“Check Your Pocket Change Carefully — A Rare Lincoln Penny, Mistakenly Circulated Decades Ago and Now Valued at an Astonishing $336,000, Could Be Sitting Unnoticed in Your Coin Jar, Offering Everyday Americans the Chance to Discover a Hidden Treasure Worth a Small Fortune in Ordinary Spare Change.”

Copper was urgently needed for military equipment, and even small savings in metal mattered. The result was the familiar silver-colored “steel cents” of that year.

But production lines are rarely perfect.

A handful of leftover bronze planchets—metal blanks from 1942—remained in the presses. When they were accidentally struck with 1943 dies, they created continue reading …