Pressed Pennies

Does anyone collect pressed pennies? On my vacation to the wonderful UP of Michigan last year I got about 20 different pressed pennies and even got a little souvenior book that holds em all. So whenever I go on vacation from now on I take a roll of quarters and a roll of pennies.

 

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I probably have about 15 from when I was a kid lol. I'd be willing to sell them cheap... pm me if you want lol.

 

I think pressed pennies are pretty neat in their own way. I am not an avid collector of them, but I get one whenever I see one of those machines. There was an article in one of my coin club's publications a few years ago on these. Apparently, there is some real interest among a small group of collectors.

 

I have a few from Table Mountain and Kruger national park in South Africa. They use just plain copper planchets. Pretty niffty

 

I get em when I can. Usually U don't do it unless I have a copper cent. The zincolns suck and rot out.

 

got a bunch from disney parks, quarters and pennies

 

I have a 1962 Seattle World's fair elongated penny. I also have a few miscellaneous coins from a trip to Oregon a few years ago.

I think they're cool.

 

My favorite flea market vendor finds them for me all the time. I too, will drop a penny in a machine when I see one. Inexpensive, and some are just cool. My favorite is one from the 1907 Jamestown Exhibition (Pochahantas), pressed onto a 1907 Indian Head cent. And no, I wasn't there . It was one of those found by the aforementioned vendor.

 

My wife collects them. She's got a couple thousand.

 

i dont realy get the pressed penny thing.
So it is basicly a machine where you put in a cent and then the machine strecthes it and put a new design on it? or am i totaly wrong?

 

its kind of like a gumball machine lol you put in your 50 cents and the penny and choose the design then you crank the wheel and smash the penny its like putting it on a train track but the trains wheel has a design on it. i own a few from disney world i usually use canadian cents lol

 

PennyCollector.com

PressedPenny.com

 

there are some nice items in the pressed penny categorie.
But i am not going to collect them, going to concetrate on my coin/bill/token collection (in that order)

 

My family has a about 50 elongated pennies, and they are interesting mementos. My favorites are the ones we got from Fenway Park & the summit of Mount Washington, NH. With regard to elongating pennies, I have always wondered about its legality http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/331 -- although there must be a blind eye turned towards it because the pressing machines are at many tourist spots. Quite possibly elongated pennies don't fall under the code's umbrella -- or not enough for the Feds to really care.

 

They don't. If you look at that law both claues require that there be fraudulent intent before it is illegal. There is no fraud involved in the creation of these things so they are perfectly legal. (Now if you were to copy the design of one that happens to be rare and valuable so you can make up some fakes to sell as the real thing, that would be fraudulent and those pieces would be illegal under this statute.

 

Upon review, I agree, Condor -- "fradulent" is the key term here. Otherwise, there would be quite a few folks out there (making coin jewelry, enameled ASEs, ...) who are breaking the law. I'm going to guess that the US Mint isn't too happy about the practice, though.

 

Condor is correct, no fraudulent intent means no laws are broken. As far as the mint, they made their money (seigniorage) when they released the coins, so my guess is, they could care less.

 

When you look at the production numbers, I'm betting that the number of coins being squashed in those machines is tiny compared to what is produced in an average calender year.

 

Just make sure you don't clean them, it will ruin the value, A little off topic but the rail flattened coins I found searching with my son. The railway ran through a YMCA camp. I love the 1940 nickel.

 

nice. i have a rail flattened coin from my grandfather. i remember him optimistically thinking it was a mint error. he of course told the story to me and my father and how he found it by the railroad tracks. my father said to him "dad it got run over by the train. i did that all the time as a kid." my grandfather pretended he hadn't heard him and still advocated his mint error theory.