A 222-Year-Old Coin Was Unearthed In A Small Maine Town
If you spend enough time in some of traveling around Maine, you'll likely come across a treasure hunter. They're easy to laugh off, often times laser-focused with their metal detectors while everyone else around them is in relaxation mode. And while the take may generally be junk to most, every now and again, a treasure hunter finds exactly what they were looking for. That seems to be the case with one treasure hunter who recently spent some time in the Embden, Maine area.
Shared on Reddit by Up2KnowGood, what you're looking at is a United States penny that is truly centuries old. As you can see in the photo above, the penny is dated 1798. A brief history lesson of the penny shows that Abraham Lincoln wasn't always the face of one cent in America. The penny actually went through several designs before settling on Lincoln, including the one seen above. It appears to be a Liberty Cap one cent piece, And while it may still say one cent on the coin, according to sammler.com, 18th century coins like this can fetch as much as $3,000 dollars at auction today.
Perhaps the most impressive portion of this find is the way the treasure hunter noticed that what they found was worth spending the time to rehabilitate. As you can see in the photo above, the initial find is almost undistinguishable as a 200+ year old penny. After the cleaning job, it truly is a piece of historic treasure.
And in case you're wondering, this treasure found a few other interesting items while on the hunt in rural Maine. You can see a few more items they found here.