Pressed Penny Machine Map
pennypresses.net
pennypresses.net
Fridge magnets are great too, but my fridge’s doors are made out of aluminum for some reason.
For anyone who's not familiar: all over the place at tourist attractions and airports you can find mechanical presses that will squish a penny with an embossed image. You pick one of 4 images, put in your penny + a couple of quarters and then turn a big crank handle until your newly pressed penny comes out the other side. You'd then collect squished pennies in a little collector's folio/pouch/thing for later viewing.
I guess now that pennies are getting phased out they'll have to "upgrade" the machines to work with other coins...
That said, I have seen several that take a credit card (or dollar bills) but you still hand crank them, so you still get the experience.
https://www.parkpennies.com/-dl-disneyland-pressed-coin-guid...
I knew before even entering the comment section that someone here would be spreading this myth.
Maximum clarity is achieved with pre-1982 pennies. It can be well-worn or have nicely-defined features; that doesn't matter, those features are getting smashed anyway. (Post-1982 pennies are primarily zinc and tend to produce smeary results that have their own way of being interesting, but that's not what you asked about.)
Sometimes, the grime on an old coin gets in the way. You can wash it first. Take it in the bathroom that's always nearby at these touristy places and use soap and water; get it spruced up a bit.
You can even polish it. Coin collectors hate the idea of chemical polishing but they aren't invited to this coin-smashing party anyway. There's lots of different things that can be used to make copper shiny and bright and some are very easy to find while out and about.
Like ketchup, from the burger joint right over there: Just smoosh some ketchup around on a penny that's already fairly clean and the acids in the ketchup will do a decent job of making it bright and pink over the course of just a few minutes. (This works on copper-bottomed cookware, too.)
If it's one of those new-fangled machines that takes credit cards and comes pre-loaded with pennies, then that's fine: Smash some pennies and clean/polish them later.
It’s probably more expensive usually $3-5 but also, it’s usually tourist trap pricing. I never have carried a penny on me since probably the 80s when I could actually use it to buy gum
In the movie Harold and Maude, Harold and Maude are sitting on the shore near an amusement park, and Harold says "I made you something" and gives her one of these medallions from the park, reading "Harold loves Maude." She expresses appreciation, then throws it into the water. He's stunned and asks why, and she replies, "So I'll always know where it is."
Whenever I come across one of these machines I make a medallion that says "Geoff loves Katerina" for my wife, but over many years, she only has four of them. I'd like to find more machines.
As I said, most are aluminum. There used to be a machine like this at the exit from Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland. That one used "doubloons" made of some other (heavier) metal.
At least, not a single one I’ve seen.