What are the rarest collectible pennies?

The 1943 penny is a real copper penny worth about $80,000.00. Though some of these dozen beauties have sold as low as $10,000 the highest price given is a recorded $112,500 as late as 1999. One would think the $80,000 valuation should be adjusted. Times changing as they are, these pennies might fetch many times the $112,500 price to a museum only a generation or two from now. This is the most valuable collectible penny you have a real chance of scoring in a search of any old pennies. Copper you ask? But weren't the 1943 pennies all steel and coated with zinc due to the need to save copper for the war effort? Yes all but the first 12 minted which were minted from the copper already in the machine. Follow me into the vast history of the 1943 "Copper" pennies.

Likely the first 1943 copper penny discovered was noted among a handful of pocket change around 1947. There was another discovery later that year which gained quite a bit of notoriety. The government in the form of the Philadelphia Mint denied there were any 1943 coppers as late as 1947. We're not certain there were only 12 but that there were about 12 copper 1943 pennies known to have been minted by accident, when copper blanks (from which pennies are pressed) were used which were unwittingly left in the press hopper when production started on the new pennies of zinc coated steel.

The rarest penny known to still exist in any form is the 1793. There are only four that we know of and that's why you are unlikely to ever find one, unless you find the missing 5th penny, if there even is one. These four are each valued at around $275,000.00. One oddity of the penny was the Liherty where an h was substituted for the obvious b. The penny today is in shortage in some places through piggy bank and collector hoarding and often banks will trade a crisp dollar for less than 100