Californian buys a cent for $2.6 million

The best of only 10 surviving 1792 coins has been sold for $2,585,000 by Heritage Auctions in Dallas, to a Californian man. The 'Birch Cent' (named after the engraver) was a test design depicting Miss Liberty, which never went into general production. Very elegant she looks too. I'm sure she's worth every cent of those millions.

Another coin, the 'Chain Cent', sold for $2.35 million at the same auction.

Interestingly, the article is calling the cents pennies. I didn't know the terms were interchangeable. I have a 1794 English penny. No-one's offered me $2 million for it though. Or even $20, come to that. But it means a lot to me, as I was only the second person to touch it after the hand that laid it there, all those hundreds of years ago. It was deliberately put there to be found by future generations, and it was really exciting for me to think of the person all those years ago, hiding it there and wondering who would find it. I wonder about the person who hid it too - I wish they'd left a note with it.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/b8e8...re-1792-penny-sells-auction-almost-26-million

I love coins, English ones especially, and especially those "unofficial" types done by coiners -- possession of which, if officially discovered, could only be paid with forfeit of life. I've one mudlarks found in the Thames half a century after it had gone in, in circumstances possibly dire -- its obverse worn away, it has a sedimentary look to it, as if the river had given it birth, then in time had swallowed it back down into darkness.