Check Your Piggy Banks Illinois! You Could Have A $300,000 Coin

You may have a bit more money than you think you do in that pile of coins in your car.

I don't know how the little hole in my car console became where I keep all of my coins, but alas here we are. At least they're not at the bottom of my purse and it makes it easier to make exact change at a drive-thru.

via GIPHY

But really, how often do any of us use pennies? I think the lowest I've used in recent days is a nickel. Pennies cost about 3 cents each to make, which seems like a pretty low ROI for the Mint, but I digress.

But check your car dash, penny rolls, bottom of your purse, or wherever your pennies might be because there could be one that's worth significantly more than 1 cent.

Why A Penny Is Worth Thousands

The pennies you're looking for are 1943 Steel pennies. According to GovMint, the pennies were only made in 1943 because of a copper shortage. In 1944, the Mint started using copper for pennies again but some steel pennies were smacked with the 1944 year and now those are considered rare.

The big one that's been proven to be worth bank (it actually even sold for $1 million) is the 1943-S Lincoln cent. It looks like this:

But the 1943 Bronze & the 1943-D Bronze have had an uncirculated buy price of $190,000 and $260,000 respectively.

As you're sifting through your pennies with prayers to find one of these, a good thing to do is look for errors or irregularities, like maybe some zinc marks in the crevices. Things that make the pennies different are what can make them valuable.

Happy searching!