Prototype US penny sold for 117.5 million pennies

A rare prototype of the first American penny, dating from 1792, has just changed hands for 117.5 million pennies at an auction in Baltimore, Maryland. The Birch Penny - one of only seven known to exist - was among the highlights of a two-day sale of rare US coins, medals and paper money.
Stack''s Bowers Galleries of Irvine, California, which organized the auction, said it went for $1.175 million, including buyer''s premium, late Thursday.
The buyer was not identified, but the coin - engraved the year Congress created the US Mint, and nine years after the American Revolutionary War - was the second Birch Penny to be sold this year. The first was snapped up by a Beverly Hills rare coin dealer in January for $2.585 million at an auction in Florida. It had previously sold in 1981 for $200,000.