'Pawn Stars' guest gets a massive $25,000 offer for a rare coin, but thinks it is 'ridiculously low'

The monetary value of a rare collectible and the amount that worth parting with it for its owner are two different things. Coin collectors are passionate about their rare possessions, and this is on display on shows such as "Pawn Stars." One such individual named Ray arrived in the shop with his 70th birthday gift, which was a rare "1944 Steel Penny." The man was offered a hefty price of $25,000 for the coin by Rick Harrison on the show, but it simply wasn't good enough for him.

In the episode, Ray showed the 1944 Zinc-Coated Steel Penny to Harrison, claiming that it would be something that the celebrity pawn shop owner would be highly interested in. He wasn't wrong, as Harrison acknowledged the coin to be quite rare. "It's a 1944 steel penny. That is really neat. I know there's less than 100 of them in existence," he said. However, according to Ray's research, there were fewer than 30 such coins in existence. Ray further shared that he got the coin as a gift for his 70th birthday, as it was from the same year that he was born. Harrison then explained that the coin was "really weird," as it wasn't supposed to exist in the first place.

According to Numista, the 1944 zinc-coated steel cent was a result of a "Transitional Error" that occurred during the changeover from zinc-coated steel back to bronze during World War II. 

"You know, World War II happened alone. I mean, just everything was rationed. Bacon was rationed. And the US government came along and said, 'Hey, you know, we make tens of millions of pennies every year. Basically told the US Mint, you have to make cents out of something else because copper is a war metal.' So they started making the cents during 1943 out of steel that was zinc-plated, and everyone absolutely hated them," Harrison explained. 

He further added that following the feedback, the mint stopped making steel pennies in 1944. However, some of the blanks "got stuck in the corners," and a few zinc-coated steel pennies were accidentally struck. "This coin is one of the great mistakes of the US Mint," Harrison claimed. 

Thus, Ray estimated that the coin was worth a lot of money, about $102,000 to be precise. Hearing the request, Harrison immediately called his expert, Dave, to take a look at the PCGS-graded coin. Upon further inspection of the coin, the expert noted that it was probably the result of the most famous minting error of the 20th century, and people have been digging through their pocket change to try and find one of these coins for decades. "If you find one, it's a gold mine," Dave noted.

While it was revealed on the show that such a coin was sold for more than $300,000 at an auction back in 2008, Dave estimated that Ray's coin would be worth about $30,000. "That seems awfully low to me," the guest immediately said to the expert.

Ray insisted that many websites value the coin much higher, but Dave claimed that $30,000 would be a realistic number that the coin could fetch in a public auction. After the expert left the shop, Ray kept insisting that $30,000 was too low for the coin. "This is probably one of the rarest penny coins in existence. I don't know where the expert came up with that value," he said.

However, Harrison was adamant about sticking to the valuation shared by the expert, and he offered Ray $25,000 for the coin. Since it was extremely low for Ray, he told Harrison that he would need to go up. Ray then asked for $75,000, but Harrison said, "Not gonna happen." The guest too stuck to his demand and told Harrison that they would not be able to make a deal. 

In the end, Ray said, "I think the offer of $25,000 is ridiculously low. But I'll just keep it in the family, and somebody eventually will sell it for a lot more than I'm being offered today."