Can you imagine carrying $10 million in pennies? Well maybe if you had the coin collection that was recently sold in Long Beach, California, it wouldn’t be so difficult.

288 pennies brought that $10.7 million in an auction. The collection consisted of 301 rare, early American pennies. Often referred to as “large cents”, these antique copper coins are about the size of today’s quarters. They were minted during the time of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, roughly 1793 to 1814.

At the end of the auction, there were 13 pennies left. These remaining coins were expected to be sold within a week of the auction.

The auctioneers were as surprised as the collection owner at the prices the coins were bringing. Two 18th century pennies broke the record for the highest price received for a rare penny. A sweet price at $632,500. Hopefully the new owner feels like he got his 2 cents worth.

Other coin collectors had been waiting decades for these coins to come back on the market. The pennies are well known, and the owner had been holding onto them for years.

The auction officials said a sale like this one happens once in a lifetime. The turn out was exceptional. About 200 collectors were there with hundreds more placing their bids over the phone and on the internet.

The collection owner guesses he had spent a little over $5 million on the pennies, so that was a nice return on his investment.