I had decided to surprise my wife with a special little weekend trip for our upcoming wedding anniversary.  A few different ideas had come and gone, and then I thought of a place we hadn’t been to in quite a while.

Atlantic City is only a about an hour and a half away from our house, and we aren’t huge gamblers but it does make for a nice (not to far from home) getaway.  I had booked a room at Caesar’s with a gorgeous ocean view, but we had places to go and things to see.  Our dinner reservations weren’t until later in the evening so we decided to talk a walk along the boardwalk.  This obviously isn’t peak beach season in Jersey so most of the stands and merchants along the boardwalk were closed, but spending time together was really the main reason we were there.  There are many amazing reasons I love my wife and one of them that always surprises me is her understanding of my pressed coin obsession.  While we walked along the boardwalk we stopped near the Taj Mahal casino and all of a sudden my wife said “Hey isn’t that ta penny machine?”  I knew there were some machines in AC which I had collected years past and was caught off guard that there were new machines and new designs.  Luckily I always carry extra change just for these type of encounters.

Across the boardwalk from the Taj Mahal is the famous Steel Pier.  During the summer season this place is packed with people riding classic carnival style rides and playing all the usual games to try to win an oversized stuffed animal.  During out visit unfortunately the pier was closed and covered in nice layer of snow.  Lucky for me they had pulled the penny machine out and it was located right on the boardwalk.  My cold hands fumbled with the change in my pocket but I managed to get what I needed and quickly pressed the coins.

The designs all included four separate images of the steel pier.  As you can see from the image above two of the designs pressed fine, but the other two were rolling a little short.  I don’t know if this was due to the cold weather or just over use, but hopefully the machine will get fixed before the busy summer season.

We headed back towards our hotel and headed into a mall type building that extends out over the water on a long indoor pier call the Pier Shops.  This is part of the Caesar’s resort and includes a lot of high-end stores which makes for some fund window shopping.  However for the rest of use non-high rollers there are some other stores with a family friendly budget.

First was a store called It’s Sugar.  This is exactly as the name suggest and is a very big candy store with every kind of candy you can possibly imagine.  As we wandered through this candy land I located their penny machine.  This was a machine I had previously collected and checked my online database to verify that the designs hadn’t change.

Since I didn’t press any new coins I can’t vouch for how it was pressing, but I know that the last time I used the machine it worked perfectly.  The designs are all candy related.  There was a Gum ball machine, a Chocolate Bar, and Airplane and a Lollipop.  All the designs say Atlantic City and It’s Sugar.

After filling up on some much needed sugar we continued walking through the mall and towards the end of the pier there was a round sitting area with an elevator.  As we sat down for a quick rest my wife pointed out another penny machine next to the elevator.  I walked over and pressed the set.

These designs were really cool.  There was the Atlantic City Boardwalk, Caesar’s Resort, an I Love AC poker chip, and a stack of money saying “Show me the money”.  As I rolled these designs I noticed the bottom of the penny machine cabinet said Machine #2, which meant …. There was another machine here somewhere.

As I walked back to get my wife she knows me so well that I guess the look on my face said it all.  She said “Is there another machine in here?”  I smiles and we were on our way to the second level.  Thankfully the machine was beside the elevator as we got out on the second floor.  I pressed the pennies and we were on our way back towards the boardwalk.

 

 The coins had designs of the Atlantic City skyline, a pot of coins, the Beach Patrol, and dice.  As we headed out of the Pier Shops we got back on the boardwalk we noticed a familiar sign.  We walked a little further down the boardwalk and went inside the Rainforest Cafe.

We always like to go into these locations whenever we come across them.  With our dinner reservation quickly approaching we weren’t there to eat but to browse the gift shop and the animatronic animals.  There was a penny machine near the entrance which I checked the designs and saw that they too hadn’t changed since the last time I was there.

These designs are classic Rainforest Cafe.  If you have pressed any of their designs they are all pretty similar but one unique thing is they always list the location.  These all said Atlantic City on them and had designs of different animals including a Crocodile with a Slot machine, a Gorilla flying a plane, a tree frog and a roulette wheel.

We headed back out to the boardwalk for one last look at the water and the bright blue sky before we headed back to our hotel to get changed for dinner.

It was cold out and the beach looked funny with patches of snow on it.  But this was turning into another great trip with my beautiful wife to celebrate another wonderful year together.  We did make our dinner reservation and enjoyed the rest of our stay in Atlantic City.  To be honest it’s not quite what it used to be with some of the casinos no longer open, but you can’t beat the Jersey shore even it was technically still winter.