What if I find a 1908 penny, what is the value of it now (2008)?

Question

What if I find a 1908 penny, what is the value of it now (2008)?

Answer 1

A well-preserved 1908 penny would have earned investment value, perhaps even up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. You can go to coin sites like www.pcgs.com to look up the value of a penny based on its grade and find out the current value.

The metal composition of pennies back then was  95% copper, 5% tin and zinc. Today, pennies are 97.5% zinc core and 2.5% copper plating, which is a much less expensive composition. Copper today is $3.79/lb, and zinc is only $0.83/lb. So the actual cost of metals in today's penny is $0.005, while the metal used in 1907's penny is $0.02. (Now you know why they changed penny composition!)

That being said, the actual value of one U.S. cent back then was a lot greater than it is today, just based on observing gold prices. In 1907, the price of gold was $20.67/oz, and today it is around $950/oz, meaning today's dollar is worth around 2% of the dollar in 1907. So a penny back in 1907 have been worth 50 cents today, and one cent today would be worth $0.0002 in 1907.