Vintner pays pretty penny for rare coin | News | Rare Coin Wholesalers, a S.L.Contursi Company

Contursi, who owns east Napa vineyard, lucks into find from 1943
Napa Valley Register
By NATALIE HOFFMAN
Tuesday, July 29, 2008

The old adage goes, “A penny saved is a penny earned.”

For vintner Steven Contursi, a penny saved is more than $72,000 burned.

The Napa Valley vineyard owner and California coin dealer’s boyhood quest for a rare find recently ended with the purchase of a 1943 bronze penny to the tune of $72,500.

Contursi, new owner of Little Creek Vineyard in the Coombsville area and president of Dana Point’s Rare Coin Wholesalers, bought the coveted coin from the family of its longtime owner.

The presence of bronze in the 1943 coin is what gives the coin its worth, Contursi said.   In 1943, however, the bulk of available bronze went toward the war effort and the U.S. Mint then authorized pennies to be made from steel.

Only about 13 similar pennies are known to exist worldwide, including one from the U.S. Mint in Denver, which sold for a staggering $200,000.

Contursi is a 34-year veteran of the coin business who bought the east Napa vineyard from Etude Wines founder and prominent wine consultant Tony Soter.

Contursi said his bronze penny was struck at the U.S. Mint at San Francisco in 1943, and was somehow made from the previous year’s materials.

Contursi bought the penny from Paul Wing, the son of Kenneth Wing Jr. of Long Beach, a late architect who turned up the coin as a teen in 1944.   Since Wing’s death in 1996, the coin sat in a deposit box at his family’s bank.

When Wing’s son brought it to Contursi’s coin business, Contursi was skeptical about its authenticity.

“When his heirs asked me to examine it, I doubted it was genuine, and probably just a common 1943 steel penny altered outside the mint to look like it was made of copper,” Contursi said.   “But then I got a magnet and was surprised when the coin did not stick like it would to a steel cent.”

Contursi, who lives between Laguna Beach and Napa and bought the Little Creek Vineyard property in November 2007, said as owner of Rare Coin Wholesalers, he regularly handles prized coin collections.   His company owns the first silver dollar and gold coin struck in the U.S., worth a combined $17 million.

Still, Contursi said the addition of the bronze penny to his collection is no small triumph.

“I used to go through pennies all the time in the ’50s and I was always searching for a copper 1943 penny. ... I’ve never been nearly as lucky as (Wing) was. I’ve been collecting coins since I was 5,” he said.