With all the new pressed pennies and medallions being released so far for 2024, honestly a new set of Star Wars themed coins was not what I thought we would get. I’m not complaining as I’m a pretty big Star Wars fan, plus it gave me an opportunity to visit a section of Hollywood Studios I don’t often go to.
Back in what used to be called Animation Courtyard, I’m actually not sure if that’s still the official name or not. It’s where the Little Mermaid stage show, and the Disney Junior Dance Party can be found. All the way in the back is a large marquee for the Star Wars Launch Bay.
It’s easily been 3 or 4 years since I’ve been back in here. I remember they used to have a theater where you could watch trailers for upcoming Star Wars movies, or maybe even a little “history” of Star Wars video but now it’s really just a meet and greet area with a really slimmed down memorabilia area.
There used to be a ton of models from the different movies, and props, costumes and so much more. There wasn’t much in here in they way of props but the few items they did still have were interesting to see in person.
The main area in the middle of this building is where you can meet a few different Star Wars characters including Chewie, BB-8 and Darth Vader. As you can see from the above photo it wasn’t too busy inside.
This area is also where I found the new medallion (and existing pressed penny machine in case you were looking for it). The penny machine used to be outside the Launch Bay near the exit for the gift shop that seems to no longer be available.
The machine offers 4 different medallion designs including Darth Vader with a couple Storm Troopers, Mando & Grogu, Chewie, and the famous Droid Trio of C-3PO, R2-D2 and BB-8. Unlike many of the other medallions we have collected in the past that are more golden in color and very reflective, these are more of a darker tarnished color which I actually really liked. Not sure if that’s just because they photograph easier, but they also don’t attract fingerprints as easily which is a big plus.
The design on the reverse side of each coin here are all identical and just shows the Star Wars trademark logo among a consultation of stars.
The Star Wars Launch Bay always seems like it’s just really disconnected from the Galaxy’s Edge area of the park, and with the limited props and other items inside this really seems to have become an afterthought. Hopefully they can revamp it, but for now it’s at least a fairly quiet place to take a break and get some air conditioning if needed, or just a set of these new medallions.
Keep on Collecting!
David's Coin Travels 
Hi David, I recently bought these on eBay and I also like the tarnished look, especially for the Star Wars theme. I have the Mandalorian set from Disneyland and the designs are different except the Mando & Grogu one is repeated. The DL ones don’t have the stars and they are bronze though.
Do you know if there’s a catalog of Disney World pennies and medallions similar to parkpennies.com for Disneyland? I’m looking for Star Wars medallions and for WDW I found 2 in the Disney 50 set and three in the Disney 100 set. Thank you for all the great posts!
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That’s fantastic. I really liked the look and style of those medallions and wish they would use it more often.
For Walt Disney World pressed pennies the best place to use would be presscoins.com. They do assign their own catalog number system which you can use to help organize your collection. They don’t quite have the level of detail that parkpennies does with original release dates, and removal dates of older designs but I still use them as my primary source for my collection. Unfortunately they don’t catalog the medallions on that site and so far I haven’t found anywhere that does. Some facebook groups like “Disney Coin Pressers” has user created medallion checklists that are pretty good and may be an option to try and check out to see if it works for you.
Hopefully some of this will help. Good luck with your collection, it’s a lot of fun to track down some of those older coins and add them to your collection.
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Thank you for the tips! I used to rarely buy medallions, but I’ve gotten into the Disney ones recently. Your post on the colored ones intrigued me and the medallions in general are nicer to look at when I get home (although I still love getting pennies).
I didn’t like how the medallions made my binder pages heavy and I found your helpful video on medallion storage. I think I’ll get the smaller 2×3 book on Amazon and maybe the military challenge coin display cabinet. I like the idea of the cabinet because the items can easily be changed and it can display other things like pins or small momentos. Plus, I’d get to actually look at some of my collection without going to the binders. Thanks again.
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