This weekend an American collector showed how $3.01 in pennies could be turned into millions.

Friday night at an auction on Long Beach the rare collection of 301 American pennies of Walter Husak gathered $10.7 million.

The collection included some of the rarest examples of the early American pennies, like a cent which was minted in 1793 only for two weeks representing Lady Liberty with the wind in her hair.

Husak was a little sad to sell his collection, but surprised about the auction. He said: "It was a stupendous auction. I still can't even believe it," Los Angeles Times reports.

According to the officials from the auction house, this was a “once-in-a-lifetime event” for coin aficionados.

Heritage Auction president Greg Rohan said that it was a “fabulous night.”

“Every major coin collector of American cents was either there in person, bidding online or on the telephone,” he added.

The prices for two 18th-century coins broke the records having sold for $632,500 each.

The collection includes coins from the days of Washington and Jefferson, 1793 to 1814.

Almost 200 collectors gathered in a room at the Long Beach Convention Center on Friday night for an auction that was supposed to last for two hours, but continued for four hours into the night. Hundreds of others collectors were bidding by the phone and online.

The collection fetched 10 times it’s estimated worth.  

The reason for all this frenzy is that Husack has been hanging on to the collection for quite some time.

Rohan said: “These coins had been off the market for decades. People had been waiting… for the chance to buy some of them.”

Also the quality of the coins was also another reason. According to Rohan, some of them looked like they were just taken out of the press at the mint.

Husak became a collector of coins at the age of 13 when his grandparents paid him with them for the choirs he did around the house. He owned an aerospace-part manufacturing company and by the 1980s he already sold his collection for a '54 Cadillac and a down payment on a Chino house.

Husak estimated of spending about $5 million over time in collecting the coins. He said that at the auction he was only happy that he will get the money back, but was he wrong or what?

His wife, Patricia said that she never knew how much her husband spent on his collection.

She added: "I know he's going to start collecting something. There's just no way he cannot collect."