It should sell for a pretty penny
Exceedingly rare 1936 Canadian cent could fetch as much as $250,000 when it is auctioned off in Chicago in April, writes RANDY BOSWELL.
Just weeks after the Canadian penny was pulled out of circulation, the single most famous one-cent coin ever produced in this country — an “exceedingly rare” and valuable 1936 “dot cent” — is set to be sold at an American auction next month for at least $250,000.
The penny was one of just three known to have been created by the Royal Canadian Mint at a time when the nation’s coin-makers were scrambling to prevent a shortage of properly stamped coppers. The crisis loomed at the end of a tumultuous year for coin engravers, during which George V died and his son, Edward VIII, became king for only a brief reign before abdicating in favour of his younger brother, George VI.
Between the time Edward VIII gave up the throne in December 1936 (to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson) and George VI was formally crowned in May 1937, nervous Canadian officials — lacking a profile portrait of the unexpected new king to stamp on the country’s coinage — prepared for a stopgap re-minting of the old George V design.
To distinguish any new batch of coins that might have been required from the earlier production runs of 1936 George V pennies, a tiny dot was added by mint technicians in the space beneath the “1936” date of the posthumous prototypes, believed to have been made in early 1937.
Some experts believe that the potential coin shortage never materialized, so that just three “dot cent” samples were produced, along with limited numbers of similarly marked dimes and quarters. Others suspect thousands of the dimpled pennies were actually minted but later melted down for the first run of George VI one-cent pieces, dated 1937.
Either way, two of the three documented 1936 “dot cent” specimens wound up in the hands of retired Royal Canadian Mint employee Maurice LaFortune of Ottawa. And by the early 1960s, that pair of pennies — as well as the third one, once owned by the widow of another mint employee from Ottawa — had been acquired for a few hundred dollars each by the legendary Rochester, N.Y., coin collector John Jay Pittman.
Before his death in 1996, Pittman would assemble a treasure of numismatic rarities worth $30 million, with the three dotted pennies from Canada among his most prized possessions.
One was sold in 1999 for $115,000. Another was auctioned for $230,000 in 2003 and then resold in 2010 for a stunning $402,500 US.
The third of the three — and the one to be sold next month by Texas-based Heritage Auctions at its “World and Ancient Coins” sale in Chicago — has had a particularly intriguing history, having been snatched by thieves from Pittman’s home in 1964 along with a number of other valuable items.
Then, inexplicably, the New York collector received an unsigned envelope containing — along with a few of his other stolen coins — the dotted 1936 penny with a slight scratch on the “3” of the date.
That penny was sold in 1997, the year after Pittman’s death, for $121,000. It sold again in 2004 for $207,000, and Heritage estimates it will fetch $250,000 to $300,000 at its April 18 auction.
Even if the penny sells for more than expected, it’s unlikely to surpass the all-time record price for a historic Canadian coin. A 1911 Canadian silver dollar — one of only three known to exist — was sold to a Canadian collector in 2003 for $1.1 million.