I learned to appreciate old coins at a young age. My father was a serious and avid collector. He taught me early on to always keep an eye on the dates of all coins that passed through my hands. One of my most exciting discoveries came in 2012 when I got an 1899 Indian head penny in change. 
But that pales in comparison to the pleasantly shocking (and highly lucrative) find a boy made one day. This is the story of the Lunch Money Miracle. 
Ever since the United States minted the first one cent piece in 1793, pennies were made of copper. Until World War II. Suddenly, the Mint had a problem on its hands.
That metal was one of many items rationed for the war effort. The same copper in the cent was also used to make shell casings for fighting the Japanese and Germans. It was such a crucial commodity, in fact, the War Department estimated 1.25 million rounds of shells could be made from the copper used to produce a single year’s supply of pennies.
After much heated debate, the Mint took the extraordinary step of changing the coin’s makeup. In 1943, pennies were made of steel coated in zinc. That made them look shiny, almost like silver. At least when they were brand new. After a few months in circulation, a serious situation developed.
Somebody apparently forgot that steel rusts. Badly. In a short time, many 1943 pennies were developing a dirty, dark tint as rust set in.
The government switched back to copper the next year. Though interestingly, the military saved all the spent shell casings it could and sent them to the Mint, which melted them and turned them into pennies. If you’ve got one from 1944, 1945, or 1946 it was once an army or navy shell before it had Lincoln’s face on it.
Which brings us to 1947. Don Lutes was a typical 16 year-old. He was having lunch at his Pittsfield, Massachusetts, high school one day when he noticed something unusual. He received in change for his meal a 1943 penny that was made of copper.
That was unusual, he thought. It was totally different from all other 1943 pennies he had seen, both shiny and rusty alike. So he decided to hang on to it.
He even wrote a letter to the Treasury Department, explaining what he had. Some federal bureaucrat wasted no time shooting back a letter insisting all 1943 pennies were made of steel and nothing else. It even hinted that Don’s penny was a phony.  
But that didn’t satisfy the boy. The mysterious coin’s origins kept gnawing at him. Finally, in 1958, he paid one of the country’s leading numismatists (a fancy name for a coin expert) to examine it. He rated it completely authentic.
The Treasury Department finally ‘fessed up. It admitted that 20 copper pennies had indeed been minted in 1943. (Though to this day, nobody knows just how that mistake happened.)
How rare is this coin? It’s believed only 15 of them survive today. One leading auction house called them “the Holy Grail of coin collecting.”
Don resisted increasingly lucrative offers to sell his precious penny. He still had it when he died in September 2018 at age 87.
His heirs, however, wasted no time parting with it. The rare cent was sold at auction earlier this year. A pre-sale estimate appraised it at $170,000. It actually sold for $204,000. Not a bad return on a one cent investment.
I suggest doing what dad taught me more than 50 years ago: always keep an eye on the coins that come your way. You never know.          
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