Couple turns penny into $660,000

WEST PALM BEACH - Denis Loring and Donna Levin, of Singer Island, reaped a windfall from a copper 1792 penny the couple bought last year at a Beverly Hills auction for $437,000.

Two months ago, the penny sold for a whopping $660,000 to “an East Coast energy company executive” who wished to remain anonymous, said Greg Rohan, president of Dallas-based Heritage Auction Galleries, which arranged the transaction. The couple took home $600,000. Heritage made a $60,000 commission.

The coin had originally been owned by descendants of Oliver Wolcott, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and Connecticut’s governor in the 1790s, Rohan said. It had been kept for decades in an old tobacco tin.

The chocolate-colored rare coin, one of only nine known to exist, bears the date 1792, the inscription “Parent of Science & Indust: Liberty,” and the likeness of a woman’s head representing Miss Liberty.

Loring’s wife, Donna, said her husband had been trying for years to get her interested in coin collecting.

“Never in a million years did I think we’d actually find something. But when it came up for auction, Denis said we had to get it,” Levin added.

(via Florida Today)