I will admit that I’m no art expert, but there are plenty of famous paintings and sculptures that I do enjoy and have been lucky enough to see in person. Living in New Jersey I had many famous art museums in New York and Philadelphia I could visit as well as many others along my travels. But I think the art work on our beloved pressed pennies is certainly more up my ally. I really wish I had some artistic talent but unfortunately I do not. There are however so many very talented artists out in the world that you just never know what you are going to come across. That bring us to this amazing item that our friend Erica sent over and is kind of a mashup of pressed pennies and a more classic form of art. Let’s take a look at this beautiful butterfly.

This flattened penny creation is a combination of a spark plug, bike chain, and washers all welded together to form the body and wing structure. As we take a closer look at her wings, we can see they are adorned with some pressed pennies.

The pennies included in this piece are from the Lydia Mountain Gift Shop in Stanardsville, Virginia. Two of the designs are the same showing off the Old Wash House, and the other two designs show off the Lydia Mountains and Lodge. I checked on pennycollector.com and it appears these pennies are still available in case you are in the area and want to press a set for your collection. The listing did show a fourth design of the Shenandoah National Park which I would have loved if it was included in the butterfly replacing the duplicate design so that I had the full set on display here.

Our friend Erica did let me know that this item was not something she created but instead she somehow found it on Etsy before I came across it. I really think this is a fun and certainly a unique item I have never seen before. I don’t know if each butterfly comes with the same pressed pennies, or if different ones are available. I’m also hoping that maybe the artist will release other similar sculptures of different animals or creatures.

What do you think of this unique piece of pressed penny art? Let me know down in the comments below. Thank you for joining me again today and stay tuned for plenty more of these unique penny related items. Who knows what we will find next. Stay safe and as always Keep on Pressing!

I want to apologize for the extended time it took me to post about this “New” medallion machine. Back in May 2022 after the All-Star Sports Resort had finally reopened they released first a new pressed penny machine that you can read about here, quickly followed by a new collectible medallion machine. With everything going on I made sure to review the new penny machine, but completely forgot about the medallions. So that’s what we are going to focus on in today’s adventure, plus there is currently a bit of a unique situation happening to this machine.

When I used to live in New Jersey and visited Walt Disney World, most of my visits I stayed at one of the All-Star Resorts. I believe I only stayed at Sports once, but they are all pretty much laid out in a similar fashion. There is one main building with the check-in, gift shop, food court, and arcade, then all the guest rooms are in various buildings nearby.

The penny and medallion machines can be found in this main building just outside the Game Point Arcade.

The cabinet for the new medallion machine has the same color scheme as the pressed penny machine. These colors are very close to the rest of this main building making them fit in nicely with the surrounding asthetics.

There are four medallion designs available at this location and they are all, as you may have guessed, sports themed. Goofy playing basketball, Cheerleader Minnie, Football Donald and Mickey playing soccer.

I love the design on the reverse side of the medallions that has the All-Star Sports resort logo and trophy design. These are really a fun set of coins, and I hope we see similar themed designs at the other All-Star Resorts, Music and Movies, in the future.

Now lets talk about this machine in it’s current state. As I mentioned these new sports themed medallions were available starting back in May 2022 and were there for a few months. But recently I was informed that those designs are no longer available and have been replaced with some 50th Anniversary designs.

First let me explain that these are NOT new 50th anniversary designs. These are duplicates of ones we have already found at other locations.

Above is a picture I took of the currently available medallion designs at the All-Star Sports resort. Mickey and Minnie are currently also available at the Port Orleans Riverside resort, Goofy is at Hollywood Studios in the Tower of Terror gift shop, and Donald can also be found at Disney Springs in the Pin Trader store.

So what happened, well I have a couple theories. First is that the Sport themed designs sold out or had low inventory so they replace them with some 50th anniversary designs to ensure the machine had coins to sell. Nothing worse than having a machine that can’t be used, and we saw this a few times earlier this year where they moved certain designs around when ones were out of stock.

Second possibility is that with the 50th Anniversary starting to head towards it’s completion in early 2023 I’m sure they have plenty of the 50th medallions that they want to do everything they can to sell off so they are putting them in as many machines as they have available.

Either way I would say that these 50th designs are not going to be in this location for very long. Once this stock either sells out or the 50th comes to a close, and I would then anticipate those Sports themed designs will return. Happy Collecting!

My elongated coin collection is something I’ve worked on for many years, and is primarily made up of designs from large theme parks, zoos, aquariums and many roadside attractions. I love all of them, but something I had more recently found and been exploring more and more are privately designed coins. We have reviewed quite a few already here in previous posts and I’m not slowing down anytime soon. In one of the many pressed penny Facebook groups I’m a member of, another member posted about one of his design sets that I thought was really striking. So I reached out, placed and order and was blown away when they arrived in my mail. Let me introduce you to Michael Mochizuki and he coin designs.

Michael is a fellow TEC member, and is primarily a Hawaii collector of many different categories but his main interest being elongated coins, medals and tokens. He has been designing elongated coins since 2010 specializing in Hawaiian historical subjects and commemorating various Hawaii anniversaries. To date he has created over 250 designs which is truly amazing.

One thing about some of Michael’s coin sets is the beautiful information card giving a detailed explanation of the story behind the coin design. These are limited sets that are numbered, which I think this is a fantastic touch making these sets highly sought after.

Michael’s latest design commemorates the the Honolulu Fire Department. December 7th 1941 a Day of Infamy and Fire.

The story behind the Honolulu Fire Department is really an unbelievable one, and an important part of a very tragic day in our Nation’s history. The design on this coin has some amazing details including the Department shield logo, and the Purple Heart medal.

The set I received included not only a full denomination set of coins, but also a collectible chip. Michael has quite an amazing catalog of Hawaiian elongated coin sets similar in style and amount of detail to this one. I have already ordered a few more designs so we can take a look at those in future posts. If you are interested in checking out any of Michael’s available sets I have included a link to his Facebook group page here.

Thank you for checking out more privately designed pressed coins with me, I hope you find these as interesting as I do. There are so many talented designers in our community that we have plenty to find and review. As always Keep on Pressing. Mahalo!

I’ve always really enjoyed visiting Universal Studios as far back as I can remember. In previous posts I’ve mentioned how much I loved their classic attractions like Kongfrontation, Disaster and of course the infamous Jaws ride. Unfortunately they have all been replaced with some great new rides and one not so great (ahem…Fast and the Furious Super Charged). I was certainly not happy when they decided to remove Jaws, and that wound still stings a bit from time to time, but when they replaced it with Diagon Alley and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter over in Islands of Adventure, theme parks would never be the same again. The design and theming is amazing, being able to use a wand to cast spells, the food and Butterbeer are great, and of course the merchandise is fantastic. It took some time but we did eventually get some Harry Potter themed pressed pennies not too long ago.

But there was something I was surprised they had not released and that was a themed booklet to keep your pressed pennies safe. Universal over the years has not had many options when it comes to these penny booklets or albums. Most are just the Universal logo and nothing else. Thankfully that has all changed with the release of a brand new collectible coin album designed around Hogwarts.

There are three Harry Potter penny machines, one in City Walk and then one each in the parks Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure. On a recent visit I checked on all three machines and they each had a display on top filled with these new coin albums.

The cost is $12 which I will admit is quite a bitch cheaper than the nearby Disney versions. If you are an annual passholder your discount will apply to this item.

Embedded in the front cover of the album is a special pressed penny not available in any of the machines around property. The coin says Wizarding World and what appears to be an open book with the pages fanned out.

There are four pages with a total of 44 small plastic sleeves that you can insert your recently pressed pennies. It’s a perfect place for all 24 of the Harry Potter themed pennies, but of course you can store whatever other special pennies you have in here as well. Or maybe, we can expect more Harry Potter designs in the future?

On the last page page I noticed some larger sized plastic sleeves and thought maybe they were for the newer collectible medallions we have been finding at the parks. Once I got home I tested one out and sure enough they fit perfectly.

These new Hogwarts collectible coin albums seem to be pretty popular and I saw quite a few people picking them up. I don’t think these are a limited quality item and would assume these will be available for quite awhile. Hopefully we do see some more Potter pennies at some point in the future, and Universal please somehow figure out how to let me use my wand to activate the machine, or add it to an in-park game with a secret penny design like they used to have in Epcot with the Agent P game.

Now that I have my new album and full set of pennies I think it’s time to cool off with a Butterbeer.
Keep on Pressing