CHEYENNE — When most of us think about keeping an eye on our money, we think about how many lattes we bought last week or how many subscriptions we have that we’re not using.
But thinking about it like a coin collector brings a whole new level of meaning to keeping an eye on your money — and it’s one that can come with some hefty paydays if you happen to spot a unicorn.
Like a $10 bill worth $800, for example, or a Sacagawea “Cheerios” dollar, worth around $6,600.
Then, too, there are the true unicorns, like the 1943 Lincoln bronze wheat penny, worth a cool $2.6 million, because it was mistakenly made of bronze instead of zinc-plated steel.
Of course, most steel pennies aren’t worth anywhere near that much.
“Steel pennies were only made for one year in 1943, because of copper shortages due to the war effort for World War II,” Dave Richardson with City National Pawn in Cheyenne told Cowboy State Daily. “So, they were making pennies out of steel. But a few of the pennies made in ’43 were mistakenly stamped 1944, so those are worth, even in poor condition with a bunch of pocket wear and everything, about $35,000.”
Steel pennies have the same design as regular copper pennies, Richardson added, but they were a silvery color when first minted, changing to a dull, charcoal gray over time.
The distinguishing characteristic of steel pennies is that they are magnetic — which also made them unpopular during that timeframe. They gummed up the old gumball machines of the day.
Almost all steel pennies will exceed their face value by a fair amount, even if they aren’t an error coin. An uncirculated steel penny is worth up to $5 depending on its condition, or from 10 to 25 cents if it was circulated.
Still Possible To Find Unicorns In Your Change
While many of the most valuable coins and bills have already been found and are no longer in circulation, millions of coins are circulated every day, and it’s still possible to find that one in a million coin that will be worth quite a bit more than face value.
Artie Homolka, manager at City National Pawn, for example, stumbled across a 1928 $10 bill at a flea market that ended up being worth quite a bit more than the $20 he paid for it. He decided to buy it not because the bill said it could be redeemed for gold, however, but because of its serial numbers.
“The bill had four zeroes to start with,” Homolka said. “So, I took it down to a coin shop in Fort Collins, and so, he goes, get a grade.”
Getting a grade is coin collector lingo that means, “Hey, this is probably worth something. But I can’t tell you how much until you get it rated for condition.”
With money, the condition number will typically range between 1 and 70, where higher numbers signify better quality, and thus higher worth.
The cost of grading is typically a percentage of an item’s overall value. In Homolka’s case, the item turned out to be worth $800, so the grading cost $140.
“After I had it graded, the guy said he’d give me $600 bucks,” Homolka said. “So that’s pretty good for an item worth $800.”
Especially considering Homolka himself had only paid about $20 for it.
Homolka said there are websites where serial numbers on a bill can be input to check and see if they’re rare. But that’s not something he himself does routinely.
“After a while, you can just tell,” he said. “If you have a bunch of zeroes, yeah, it’s gonna be worth something. What you really want to find is 00001. You find that guy, and yeah, it’s worth some money.”
Other things to look for on bills are odd combinations of numbers, or combinations where there’s just one or two numerals in the entire string.
“Like this one here, if that one would have been all sevens, it’s a minimum of $1,200 bucks,” Homolka said, pointing at a bill whose serial numbers were sevens with just one eight.
What About The Change In Our Pockets
In a pile of coins collected over the years by this reporter, some of which were gifts from a grandmother who collected coins that might be “worth something someday,” the only one that turned out to have anything like significantly more worth than face value was a 1922 silver dollar. It wasn’t in great condition, but still worth about $35, just off the value of the silver in the coin.
There were also six 2000-P Sacagawea coins that initially seemed promising — but they weren’t the right 2000-P coins, National City Pawn’s coin manager, Joe Bollinger told Cowboy State Daily.
“Well over a billion of these have been minted since 2000, so there’s just too many of them,” he said. But there are some collectible varieties, like the Cheerios coin.”
The distinguishing feature of the 2000-P Sacagawea “Cheerios” dollar are eagles with much more highly detailed tail feathers.
These particular dollars resulted from a partnership between General Mills, which makes Cheerios breakfast cereal. General Mills placed 5,500 of the new Sacagawea dollars in some of their cereal boxes in 2000 to help the U.S. mint heighten national awareness of the coins.
About 10 million boxes were part of the promotion in all, each containing a newly minted Lincoln Cent, but another 5,500 also contained a 2000-P Sacagawea dollar. It turned out the Cheerios Sacagawea coins were made with a different reverse die than the regular circulation strikes. That’s where the enhanced tail feather details came from.
Even though 5,500 of the coins were struck — an awful lot of coins when it comes to collectibles — very few of these “Cheerios” dollars have ever surfaced, suggesting many were probably lost to mishandling. The Cheerios dollars that have surfaced so far can be worth thousands of dollars in mint condition — but buyers should beware.
A seller on Poshmark.com, for example, lists a Cheerios Sacagawea dollar for $52,000 — but doesn’t show the back of the coin. It’s impossible to tell if it’s actually one of the valuable ones.
There’s one other 2000-P Sacagawea dollar that can be worth significantly more than face value. That’s the “wounded eagle” coin, caused by a raised die cut flaw that cuts across the eagle’s belly, looking a bit like a spear has pierced the bird in flight. That one is worth a few hundred dollars, if in mint condition.
City National Pawn's coin master Joe Bohlinger picks through a pile of random coins from this reporter, to demonstrate how to assess the value of your coins, and find unicorns that might be worth more than face value. This time, only two copper pennies were found, worth about 2.5 times their face value for their metal content. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
Artie Homolka, manager at City National Pawn, lucked into a 1928 $10 bill that was worth about $800. He picked it up for $20 at a flea market. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
Joe Bohlinger looks up coin details at the pcgs.com site, which lists values for all sorts of coins, as well as their distinguishing characteristics. That's made coin collecting much more accessible to everyone, and is how he figures out which coins are worth a bundle. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) 
The words catch the eye, but aren't what made the 1928 $10 bill they went with valuable. What actually made it valuable was the odd serial number, which included four zeros. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily)
What Else Is In The Random Change Pile
Cowboy State Daily also showed Bohlinger a random collection of coins from 2024, left over from various routine transactions, to get a sense of how one might assess the random coins that accumulate each year.
The first thing Bohlinger did was to pull out the quarters and dimes and turn them on their sides.
“When you look at the sides, you can see the ones that are copper inside, so those, typically, are just worth their face value,” he said.
Silver coins were minted up until 1964, Bohlinger said.
Most of the money after 1965 won’t be worth a mint — but there can be some exceptions. Like the 1965 silver quarter that was struck on a silver dime planchet.
“Error coins can be worth obscene amounts of money,” Bohlinger said.
That means it’s worth looking at both sides of the coin, to see if anything that looks like an error stands out.
Nickels don’t have a quick sorting method, since their inner layer can’t be seen.
“You’ve gotta check the years on those,” he said.
War nickels, for example, minted between 1942 and 1945, with a large “P,” “D,” or “S” on the reverse, contain silver and will be worth more than face value. Some of the most valuable nickels include the 1837-D, 3-legged buffalo nickel, worth around $2,000 due to a minting error that produced a buffalo with only three legs, or there’s the rare 1926-S buffalo nickel, which can be worth up to $4,200.
The most valuable nickel of all is the 1913 Liberty Head V nickel, worth over $3 million. Minted in secret, they were never officially released, and there are just five known in existence.
For pennies, what Bohlinger does first is look for the ones that are actually made of copper. Those will be worth more than face value, just due to their metal content.
“Modern pennies are pretty much made with tin,” he said. “So, they’re worth less, and that’s why they switched to tin from copper, because they were cheaper to produce.”
There were just two copper pennies in the pile of change. Neither were unusual, so their value was just over 2 cents based on the value of the copper in them. That made the two of them worth about a nickel.
Playing With Pennies Can Be Better Than Lottery
Some copper pennies can be worth five and six figures, usually due to some type of error.
Perhaps the most famous is the 1943 wheat penny with a bronze cent strike.
What happened is that in late 1942, the nation’s three mints were ordered to stop producing bronze cents for 1943 and to use a zinc-coated steel planchet instead.
A few bronze planchets with 1943 dates still found their way into the coinage stream, creating an extremely rare coin, valued at $2.3 million or so in uncirculated, mint condition.
There’s also a rare 1982 Lincoln penny mistakenly made from copper, which ranges from $10,000 to $30,000 or more, depending on quality.
And there’s a 1909-S VDB Lincoln penny. What happened here is that in 1909 the U.S. Mint had replaced the Indian Head penny with the Lincoln cent. After about 500,000 of the pennies had been minted, the Treasury Department decided to remove the initials of the designer, Victor David Brenner, from between the two wheat stalks. The VDB penny is now worth around $117,000 in mint condition.
Not all of the valuable pennies are necessarily mistakes though.
A mint 1872 Indian Head penny, for example, is worth around $126,500 not because of any mistake, but because it has been so well preserved, and the original bright red-copper color can still be seen.
“Coins that have never been in someone’s pocket will always be worth more,” Bohlinger said.
Bohlinger knows coin collector friends who buy $100 of pennies at a time, picking out all the copper ones, and looking for that rare coin that’s going to be worth millions.
It’s like playing the lottery, but better. It might be a one in 300 million chance to find a unicorn. But unlike the lottery, the pennies will still be worth at least face value at the end of the draw, while a losing lottery ticket’ is not worth even the paper it was printed on.
“That’s like 200 rolls of pennies,” Bohlinger said. “And they’ll spread it all over their dining room table to sort out the copper ones from the regular ones.”
Each of the copper pennies is double the value of a regular penny, Bohlinger said.
“So, you can double up, if you want to put in the effort, so it can be worth it,” he said.
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
