From all accounts, Ken Wing was a typical kid. Born in 1930, his childhood invariably revolved around World War II.
Back then, young children lived for newsreels detailing accounts of the war. Many boys diligently studied aircraft silhouettes in the event of an attack. Wing was surely one of them considering he lived in Long Beach – one of the closest U.S. cities to Japan.
As a distraction from the war, and long before television and the Internet, young boys would also spend hours searching through pocket change and rolls of coins to add to their collection. Pennies were the primary focus. They were both cheap and valuable.
In the 1940s, you could still buy something with them.
Pennies also got increased attention because in 1943, the government stopped using copper to produce them. It was needed for the war effort, so for that year they were minted out of steel. According to Leland Howard, then acting director of the Mint, "No 1943 copper coins were produced."
As Ken Wing discovered, that wasn't quite the case.
In 1944, when Wing was 14, he found a copper 1943 penny in change. He took it to a local coin dealer, who offered him $500. Wing decided to keep the coin for his collection. It proved to be a lucky move. Luckier still was when he found it.
Today, it's not uncommon to see a 1943 "copper" cent. But, they're rarely authentic. A dozen or so genuine copper 1943 cents have surfaced – invariably because only a handful of blank copper planchets made their way into minting machines. However, because of the scarcity of the coins, in the 1950s and '60s, some people took rolls of the 1942 steel pennies and had them coated in copper. Happily, the ruse is easily detectable. By holding a simple magnet near a steel cent – even one that's coated in copper – it will stick. Pure copper pennies won't.
And, back in 1944, when Wing found the coin, few if any people had thought about coating steel pennies with copper.
Wing went on to became a prominent architect and was a designer of the Long Beach Arena. Until his death in 1996, the coin collection of his youth sat undisturbed in a safe deposit box.
When his heirs decided to check out the collection, they contacted Steve Contursi of Rare Coin Wholesalers. Understandably, when Contursi initially examined the coin he, too, believed it to be a fake. Then he tried the magnet test. It passed. So he submitted it to the Numismatic Guaranty Corp. for authentication. It agreed it was genuine and certified it as such.
There was one more thing. The coin Wing found was minted in San Francisco.
The dozen or so other genuine 1943 copper cents were minted in Philadelphia. Only one or two from the San Francisco Mint have ever surfaced.
A few weeks ago, the family sold the coin for $72,500. Not a bad return for a penny found by a young boy looking for a distraction during a time of war.
Peter Rexford writes for Creators Syndicate. Contact him at P.O. Box 50377, St. Louis, MO 63105.
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