Los Angeles Couple Find One Million Pennies in Parent’s Basement but Banks Decline Exchange Requests

A couple from Los Angeles, United States’ who found one million pennies while cleaning out their parent’s home in Pico-Union are now facing problems in figuring out how to exchange them.

John Reyes, a realtor from the Inland Empire, told Los Angeles-based news outlet KTLA that he and his wife found at least one million coins while cleaning out his father-in-law, Fritz’s, basement.

The coins were neatly packed crates, boxes and old bank bags in a tight corner of a basement crawl space. The coins, made of hard copper, are $10,000 worth.

John Reyes, his wife, Elizabeth, her sister, her cousin and their spouses told KTLA that they have been planning to renovate the house where her father and her brother, both German immigrants, once lived.

“They were so heavy, and there were so many of them, that it took hours to move them,” Reyes told KTLA, highlighting that getting these coins out of the basement was hard as the bags were very heavy.

However, now Reyes and his family are in a fix because these coins have no takers and banks have already denied exchange requests, including a Wells Fargo branch.

Another bank manager told Reyes that they do not have enough space in their vault to store these coins.

Both of them have listed the coin collection on the website OfferUp for $25,000, which is more than twice their value, the news outlet said and are hoping that someone will show interest in buying the entire collection.

If sold at $25,000, it would become the most expensive copper US coin collection. A report by Insider said that the most expensive US coin collection currently is a $20,000 collection of assorted coins.

Pennies have been known to fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars at auctions. A rare 1972 penny was auctioned at $1.1 million, according to Barron’s. The Insider in its report also pointed out that in 2022, a California auction house sold 10 pennies, which were over 100 years old for $1.1 million.

The last major coin discovery was made in 2019, by a couple in North Yorkshire, England, who found $800,000 worth of coins hidden under their kitchen floor.