Seattle-based artist, Jack Daws, created a series of eleven counterfeit gold pennies, each costing approximately $100 to make. He sold one for $1,000 to an art collector in Seattle, and the rest remained hidden–except one.

While at Los Angeles International Airport, Daws bought a Hustler Magazine with the penny out of curiosity about where it would go. He thought it was lost forever. That is, until Jessica Reed found it in Brooklyn.

Reed, an artist and self-described fan of unusual coins, had come upon an unusually gold colored penny at her local C-Town in Greenpoint.

“Then recently, while doing research about a 1924 Mercury-head dime, she remembered the penny and typed “gold penny” into Google, which returned information on science experiments to give a penny a gold color. She added “1970” and found an item about how Mr. Daws had put a 18-karat gold penny, dated 1970 with no mint mark, into circulation. It was heavier and smaller than a real penny.

In disbelief, she weighed the penny on a digital scale. It came in at three grams, one gram more than similar pennies from 1970. And it was slightly smaller than a normal penny, owing to the shrinking after the casting process.

She traced Mr. Daws’s phone number through the gallery and left him the message. When he called back, he knew it had to be his penny as soon as she described it to him.”

This is one of those great stories about coincidental events that could never be born out of fiction. As of now, Reed has kept the coin.

[Via Neatorama; Quotes Via NY Times City Room Blog; A letter written by Reed about the coin can be found here]