Pennies Anyone? This Is Quite A Lot.

That certainly puts my small hoard to shame... but I think his numbers are just slightly out of touch with reality as well...

Bergevin was a known penny hoarder in Victoria Area for years. All of the dealers on Fort Street , myself included filled him in on every 1937 circ penny and 1948 nickel we could supply him with. Quite a nice guy , rather eccentric and colourful.
Sort of a poormans " REDFIELD" hoarder.
As I recall he started in the late 1950s early 1960s and was absolutely fixated on 1937 pennies especially.
We would sell him 37s for a quarter a piece if they were Fine VF and charge a Buck each for 1948 nickels.
Good luck to the new hoarder who now owns them. He has enough gear there to supply the Canadian Penny market for two decades plus , maybe half a century.

The total mintage of the 1948 1c was 25,767,779.

Listed the Bergevin Hoard is 5,850 rolls, that's 292,500 of them - over 1% of the original mintage but certainly a much higher percentage of what remains today.

"A penny for your thoughts!" - so many it's mind boggling!

maybe it's just me? but other than shear volume there isn't anything that spectacular about this collection.

I'm not a penny guy, but for a "key date hoard" shouldn't there be 1955 cents and 1947 nickels.
those 2 money years are missing - either not hoarded originally, or removed before offered in this sale.

I think with transporting, sorting and selling you would be hard pressed to make minimum wage, especially without the shot at some really high condition 1955 NSF & 1947 dot nickels?

Listings with more story than substance always turn me off. Not to mention the overuse of the term "key date".

Over 800,000 small cents alone. That's an impossible "collection" to sell intact. He'd have been much, much better off buying almost anything else, in my humble opinion.

It sounds like he enjoyed hoarding them, so it's not a total loss.

Now that TD has abandon their coinstar machines, it would cost about 10% fees just to deposit

Hoards like this, are for Zoell variety hunters... they can be fun to sift through, if that is what you want to do with your time. If they are original, they can be a fun thing to do in this hobby (thrill of the hunt).

After the local dealers told this gentleman to "take his coins to the bank", I bought his large lot (200+ lbs) of pre-1960 pennies from a hoarder here in Ottawa. I paid 1.5 times face and went through the entire lot. There was a 1923, several 1926 and 1930 pennies, and a 1955 NSF in that hoard, but I mostly made my money by putting the George V and George VI coins (random mix of dates) into rolls, and selling them to local flea market dealers here in Ottawa $1 a roll for George VI and $5 a roll for George V (after I had gone through them for Zoell varieties and doubled dates). The photo of that hoard is below, and not a single coin was newer than 1960.



I also bought a similar 250 lbs lot of 5c coins from the same hoarder, paying 1.5 times face. All the low grade nickel coins were sold to Hub City Coins (as bullion, 10% over face) I found a 1925 and several 1932 far 2 coins, and I also found a 1954 NSF. Again, local flea market dealers bought the rolls of tombacs and George V nickels ($10 per roll).

In the end - I learned about Zoell varieties, stocked my binders with decent pre-1950 AU and MS-60 to -63 coins, and learned a bit more about grading EF and AU coins. If you do not count my time, I made my money back several times over. But - at 1.5 times face I really had nothing to lose.

I had a similar situation to SPP-Ottawa's story in the beginning of the year although I found much less rare stuff. I wish I could find buyers for $10 cash a roll of george V nickels, selling the common rolls on ebay is annoying with the weight and size. From my experience he prices listed on this ebay auction are ridiculously high. Searching through all of the coins has helped my grading skills as well as variety recognition as well so I definitely feel it was worth it, although time consuming.