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Just weeks after the Canadian penny was pulled out of circulation, the single most famous one-cent coin ever produced in this country — an “exceedingly rare” and valuable 1936 “dot cent” stolen from a U.S. collector in 1964, then mysteriously returned to him — is set to be sold at an American auction next month for at least $250,000.

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The penny was one of just three known to have been created by the Royal Canadian Mint at a time when the nation’s coin-makers were scrambling to prevent a shortage of properly stamped coppers. The crisis loomed at the end of a tumultuous year for coin engravers, during which George V died and his son, Edward VIII, became king for only a brief reign before abdicating in favour of his younger brother, George VI.

Between the time Edward VIII gave up the throne in December 1936 (to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson) and George VI was formally crowned in May 1937, nervous Canadian officials — lacking a profile portrait of the unexpected new king to stamp on the country’s coinage — prepared for a stopgap re-minting of the old George V design.

To distinguish any new batch of coins that might have been required from the earlier production runs of 1936 George V pennies, a tiny dot was added by mint technicians in the space beneath the “1936” date of the posthumous prototypes, believed to have been made in early 1937.