To be honest I thought I had written about this years ago, but recently I’ve had some questions and comments asking about how I first got into the hobby. When I went back through all my posts I realized that it’s apparently not something I ever wrote about in detail. So in today’s article we are going to time travel back quite a few years to where it all began. I’ll try to keep this on point and not to go onto too many tangents. Here’s my story and how I started collecting Pressed Pennies.
I’m originally from Ottawa Canada where I grew up with my parents and younger sister. We were lucky enough to go on quite a few family vacations each summer. Sometimes it was to Disneyland in California, or Disney World in Florida, and then there were other years where it was what my sister and I referred to as educational trips where we explored places that had some import Canadian historical relevance. Looking back on those trips I’m glad to have experienced them, but at the time we would always have preferred visiting the Disney parks each and ever year.
My first memory of getting a pressed penny was on one of these vacations to Florida. It was a large family trip that included my immediately family, grandparents and aunt and uncle. One day my parents were going to spend the day with my aunt and uncle, so my grandparents got to keep my sister and I busy.
They decided to take us to the classic Florida attraction Gatorland. I remember all the gators floating around, and have visit memories of the show where the staff would roll raw chickens down a wire and the gators would just out of the water attempting to gab its meal. During this visit to Gatorland I remember coming across this crazy-looking machine with all sorts of gears inside of it and a big sign on top that said you could squash your penny. I looked at my grandfather who was happy to give me some pocket change, and we quickly pressed the penny. I loved watching the gears work, and having the crushed coin drop down was such a cool little souvenir, I was blown away.
The next day we were back with my parents and headed into the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World. We had plans to see some shows, a parade and of course check out some of the rides, but now all of a sudden I had something else that my mind was focused on and that was finding more pressed penny machines. It’s not like it is today where Disney has hundreds of machines, back then I only remember a few along Main Street USA. There could have been more, but those are all I remember coming across. To this day I do not remember exactly how many I ended up with. It seems like a lot however in reality it was probably only a dozen or so. When we got back home I put them all in a special box I had in my room and even so often would open it and examine my special treasures.
Unfortunately in Canada at that time there were just no penny machines that I knew of, at least not in my town. With not having any way to continue my collection, over the years I kind of forgot about my pennies. Then years later my family moved down to New Jersey for my father’s work. I actually moved down for my Senior year of High School which was quite a change, and I’m not sure if my parents felt bad about the whole timing of that but after my graduation they gifted me a trip with a friend to Walt Disney World. For an entire week we stayed at the Coronado Springs Resort and visited each of the parks and ate at all our (still) favorite restaurants. Now being just out of High School I had a credit card but it was primarily for emergencies only so this trip I was mostly using cash for meals, and snacks. At the end of every day when I got back to our hotel room I would empty out my pockets of loose change and towards the end of the trip it had really started to pile up. I remember say “What the heck are we going to do with all the change?” and my friend mentioned we should use it in the penny machines for some souvenirs. I couldn’t believe I had completely forgotten about pressed pennies.
The last full day of our trip we had scheduled to visit Magic Kingdom again. My pockets were filled with quarters and pennies (ahh the good ol’ days) to use in the penny machines. We still had planned to go on a bunch of attractions and hoped to find penny designs featuring the rides we had experienced. This was a great way to use up all that change and I even came across a couple pressed quarter machines. Then in probably the biggest turning point in my collecting career, on one of the last machines we used I just happened to notice a sticker on it advertising pennycollector.com. This was also a time when there were no smart phones so I just took a picture of it with my point and shoot camera and tried to make a mental note to check this website out once I got home. Above is that actual photo from that trip.
Eventually once I got home and was going through my new collection of pressed coins I remembered the photo of that website. After powering up my computer I typed in the address and probably spent the next 3-4 hours just exploring all the information. There was details on the history of the hobby, tips and tricks about how to clean your pennies or the benefits of copper over zinc. Then I came to the locations tab and found a huge list of penny machines scattered all across the country but more importantly in my state of New Jersey.
I was so excited by this plethora of new trips I needed to make that I just couldn’t even wait until the following weekend to try and map out where I was going to go and get new coins. Thankfully there was a location listed with a machine that was only a few minutes from where I was living. So I hopped in my car and drove over to a Petrol Truck station in Bordentown New Jersey.
As I headed inside my heart was almost racing, I know this sounds crazy because I was only looking for a penny machine. I guess in my mind the machines were only in Disney and other Florida attractions, but it never crossed my mind that they could actually be found anywhere else. This Petrol station wasn’t too big and as I’ve come to find out is a popular location, the machine was located just outside the restrooms.
I pressed the coins and then got back in my car and headed home with my first set of New Jersey pressed pennies. However the urge to press more did not subside for too long, and before I knew it every free weekend I was spending time driving all over the state looking for more penny machines. I visited our Six Flags, aquariums, science museums and the notorious Jersey Shores. Then during one of my trips up and down the Turnpike those old pennies I had collected as a kid popped into my mind. I wondered if I could find them but it wasn’t meant to be. My parents basement as been searched many times, and all the old boxes filled with my childhood trophies and school projects also came up empty. My assumption is that they must have been either lost or tossed out at some point during one of our moves. This is still something I regret to this day and I can only imagine what some of those designs must have been. Many of them I’m sure would probably be highly sought after by collectors at this point but that’s just how collecting goes sometimes.
I do prefer to primary collect coins from locations that I’ve actually visited and that’s just my preference. There’s nothing wrong with trading or mailing away to get coins from other locations. I know plenty of other collectors that do so because they have a very specific theme or category they like to collect and that’s just the easiest way to do when, plus not everyone is able to travel all over the country. I find it’s just part of the adventure that I like and when I look at those individual coins I can remember the vacations we took, or the trips we went on, and for some reason I have quite vivid memories of almost every penny machine I’ve ever used. I guess when it’s something you truly love, those images and memories just stick with you.
My wife is a saint. She is not a pressed penny collector herself, but she knows how important it is to me and just how much I love it. She always lets me add some side trips to our vacations when there is a penny machine nearby and never complains. Plus every so often I’m even able to get her to press some pennies for me and I absolutely love her for that.
That’s how it all start for me with collecting pressed pennies. I continued collecting through the years and eventually decided to start this Blog with my very first post on March 18, 2014 about a trip I took to get some pennies from the Great Wolf Lodge in the Pocono Mountains. Then on August 30, 2017 I started our Youtube Channel all in an attempt to share my passion for the his wonderful hobby, be sure to check it out and subscribe for some really fun elongated coin videos each and every week.
I’ve heard from so many of your through comments, emails and direct messages and I truly appreciate each and every one of you that takes the time to visit and partake in my adventures. Who would have thought these tiny little inexpensive souvenirs could bring so many people together.
Keep on Pressing!
David's Coin Travels 