450 for this coin, and while I was packing up I threw it in the bucket with the change that was coming here.”

Since there were entirely too many coins for him to sift through on his own, Mr. Bryan figured he’d leave the prize in the pool and offer $550 to the first child who found it.

“I’ll give them the $550 if they want to sell it back to me,” he said. “If not, they can hold onto it. I’m not going in there looking though. It would take days to find.”

Read the full article.