$1,700,000.00 PENNY. How To Check If You Have One! | US Mint Error Coins Worth BIG Money

You're watching JD's variety channel. Hello everyone and welcome to this tutorial about

coins

. In this video, I'm going to show you how to

check

for pennies

worth

between fifty thousand dollars and a potential 1.7 million, which of these were sold at auction, but before I get to the main story, I'm going to tell a little bit of history. background about what our

coins

are made of today, so here's a beautiful, shiny 2016 one cent shield back design, now these pennies, although they look beautiful when they're

mint

ed and they're ninety-seven percent zinc with a two and a half percent layer of copper on top of it, so after they get hit for a while or exposed to air or if the metal detects it.

I know they've been underground for a while, they just deteriorate, so for this video I grabbed a couple of my metal detecting bands to show you what they look like after they've been underground for a while, they literally just fall apart, but before. to nineteen eighty-two and some of them in 1982, as I said, it was a transition year from 1982 to 1909, except for one year that I will explain in a moment, USA. The pennies were predominantly made of copper, 95% to be exact, so here's what it looks like. Here's a look at a wheat

penny

that was taken out of circulation in good condition.

It is a little worn but has a nice color. Just a beautiful 1938 wheat

penny

that is 95% copper now here is a penny, a wheat penny that I found with metal detector that is 95% copper and you can see that it is in a bit of a rough condition, but it's not that bad, but compared to the ones you can, I think everyone could agree that it still looks a lot better, so it's just an idea to show you what our pennies

have

been like for the last hundred years, except since 1909 until 1982, of which copper was made, there was one. year they were made of steel, that's right, I said steel in 1943, the government needed copper for the war, so the United States Mint made the pennies out of steel with just a thin coating zinc on top, but they are 99% steel. and you can see here that I got a 1943 model with no

mint

mark, which means it was minted in Philadelphia, one from Denver where you can see the D and one from San Francisco, you can see the division there.

I showed some in different conditions. You can see how they deteriorate over time. Now where the big

money

comes in is if you can find one of these 1943 pennies that wasn't made of steel but copper. They were

worth

a lot of

money

because they were accidentally produced there. If you had a coin like this before it was stamped, it would basically be a round copper blank called a planchette, so some of those planets ended up where the steel pennies were supposed to be minted, so There are 1943 pennies. They are made of copper and there are some that came out of every mint in Philadelphia, Denver and San Francisco.

Now I will show you the main way to

check

if yours is real or not. Now this isn't foolproof, but it gives you a good idea if you

have

one, it's obviously fake or not because anyone could pick up one of these 1943 cents, you know, played it on copper and boom, you're a million millionaire, it's not so easy because you would have to authenticate it. anyway, but basically the main reasoning is that steel pennies are going to stick to a magnet and copper pennies aren't, so if you have a 1943 coin that's made of copper and isn't sticks to a magnet, you could be in for a lot of money, so I'll show you an example here.

This is the 1938 wheat penny I was showing you, which is predominantly copper and see, they don't stick to a magnet, that's the one I found for metal detecting too, by the way. the zinc ones don't stick to a magnet either now the steel pennies that come out of the middle here the boom sticks directly to the magnet effortlessly even that little magnet can pick up a couple of them so there are a lot of people I make fake ones, but they are made of steel underneath, so if it sticks to a magnet, it's definitely fake. If you know someone who tried plating one of these in copper, here was something that was pretty interesting in metal detecting that I found. a big spill of old coins all in a hole and you can see them all here.

I have a variety of wheat pennies. I found this beautiful silver Mercury dime in the hole along with a buffalo coin, some old Jefferson nickels and this was all in one. hole I guess they had fallen out of someone's pocket or maybe they were even buried, who knows, but one of the things I pulled out of the hole was this right here, when I saw it compared to all the other pennies, I was very surprised and I knew almost immediately that this was going to be a stolen penny and it was kind of stupid that I found it with all these other coins because normally I wouldn't find a stolen penny with a metal detector because I discriminate against steel.

Here we are going to test it right now to find out if it really is a steel penny and if it is, this is what it would look like if it had been on the ground. It's been in the ground since around WWII and here's one that's next to one that was almost new so you can see how it's just completely trashed so anyway all the other pennies I found go the magnet room and they don't stick and then that penny I found boom it's a 1943 robbery time war penny I never tried to clean it because I didn't want it to fall apart anymore but maybe I'll run it under a little water and see It does clean up even a little bit, but there you have it guys, I hope you enjoyed it.

The video is a little tutorial on how to look for some valuable coins and a little information about what has happened to our pennies over the last 100 years, so thanks for watching and watching.