I’m always looking to try new things when it comes to pressed pennies and a few months ago I came across something that a fellow collector was organizing. The description sounded interesting and fairly straight forward so I sent him a message through Facebook and signed up. Basically this was an opportunity to trade a bunch of pressed pennies through the mail. The organizer would put together a box that contained 50 pressed penny sets, and it would be mailed to the first people on the list, then when they were done trading with the box, they would send it to the next person on the list until everyone had a chance to go through it and the box would eventually be returned to the organizer.

There was no cost to sign up and the only financial responsibility was each person needed to cover the cost to ship the box to the next person on the list. It was required that the package be sent priority mail with tracking so try and ensure it didn’t get lost along the way. That cost was roughly about $9.00 so that wasn’t too bad and I was pretty intrigued by this.

It didn’t take too long for me to get confirmation back from the organizer that was all signed up and at that time I was also sent the rules to review. They were pretty straight forward and basically just gave more details on how the box would work. You were supposed to not break up a set, and needed to trade full set for full set which all made sense. It did also request that only copper sets be traded unless it was one of the new 8-design machines that is preloaded with zinc pennies which was allowed. Once I agreed to the rules and terms it was then just time to wait for my turn to arrive with the box.

It took a little less than a month before I had the box in hand. Once I had it opened there were a few different bags, once with some loose individual pennies both zinc and copper, a second bag had some zinc sets, and the third bag was all copper sets.

I perused the individual coins, and zinc sets with not much catching my eye. But once I was in the copper sets things got interesting. Each bag included a little note that had information about where the coins were from which great and helped make going through them a little easier.

I found coins from Missouri, Nevada, California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and many more places throughout the US. It took quite awhile to go through all of them, and I really enjoyed seeing what was included.

Once I was done going through all of the coins I had put aside 8 full sets and 2 individual designs. These weren’t sets had previously been looking for or missed along my travels, but instead just had designs that caught my eye and I immediately wanted them for my collection.

Above was one of the first individual pennies I found in the miscellaneous bag. The design from was the Oklahoma Aquarium and was of a Water Snake. Now I’m not normally a snake fan, but this design was just too cool to pass up. I loved the image of the snake and all the bubbles around it was just very unique and not something I’d seen before.

Next was a set from Kennebunk Maine and had some really fun designs as well. I’m a sucker for a good Lighthouse design, and that lobster I just couldn’t pass up.

Another of the sets I pulled aside was from the National frontier Trails Museum in Independence Missouri. The details on these coins was really impressive.

This next set I found very interesting. Years ago when I was vacationing in Orlando Florida I visited a Titanic Experience along International Drive specifically because they had a pressed penny machine. I didn’t realize that there were more Titanic attractions around and figured I now needed to try and collect all the different sets.

There were a few other sets I picked out but won’t go over in this post just to try and keep it a from going on too long, but if you want to see all of the sets and more of this process you can see our YouTube video at the very bottom. This last set for this post was from the Circus Circus Casino and Resort in Las Vegas Nevada. I visited Las Vegas quite a few years ago with my wife for a quick weekend trip to see a UFC event, and we had very little time to sightsee. I was able to press a few pennies at the MGM Grand and Luxor resorts but I know there are so many more and this set just called to me so I put it aside for myself. Guess I need to hurry up and schedule another longer trip to Vegas to try and get the rest of the resort themed pennies.

Following all the rules I had some duplicate copper sets from Florida, Vermont, Pennsylvania and New Jersey to try and help give some variety to the mystery penny box. I filled out similar white labels with the location information before I placed my traded sets inside the box, taped it all up and shipped it out the next day. One of the rules was to try and turn around the box within a few days to keep it moving and I had it back out the following day.

Of course the big question is would I do it again. Now I’ve mentioned in the past that for my collection I primarily prefer to only collect pressed pennies from placed that I have actually visited. That’s not to say that’s the only way you should do it, and the nice thing about collections is they are all personalized and you can do them however you like. With that all said however I did really enjoy going through the box and seeing all the different pennies, the incredible designs and was kind of amazing at just how far some of these coins had traveled. It was a lot of fun, and I’m happy with the new coins I have added to my collection. So the final verdict is yes I really liked this and would definitely do it again. I’ll be on the look out for other similar programs as the allure of a mystery pressed penny box is quite exciting.

Have you participating in a similar program? What did you think and did you get any special coins? Be sure to let me know down in the comments below, I’d love to hear all about it. Thanks for visiting this week and as always Keep on Pressing!

---