2:30 PM
Panting and puffing, Johny Lee carried a heavy, clinking bag of antique copper and silver coins back to City Hospital.
Upon entering the Orthopedics Ward, under the surprised gazes of the old man with the fractured leg and his visiting son, Johny tossed the large canvas bag beside his hospital bed.
Clatter, clatter...the coins vibrated with a loud, pleasant metallic sound.
The old man looked over in amazement. "Young man, what on earth are you doing with all that?"
Exhausted, Johny sat on the edge of the bed, wiping sweat from his brow with a grin. "I bought some antique coins at the flea market."
The old man's son chuckled. "Good heavens, you shouldn't buy that many at once, right? That looks like pure bulk weight."
"Haha, just for fun, just for fun."
Seeing the son's Dell laptop resting on the bedside table, Johny hesitated for a moment and then smiled apologetically. "Brother, I saw you using your laptop to go online yesterday. Is that a wireless broadband card? Um, if you're not using the laptop for a bit, could I borrow it for a while?"
The man pushed the laptop over quite generously. "Sure, go ahead and use it. I'm just reading a magazine right now."
"Oh, thank you so much."
"Don't mention it. When I wasn't around these past two days, your girlfriend helped my dad pour water and wash his lunchbox quite a bit. I haven't even had the chance to thank her properly yet."
Johny felt a swell of pride but didn't correct the girlfriend assumption.
Fearing that the nurses and doctors might gossip or scold him for making a mess, Johny didn't dare pour the coins out directly onto the clean white sheets. Instead, he dumped them into the narrow corner between the bed and the wall, spreading them out on a clean towel.
He rummaged through the pile with his good hand, doing a rough visual count. Instantly, Johny felt the truth of the old saying, 'There is no merchant who is not deceitful.' What 'fourteen hundred coins'? This pile didn't even reach a thousand! Each copper and silver piece was too small to easily count by eye, which is exactly why he got cheated on the bulk weight.
Well, whatever, Johny thought, rubbing his hands together. It's still uncertain who really lost out on this deal!
Johny opened the laptop, connected to the internet, and began searching online by cross-referencing the dates, mint marks, and profiles on the coins. He didn't know anything about professional antique coin appraisal; his only weapon was the internet.
Five minutes...
Ten minutes...
Twenty minutes...
He wouldn't have known if he hadn't looked closely, but the variety in this pile of bulk coins was truly immense.
There were old Wheat Pennies, heavily worn Indian Head Cents, slick Barber Dimes, and a handful of unidentifiable European coppers. It was a dizzying, dirty sight.
Johny steadied his nerves. While cramming knowledge from several numismatic websites, collector forums, and auction databases, he began to gradually filter through the pile.
For instance, he could easily identify some coins with distinct, common features, such as the 1940s Lincoln Wheat Cents or heavily circulated 19th-century British pennies. These were items with a market value of only a few cents or a couple of dollars at best. The wholesale price the vendor paid likely didn't even reach ten cents apiece. They had zero true collection value.
Johny picked out the worthless coppers one by one and threw them into a separate plastic bag to keep them organized.
One coin...
Ten coins...
Fifty coins...
This was a very tedious task that severely tested his patience, especially with his burned hand throbbing.
After picking and choosing like this for an entire afternoon, the food cart rumbled to the door outside. Dinner had arrived. Johny took a short break while eating his bland hospital food. As soon as he was full, he went right back to the screening work.
Three hundred and thirty coins...
Three hundred and fifty coins...
Four hundred and ten coins...
Good heavens, by 7:00 PM, he had excluded over five hundred worthless coins, with fewer than three hundred remaining to check.
At 7:30 PM, Maggi called to say her workplace had some urgent, late-breaking crisis to handle, so she wouldn't be coming over tonight. She promised to visit him tomorrow morning before work instead. Johny told her to focus on her career and that she didn't need to come tomorrow either if she was too tired, but Maggi wouldn't listen. After giving him a few strict instructions to rest, she hung up.
The old man's son wasn't leaving tonight, he was staying overnight to keep watch, mainly because it wasn't convenient for the old man to go to the bathroom alone. Johny asked for his permission to keep using the computer, and the man generously said he could use the laptop as much as he wanted.
Johny hurriedly thanked him, thinking to himself that he definitely needed to buy a laptop for himself once he made his fortune.
Johny was the type who couldn't let things rest. He planned to stay up all night to identify every single coin otherwise, he wouldn't be able to sleep peacefully.
And so, the screening work continued...
Five hundred and eighty coins...
Six hundred and fifty coins...
Six hundred and seventy coins...
However, the remaining ones weren't so easy to filter out.
For example, with the older large cents and colonial coppers, there were many, many varieties like wide dates, narrow dates, double dies, specific mint marks, and rare misprints. But the prices for these variations were vastly different as some were worth thousands, some hundreds, and some just a few dollars. It was very difficult for someone who wasn't a professional numismatist to distinguish them under poor hospital lighting.
Search.....Just search slowly.
Hmm, this is a late 1800s French Franc, high circulation volume.... PASS!
Oh, that one has a chipped edge and the corrosion is too heavy. Even if it's a rare date, the condition ruins the value. PASS!
Another three hours passed like this, and he still had no major harvest!
Until one o'clock in the morning.
Just as a yawning Johny was about to give up and go to sleep, a heavy, dark-toned copper coin entered his sight.
This ancient coin was significantly larger and heavier than the others. He wiped the grime off the face. It read: 1793 Flowing Hair Cent.
Checking online, this specific early American coin had all sorts of prices. Different die varieties, different strike qualities, and the condition varied wildly. Initially, Johny didn't take it to heart, comparing the coin in his hand with the sample images and text descriptions online.
This variety isn't it... that one is wrong... the wreath on the back doesn't match either.
After searching for a long time, he simply couldn't find a die variety that perfectly matched his.
He switched to a specialized high-end auction website and continued searching. Scrolling and scrolling, suddenly, Johny clicked open a past auction item's archived information.
1793 Flowing Hair Cent, Chain America Reverse, Sheldon-3 Variety with diameter 28mm.
Looking at the high-resolution sample image, the color, the specific font of LIBERTY, the diameter, and the interlocking chain design on the back were absolutely identical to the heavy copper coin in his hand.
The only difference was that the auctioned one was in extremely fine condition with no environmental damage, while Johny's coin had slightly heavier wear.
Johny casually moved his gaze down to the auction's final realized price, and then... he was dumbfounded.
Starting price: $30,000.
Final realized price: $62,000.
Holy crap! That expensive?!
This is definitely it!
The coin that the pompous Professor Cole had his eye on was definitely this one!
Johny took a deep breath in excitement and stared again at the price that far exceeded his wildest expectations.
He couldn't help but feel a massive surge of adrenaline. He originally thought he'd just pick up a nice bargain worth maybe eight or ten thousand bucks, but who would've thought it was worth over sixty thousand?!
Uh, wait, no. Let's be realistic. The auction price would definitely be on the high side because it included buyer's premiums, and that coin was in better condition. The actual wholesale value for a dealer would be relatively lower.
Sigh, maybe it's even a fake? Counterfeit early American coppers are too rampant these days.
Eh, but probably not. Although that guy Cole's character was terrible, his eye for authentic coin appraisal was publicly recognized on national television! Cole wouldn't have dropped $4,500 in cash instantly if he wasn't 100% sure it was real and highly profitable.
Suppressing his joy for the moment, Johny checked the last small handful of coins online one by one. They were all worth a few dollars; nothing else was noteworthy.
After stuffing the canvas bag with hundreds of junk coins under his bed, Johny carefully held that 1793 Flowing Hair Cent, liking it more the more he looked at it.
Although that guy Cole had bought nine coins in the erased timeline, he probably used that little trick of buying a batch to avoid drawing the vendor's attention to the single valuable piece. In reality, it was only this one rare cent that attracted him.
Haha!
I'm going to make a fortune!!
Authors Note -
That's chapter 44 .
Enjoy....
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