Pressed Penny Machine Map

wwillmeyers about 4 hours ago 34 commentsRead Article on pennypresses.net

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SyzygyRhythm•10 minutes ago

I love penny smashers. I have a paradoxical attitude toward souvenirs: on one hand, I like to have reminders of places I've visited as well as a physical token of "proof" that I've been there; on the other hand, I hate household clutter and don't like to spend money on what amounts to junk. Penny smashers fill a perfect role. They are literally a token of proof that I've been to a place, while also taking up almost no space and being very cheap.

nianderwallace•8 minutes ago

There used to be one at the World Trade Center. Before 9/11.

wasmperson•about 3 hours ago

Are these a thing outside the US?

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...

VariousPrograms•about 3 hours ago

Many traditional machines where you put in 2-4 quarters and a real penny have been phased out for credit card readers now that just drop a penny from inside the machine. It does kind of ruin some of the charm.

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS•about 1 hour ago

They're not even a penny anymore; they're using copper blanks.

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.

dawnerd•about 1 hour ago

Was just in vegas and one of them kept spitting out blanks. I have a feeling people swiped their card and didn't realize they needed to keep rotating and assumed it broke. Ended up with a whole collection before getting tired and leaving it. No telling how many more it would have spit out.

ygra•about 2 hours ago

They do exist here in Germany as well, mostly in tourist destinations. The map does not show any outside the US, though. OpenStreetMap has 662 of them here.

bluedino•about 2 hours ago

For those who have not seen one in action:

https://youtube.com/shorts/HzCCsZB4jKg?is=377XKg7gUXfMHzA2

QuantumNomad_•about 2 hours ago

I used a machine like that in Sweden or Norway once many years ago, but although it pretended to squish the coin you put into it I am almost completely sure that this particular machine was instead using a different piece of metal that was already flat and softer material than the metal in a real coin.

zahlman•about 2 hours ago

They have this sort of thing on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, but I think they take nickels now (since pennies haven't been minted since 2012).

pimlottc•about 1 hour ago

There was one in Strasbourg, France, by the cathedral

pezezin•about 2 hours ago

I have seen them in Japan and many European countries, but I don't remember which ones :/

ColinWright•about 1 hour ago

There's one at the Leeds armoury in the UK.

gilgoomesh•about 2 hours ago

Destroying currency is crime in Australia, so no, this has never been a thing, here.

gregdeon•about 2 hours ago

Same here in Canada. The solution is that the machines accept a Canadian quarter to run the press, but an American penny to be pressed. No Canadian currency is harmed!

fragmede•about 2 hours ago

It's technically a crime in America too, but I guess Americans are more outlaw than Australians in that rather specific regard.

Sohcahtoa82•8 minutes ago

> It's technically a crime in America too

I knew before even entering the comment section that someone here would be spreading this myth.

OkayPhysicist•about 1 hour ago

Only with intent to defraud is it a crime in America to deface US currency. Shaving a bit of the copper off every penny you touch, to melt down and profit from? Crime. Scribbling off the 1 on a $10 bill and scribbling on a 2? Crime. Cutting up pennies to show off the unmatched strength of your shitty kitchen shears? Perfectly legal.

bluedino•about 2 hours ago

It's legal in America

https://www.parkpennies.com/-dl-disneyland-pressed-coin-guid...

philips•about 1 hour ago

Tower Bridge in London has several.

sfdlkj3jk342a•about 3 hours ago

I saw one in El Salvador recently (they use US currency, including pennies).

jambalaya8•about 2 hours ago

They have them in Canada, or at least they used to in 1983.

Waterluvian•8 minutes ago

I hate how they don’t actually press the penny. They have a whole stack of blanks to use.

At least, not a single one I’ve seen.

bnycum•about 3 hours ago

If you are into the ones at Walt Disney World, https://www.presscoins.com/

niwtsol•about 3 hours ago

You don't see a lot of sites that use a window.alert() to tell you to sign up like that... would love an about us to know who had the passion to make this.

willmeyers•about 3 hours ago

I should have posted the plain URL https://pennypresses.net/ they have an About Us section and more info about the project.

RobotToaster•about 3 hours ago

There's also https://www.pennycollector.com/

odyssey7•about 2 hours ago

I feel an urge to visit and fill in data for all the nearby ones.

xgulfie•about 3 hours ago

Does anyone know how to get a "good" penny for these machines? Often mine are hard to interpret when they're done and just look like a garbled mess. Do I need a penny that is sufficiently old or what

ssl-3•about 2 hours ago

As a person who has never walked by a penny smasher without smashing a penny: Any old copper penny is fine. Pick the cleanest one you have.

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.

willmeyers•about 3 hours ago

I'd imagine that pennies minted before 1982 (those that are mostly copper) are best for these machines. The newer pennies (now discontinued R.I.P.) probably aren't great under pressure.

conductr•about 3 hours ago

The new machines I’ve used lately, my kid is into it, take credit card and have the penny preloaded

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

RobotToaster•about 3 hours ago

Best to use an old solid copper one, for the USA that's before 1982, for the UK before 1992.