No, You Don't Have a $124 Million Penny

Recent online stories about “pennies” worth $124 million and billion-dollar 1976 Bicentennial quarter dollars are either false or grossly misleading, advises the Professional Numismatists Guild (PNGdealers.org), a nonprofit organization composed of many of the country’s top rare-coin experts.

- BY JOSHUA MCMORROW-HERNANDEZ

2025 Lincoln cent or circulating "penny" worth one cent. COURTESY U.S. MINT

“Unfortunately, these clickbait stories and videos with absurdly inflated rare coin values often get picked up by major search engines. The misleading or inaccurate stories raise false hopes to people who may mistakenly think they have a fortune when, in fact, their coins may only be worth face value or have drastically less collector value than they were led to believe,” cautioned John Feigenbaum, executive director of the Professional Numismatists Guild (PNG).