Not too long ago I had an outing with some High School Hockey team alumni that happened up in Jacksonville Florida. This was quite a drive from the Orlando area, but I arrived safely and with some extra time on my hands. Being the ever vigilant pressed penny collector I quickly checked one of my main resources pennycollector.com and sure enough there was a machine near by.

Known as MOSH the Museum of Science & History was located just on the outskirts of the downtown area. I’m a sucker for any type of museum so I park around back, purchased a ticket and headed inside.

When I was young we had a Natural History museum in my home town that I absolutely loved. I’m pretty sure that’s where my obsession with dinosaurs came from. Plus mix in some science experiments and I knew this was going to be a fun place.

The main floor was mostly themed around local Florida wildlife, including this area that was pretty dark but I think was to mimic like we were under water. There were skeletons of manatees, dolphins and plenty of information on turtles and other marine life.

I was hoping to see a lot of dinosaurs but there was only this one. It was still a great one and that pose was kind of intimidating. I’m always taken back by just how large these incredible creatures were.

In this enclosed area which I assume is probably used by a lot of school trips and educational visits had more Florida wildlife only the smaller sized friends like snakes, lizards, and even some birds.

Time to head up to the second floor and I was immediately sucked into the Space section. There were quite a few interactive exhibits for kids (and grownups) to learn with and even had a rover you VR you could drive. Eventually I found myself in the NASA section with some replicas of Neil Armstrongs spacesuit, some space rocks, and even models of the various rockets throughout the space programs history.

The other half of the second floor was dedicated to the history of the Jacksonville area. I really loved this section. It started with the history of local native tribes, colonization and continues up to the twentieth century. There was an area setup like an old town where you would walk among all the different store fronts. Each window gave a glimpse into that era and had items and products from the time period on display.

As I exited the History of Jacksonville area I literally almost walked into the museums pressed penny machine that was just around the corner.

The cabinet design and color for this machine was fun but not too wild. I still think that science museums especially should have really intricate penny machines almost like a Rube Goldberg Machine that had a bunch of crazy moving parts (useful or otherwise) before your penny drops into the bottom. I’m sure this is way too much work for the revenue it may earn. Or maybe it would make the machine that much more fun and popular to use.

The pennies pressed a little short but thankfully most of the images still appeared on the pennies. There isn’t much different between these, really just the museum’s logo with a different icon for the “O” and separate tagline. I guess it could be worse and these could have just been very generic “science museum” designs however it would have been nice if these were a little more diverse.

I didn’t have a ton of time to explore the museum, but what I did experience was great and I would love to bring my kids here sometime in the future. Keep on Pressing!

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