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By Rachael O'Connor
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A man received a unique gift from his grandfather upon his death: thousands of dollars made up entirely of unsorted pennies.
Dave d'Agrella, from Texas, lost his grandfather, Donald Dayton, in 2020. He was left the gift under a strict condition: "Look through each and every one to find anything collectible or cool."
The penny was one of the first coins made by the U.S. Mint and was initially made of pure copper, while the modern penny is made of copper and zinc. In 1943, pennies were made from zinc-coated steel, as copper was needed during World War II. From 1909 to 1958, the reverse showed two sheaves of wheat, with these collectibles known as "Wheaties."
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Dayton had been collecting pennies for decades, and d'Agrella estimates there are around $3,000 in pennies, as he has some of the two-liter bottles filled with pennies counted already.
And as d'Agrella told Newsweek, "I think he knew that I'd probably be the only one crazy enough to actually do it."
The 28-year-old explained that his "Papa Don," who served in the Air Force during the Vietnam War, developed an interest in chess and coin collecting during this time. "He showed both of those interests to me, and those hobbies have stuck with me to this day."
"Sometime in the 70s, he started saving every piece of change he got, and the only sorting he did was by denomination. After that, the coins went straight into two-liter bottles," he explained.
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Pennies became a "special focus" for Dayton, with his wife bringing home rolls of pennies from her work at the bank. "Eventually, it became a family tradition to gift him more and more ridiculous amounts of pennies on his birthday every year. I remember a couple times we gave him an entire bottle," his grandson said.
Now, almost five years after his death, d'Agrella is still tackling his grandpa's final request and recently took to Reddit to ask for advice.
On December 2, he shared with the r/coins sub via his account u/dagreja a picture of the trunk of his car filled with dozens of two-liter bottles, packed to the brim with coins.
He asked: "I inherited around $3k worth of unsorted pennies. Is it worth it to sort out the pre-82 pennies as I sift through them or just dump them all together?"
And Redditors responded in their droves, with d'Agrella's post receiving close to 4,000 upvotes and hundreds of comments, one urging him: "How do you eat a whale? Answer: One bite at a time. Go sort through them in small batches. You will be surprised of the interesting finds within."
Another suggested he use a magnet "to pull out any steel wheat pennies," and one Redditor advised: "Buy pizza and beers, invite 5 people over, make it happen baby."
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D'Agrella told Newsweek he has sorted through about half of the pennies so far and learned that pre-1982 pennies, made of pure copper, are now worth around 3 cents.
"Melting down U.S. currency is illegal, but some people hoard the old pennies in preparation for the day the penny is discontinued, and it is no longer illegal," he said. "So sorting out those pennies, I'd potentially be able to sell them for almost 3x the value to those hoarders. I made the post on Reddit to see how actually viable that would be."
And it worked. He's since learned of sorting machines that use electric currents to check if a penny is pure copper and drop the pennies into separate buckets.
"My plan now is to run all of the pennies through the machine, and then continue to hand search them all and eventually find a way to offload the stuff I don't plan on keeping."
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