It looked like free money all over the highway. But even the most opportunistic of motorists likely passed by without taking any.

Early Thursday morning, a tractor-trailer on Interstate 95 near the Delaware Memorial Bridge hit a highway barrier, flipped over and caught fire, spilling about 45,000 pounds of blank pennies across the northbound lanes, according to the Delaware State Police.

That means about eight million coins covered the roadway. Had they been stamped, they would have been worth about $81,600.

Master Cpl. Jeffrey Hale, a police spokesman, confirmed that the vehicle had been heading to the Philadelphia Mint and that the coins were blank. That means, of course, that they were simply discs of copper-plated zinc that dreamed of being pennies.