For many collectors it can be difficult to ensure you have collected and entire set of coin designs. We have many great resources like ParkPennies.com for Disneyland coins, Presscoins.com for Walt Disney World and Pennycollector.com for more general elongated coins around the country and internationally. However there are some more niche areas of the hobby that cannot be found within these online databases and instead we have found some unique books and catalogs to help with those areas of your collection.

First let’s check out the Yesterday’s Elongated book by Lee Martin and Dottie Dow. This is widely thought of as the main resource for early elongated coins.

This was originally published in 1981, and was then out of print for quite awhile before a second printing became available in 2004, and then a third printing in 2008. Each edition has a different color cover to help distinguish them.

Inside are hundreds of elongated coin pictures, and detailed descriptions of each design including information on different design variations. I don’t have many of these coins in my own personal collection, but I still enjoy paging through it and learning about all these different early designs that are floating around out there. If you are interested in a copy of this book you can get a copy from the TECNews online store here. There is a discount for TEC members, with instructions in the book description on how to get your discount if applicable.

Next we have a really amazing catalog that was created by fellow collector Rich Rich Bottles Jr and details Elongated Coins of West Virginia 1913 to 2021.

This is a spiral bound catalog with hundreds of high quality pictures of each elongated coin design. This includes many known coin designs available throughout West Virginia both retired and currently still available. There are descriptions of each coin, and details on the location.

I don’t personally have too many pressed pennies from West Virginia. However years ago my wife and I passed through on a vacation and I was able to get one from a Cabela’s Sporting Goods store in Wheeling, WV. Sure enough I found it inside this catalog as I had no doubt it would be there. This was certainly a passion project for Rich and I have heard he may have some similar versions for different US states in the works.

Our last entry for today’s book club review is this Penny Presses Mega List of Pressed Penny Machines. This is actually a book I have received quite a few comments and messages about asking if I had checked it out. Well now I have, and let me share some thoughts.

Upon first glance this appears to just be a compilation of the online database from the website Pennypresses.net. Now this is not a bad thing, as they state on the front this contains info on over 3000 penny machines across the United States. It’s organized by state, and then city to help you find machines that may be nearby your current location. But there is no information about how many machines may be at that location, how many designs are at the machine, or what type of coin can be pressed.

Here is just a quick example. On the above pictures page I checked out the entry for Disney’s Hollywood Studios but it just lists the address. There is no info on what machines can be found there. Now I’m sure you all know from my previous posts I spend quite a bit of time at the Walt Disney World parks and know that at Hollywood Studios they currently have over 25 machines, and almost 130 designs in total. Going of the above page only would make it very difficult to prepare for acquire the pennies at this location.

Another entry that caught my eye was at the Grand Floridian Resort and listed a machine (or more?) at the Boat Launch which I was pretty sure was not accurate.

Sure enough after a quick trip over to the resort I can confirm this entry was not accurate and there is no machine available at the Boat Launch. Now this was just a couple examples and I will admit that I skimmed through the pages for New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania that were my old stomping grounds and I pressed many pennies in those states. Those entries all appeared to be accurate based on my memory of the machines I visited in years past. I can only imaging that trying to maintain a list like this with over 3000 machines nationwide is obviously not going to be 100% accurate.

My recommendation is that this book can be a great starting point when you are trying to prepare for an upcoming trip or vacation with a few side stops to press some pennies. Use this in conjunction with other resources like pennycollector.com or even one of the elongated coin Facebook groups available. Members in those groups are always more than happy to help confirm information on their local machines.

One last item I wanted to review is that websites like pennycollector.com and pennypresses.net are heavily reliant on collectors and visitors to their sites. Most of the information is initially collected through a massive data import but as we found is not completely accurate. It then relies on us users to help update the information for other collectors. I did go on pennypresses.net to submit a comment about that Grand Floridian Boat Launch entry and hopefully this is a way they can update the information in their database. If you find any information on either of these websites that needs to be updated, please take some time to do so, your fellow collectors will thank you immensely for your effort.

Keep on Pressing!

Over the years I’ve been lucky enough to see hundreds of Disney fireworks shows and parades. Every so often they get changed or moved from park to park, but there is one that has always been my absolute favorite and that is the Main Street Electrical Parade.

Currently at the time of writing this post the Electrical Parade is running at Disneyland in California, and is celebrating it’s 50th anniversary. It has changed parks over time, and there were rumors it would arrive at Walt Disney World for our 50th anniversary but that did not happen unfortunately. Disneyland however has released some special merch to help celebrate the parades special anniversary.

For most guests the special merchandise can be found in various shops around the park like the Emporium, us coin collectors however find ourselves heading into the Main Street Penny Arcade.

Years ago when I visited Disneyland last, I remember heading into the Penny Arcade and it was filled with pressed penny machines. Unfortunately those days are long gone and for the most part penny machines have been removed from this spot. Recently though a brand new Collectible Medallion machine has made an appearance.

These medallions are fantastic. I love that they show off some of the iconic vehicles and characters from the parade including the main band car, Firefly, Mr. Snail and my personal favorite Elliot from Pete’s Dragon.

The reverse side of each medallions has the above stating the Main Street Electrical Parade 50th anniversary. I am completely in love with this set and was thankfully that friend from our collecting community was able to grab a set for my collection.

As with all Disney celebrations the 50th anniversary of this parade will eventually end and I’m sure these coins will be retired as well. So if you are interested in a set I would make sure you try and acquire them as soon as you can. I’m still hoping that at some point this parade will make the trip across the country so I can see it again here in Florida. But until then at least I have these coins and my favorite dragon Elliot. Keep on Pressing!

In a recent post we were spending a little time in the wild west over at Frontierland, but today we are back and jumping into the future with a visit to Tomorrowland for some out of this world new pressed pennies.

We didn’t need to go too far inside Tomorrowland before found Star Tours attraction (a class I enjoy to this day) but for this visit more importantly we needed to find the Star Trader store.

Outside of this store there are already two existing 3-design press quarter machines that we have taking a look at previously and you can check that out here. This visit however we need to head inside to find the new machine.

This new machine cabinet is fantastic, and it looks like it could have come right out of a Star Wars movie, or removed from an Imperial Starship.

The penny designs included with this set include characters from both the original trilogy and new trilogy (someone the middle trilogy is overlooked…hmm). We can see Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker, Vader, our favorite droids, Rey and Kylo Ren.

On the reverse side of each penny is this wonderful backstamp of the Star Wars logo. I’ve said it many times in the past, but I love these backstamps and wish that Walt Disney World here in Florida would do this.

As I was inspecting this new set of pennies the designs seemed very recognizable. Sure enough after a quick search I found that we had very similar designs here in Florida at WDW. The full 8 designs are actually split among two different machines here one a Hollywood Studios and the other at Disney Springs. In the comparison I created above you can see that they are very similar but the Disneyland version seems to have been updated and improved a little bit.

Thank you for tagging along on this galactic trip to Tomorrowland and tracking down these new Star Wars themed pennies. I would have loved to see all new designs instead of using these already released images, but at least they have that great backstamp on them. Enjoy the rest of your day, and as always Keep on Pressing!

We are back inside Walt’s Original park Disneyland on the hunt for a new set of pressed pennies. As I mentioned in a previous post Disneyland has really started to pick up the pace with releasing new coin designs and hopefully they keep them coming.

We are skipping down Main Street and heading right into Frontierland. This was always my favorite land when I was young, and I still really enjoy it today. Across from the Shooting Arcade is a place called the Bonanza Outfitters.

Surrounding this store is a classic wooden boardwalk and that is where you can find the brand new pressed penny machine. It is not inside the store, but instead just outside on this boardwalk near the main set of doors.

It’s a standard looking plain wood cabinet but I actually think it kind of fits well in this area of the park. I would have liked to see maybe a few bullet holes in the sides or mud kicked up around the bottom to finish off the theming, however I feel like maybe this is only a temporary location.

The penny designs available in this new machine are themed around the Pixar animated movie Coco which I absolutely loved. The colors were incredible and they are certainly pushing the envelope of what computer animation can do. As I mentioned this does seem like a bit of a strange location for a set of Coco pennies, so maybe these will be moved elsewhere in the future.

Of course can’t forget to flip over the pennies and take a closer look at the Disneyland backstamp. These coins just have the standard Disneyland Park logo which is nice, but also a bit strange. I mean it makes sense since that the park they can be found in, but why not have the Frontierland logo, even the Pixar and Coco logo.

All in all this is another great set of pressed pennies and I’m happy to see more Coco themed coins. We still have a few more new sets of coins for Disneyland on the way so don’t leave the park just yet. I’ll be back soon with more details. Keep on Pressing!

It’s finally starting to look like Disneyland is back in the swing of things with releasing some new elongated coin designs. There has been quite a period of time between new releases out on the west coast, but that is all starting to change with quite a few new sets arriving in the parks over the last few weeks.

Before we head into the parks, let’s first take a trip to Downtown Disney and stop in the massive World of Disney store.

Inside this store you can find pretty much any type of Disney merchandise you could want, and previously there were two separate 3-design penny press machines located here. Those two machines are still thankfully available, but now they have added this brand new 8-design touch screen model.

I have seen fellow collectors referring to this set as the Disney Friends collection and I think that’s a great term for them. It includes many fan favorites like Aladdin & Genie, Pinnochio, Tinker Bell, Ariel and more. When I first saw these designs they looked very familiar, and sure enough these are very similar to a set we have here in Florida also at our World of Disney store which you can read about here.

The main different is that these designs list Downtown Disney at the top of each image instead of World of Disney Disney Springs.

There is one other big difference and that is the backstamp that is common among most of the Disneyland elongated coins. I love this addition to each coin, and wish they would do it here in Florida.

I’m very excited to see that Disneyland is back with some new penny designs and we do have a few additional sets on the way so stay tuned for those updates in the near future. Keep on Pressing!

I have visited Disney’s EPCOT park hundreds of times either while on Vacation, or now as a local to experience one of their numerous festivals throughout the year. But one thing I have never done is try to Drink Around the World. This is an unofficial task that guests have been enjoying for years. Basically you head to the World Showcase, start at one of the country pavilions, grab a “local” adult beverage and continue your walking all around the showcase lagoon until you have visited all 11 countries.

So I will confess that I did complete this adventure, but to try and keep things safe and not make a complete idiot of myself I did this over a few different visits. This is probably against the unofficial rules of Drinking Around the World, but hey I’m the one doing it so I an adjust the rules as I see fit.

To help me track my progress I found this cute little lanyard on Etsy that I could wright down each of my selections for the different pavilions. Now I will save you from having to read my entire review of all the beers I tried on this journey (if you do want that check out our YouTube video linked at the bottom of this post). Instead I thought I would just show off a few that I really enjoyed and have actually been able to find outside the parks at my local stores.

First up was a beer I found at a snack cart just in-between the Mexico and Norway pavilions, outside the Frozen Summerhaus meet and greet area if you are familiar with that. This was the Einstok White Ale a witbier that uses pure Icelandic glacier water. It had a slightly yeasty taste with some orange flavors, very similar in my mind to a Blue Moon. It certainly hit the spot on this hot Florida afternoon, and I really enjoyed this one.

This next one is in the Germany pavilion and is an absolutely fan favorite. I have had this on numerous occasions in the past, and have even got some of my non-beer drinking family members hooked on this one. It’s the Schofferhofer Pink Grapefruit beer a hefeweizen that is very light, citrusy, fruity and sweet at all the same time. My local grocery store has this available so my home fridge is usually fully stocked.

Many of the other pavilions had some nice options, and I enjoyed most of them. There were a couple that were not really my taste preference, but I was able to end strong at the Canada Pavilion with this one that was available at the Festival booth. Glutenberg Blonde Ale that is brewed in Montreal Quebec and has a slightly dry taste but a nice citrusy flavor as well. I loved this one and wished I had splurged on the larger size cup, instead of the smaller 6 oz festival tasting size.

I had a really fun time Drinking “Safely” Around the World in Epcot. It’s a fun way to try some things that you wouldn’t normally try which is one of my favorite things to do at their food festivals. Now I will admit this entire challenge was really just a ply for me to show off this beautiful privately designed pressed penny from our friend, fellow collector and designer Bob Frazier. He created this to honor Benjamin Franklin’s 315th birthday that took place earlier this year. He was an American writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, political philosopher, and was one of the founding fathers of the United States, drafter and signer oft he Untied States Declaration of Independence. I’m sure with all that he was involved in Ben Franklin certainly enjoyed beer, and some credit him with saying “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” Did he actually say this? Who is to know for sure, but it’s a fun thought and I’m so happy to share this amazing penny design with you.

Thank you for for being my designated driver in today’s adventure, and I hope you enjoyed taking a look at Bob’s coin design. We have a lot of very talented friends in our community and I’m always happy to share them with all of you. Enjoy the rest of your week and as always Keep on Pressing!

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** Updated 02/09/2023 The countdown has begun for when the 50th Medallions will be removed and no longer available to guests and collectors. Many of the machines now have these stickers on them confirming they will be leaving soon. So if you haven’t picked yours up yet, time is quickly running out.

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I’ll admit, when we got to 53 total medallions for Walt Disney World’s 50th Anniversary Celebration I assumed that was all of them. 50 designs for classic characters and 3 additional for the opening day on property resorts. That seems to wrap it all up nicely. But here we are months after we thought the full set had been released and I was informed by a fellow collector that 4 new designs were just released. Just a quick note on these I have updated our main post so there is an all inclusive place to see the updated information on the medallions that you can see here. But this quick post is just to try and catch your attention about these new coins and an update on an existing set. Let’s take a closer look.

Magic Kingdom

This machine can be found inside the Magic Kingdom right on Main Street inside the Hall of Champions store. This store is connected with the Main Street Emporium towards the far end closed to Casey’s Corner.

If you have been collecting the medallions you may notice that this machine has been here for awhile. The 50th Anniversary designs that were originally in this machine have been moved to the Port Orleans Riverside Resort Arcade (see further below for details).

This set has some really nice designs of Tinker Bell, Donald, Mickey & Minnie and Walt with Mickey all in front of Cinderella Castle. The reverse of each coin has a smiling Mickey face, and says The World’s Most Magical Celebration 50 Walt Disney World which is the same on all the medallions.

Port Orleans Riverside – Lobby Arcade

As mentioned above the 4 designs that were originally available in the Hall of Champions store have been moved into a new machine located at the Port Orleans Riverside Resort.

Just walk into the main lobby and to the far end you will find the Medicine Show Arcade.

The machines can be found just inside the arcade when you enter from the lobby doors. The new medallion machine has a completely white cabinet to match the two pressed penny machines nearby (these also have 50th anniversary penny designs click here to read all about those).

This set has designs of Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Lady and Tinker Bell. The reverse of each coin has a smiling Mickey face, and says The World’s Most Magical Celebration 50 Walt Disney World. Just as a reminder, if you already collected these from the Hall of Champions store in Magic Kingdom they have not changed and the designs are exactly the same.

Will we see any more 50th Anniversary Medallions, to be honest I have no idea. If you had asked me months ago I would have said no, but now it seems like maybe they are going to give us a few more during this second half of the celebration. If they do release any more you can count of us to find them, track them down and post them here so you can keep your collection complete. Thanks for everyone’s help with hunting down all these medallions, it’s been a lot of fun. Keep on Collecting!

For anyone that as followed my adventures you know I’m kind of obsessed with elongated coins, and even have dabbled with the collectible medallions we have seen at the Disney and Universal theme parks. However I’ve come across another collectible item that has piqued my interest poker chips. Now I will say up front that I’m not hit up any local casinos. It started a few years ago when I visited the FUN coin show here in Orlando and they gifted visitors a custom chip with the coin show logo on it, and more recently I ordered a privately designed elongated coin set that included a custom chip with the same design on it and that was the icing on the cake. Stay tuned for those coins in an upcoming post. As my chip collection slowly started to grow I was curious if any local attraction may offer their own. I live in central Florida so I figured if anywhere would have a gimmicky item for sale to collectors and tourists this would be the place, and sure enough I found a potential location.

Over in Kissimmee Florida is a pretty well known attraction called Congo River Golf. I remember years ago when I was much younger on a family vacation to Florida and we loved playing these overly themed courses.

There are quite a few of these located around Orlando and it seemed to look exactly as I remembered from all those years ago. The details and props they have all throughout the course are really fun.

The story of the course is themed around an old archaeological expedition. Before you even start your round of golf you have to cross this bridge that has hungry alligators below it. Yes, this is actually true, but they are just little baby gators and you can pay to feed them, or even get a picture of you holding one if that is something you are interested in.

There are two separate courses available to play, and each course has 18 holes. They do range from fairly easy, to a couple that can be quite challenging.

Keep an eye out as you move between each green, there are so many fun little details and gags you may miss them.

This is really a beautiful place to visit and it can be quite relaxing if you aren’t too intense with your game play. There is a highway nearby that can get a bit noisy but other than that it’s a nice break from the parks.

The courses are quite long and there is a bit of walking between each hole, but we found there was plenty of shaded areas and places to sit for a little break as you play. Towards the end of our course we were up on top of the waterfall which gave a beautiful overview of the entire property.

Once you are done playing you go back to the front desk to turn in your borrowed clubs. Then you can opt to feed the gators, or play in the nearby arcade if you like. Plus they have plenty of refrigerated drink machines around to try and help you cool off after your intense round of mini-golf.

While my family sat in the shade to cool off I wanted into the little gift shop area and found a display with the collectible chips I had heard about. They offered four different designs on different colored chips. The reverse side of each chip had the same image which was the Congo River Golf logo.

Unfortunately these didn’t specify they were from the Kissimmee location which would have been great. After this visit I did head over to a second location in Orlando just to double check if they had different designs but they were exactly the same. The employee didn’t know if these will be changed or updated in the future, but I guess that just means I’ll have to come back for another found to keep an eye on them. The cost was $2.99 per chip and if you buy 3 you get the fourth one free. So they are a bit more expensive than a pressed penny, but cheaper than the collectible medallions. I really love these and hope to find more places along our travels that offer this type of souvenir.

Keep on Collecting!

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