The 2024 Summer Olympics will be commencing soon. Starting July 26th in the City of Lights Paris France.
To celebrate collector and elongated coin designer Alex Mruk has created a special series of ten elongated coins depicting different Olympic sports.
During his research Alex found that the 1924 Olympics were also held in Paris, and he loved the art used for some post cards done by artist E. Blanche from those games 100 years ago. From those small pieces of art, Alex took inspiration to make a set of elongated coins.
All of the designs are pressed on French 10 centime coins which are the approximate size and color of a U.S. cent. Due to the use of real French coins, only a very limited number of these sets were made.
No matter which country you are cheering for in this years Olympics, it’s always just an incredible time to come together and watch some amazing athletes do what they have been training to do for almost their entire lives. Go for the gold, and Keep on Pressing!
** There is an update as of August 19th, 2024 to the 8-Design Pressed penny machine. It was originally located near the Restrooms, but has been moved to inside the Tiana’s Bayou General Store. This is the little shop you walk through as you exit the attraction. The reason for the movie is due to a new 4-design penny machine being released. I’ve included information at the bottom of this post just so all the new Tiana coins are listed in one post, but will also create a separate post that can be found here.
On June 28th, 2024 the fan favorite attraction known as Splash Mountain had reopened with a fresh coat of paint, new characters and new theme. Now known as Tiana’s Bayou Adventure.
The ride has remained mostly unchanged. It’s still a log flume style water ride with a 50 foot drop towards the end of the attraction. However the characters and story have been converted. The story picks up after the adventures in animated movie The Princess and the Frog.
Tiana as taken over a farm and co-op to grow and supply her restaurant with the required product. This is all part of her ever growing Tiana’s Food company. Then you follow her on a log ride through the Bayou just in time to join her for a Mardi Gras celebration.
The main queue for the ride has seen a lot of changes. Not just the layout, but also due to the story which begins in the queue as you walk through part of Tiana’s garden, into the main office, and even past a kitchen. Eagled eyed guests may even spot a copy of Daddy’s Gumbo recipe displayed proudly on the wall.
Once you load into the familiar but slightly updated ride vehicles you are taken on a wild and wet adventure. The updated animatronics are really well done including a few different Tiana’s located throughout the ride.
Even Mama Odie makes a few appearances including the above once with a mouth watering pile of beignets nearby.
Louis the lovable gator also appears in a few different scenes, and even plays his much loved trumpet in the final Mardi Gras scene. Speaking of that final scene it’s incredible, with fantastic music, and a huge collection of characters all enjoying the party.
After getting off the ride you will eventually come to the Photo Viewing area with a bunch of monitors on the wall where you can see your on-ride photo. Tucked away in the corner is the Medallion machine.
The machine cabinet is plain wood with a stain job that appears to be appropriately done in a quick / unprofessional manner. I’m assuming this is to try and make it fit in with the hand made style you might find on a farm.
The front side of the medallions has designs of Tiana, Prince Naveen and Louis with It’s a Joyful Celebration, Mama Odie and her Snake, a Family of Bears playing some instruments and The Bayou Where the Music is Magic, and my favorite Tiana with a plateful of Beignets.
Something that is a bit interesting is that the back designs are not all the same. The one with Tiana, Prince Naveen and Louis as a back design of Tiana’s Bayou Adventure 2024. The other three designs do have the same reverse image of Tiana, Louis and the ride vehicle filled with a few of the characters from the attraction.
If you continue walking past the photo preview area, you find yourself inside what I assume will eventually be a small gift shop, for now it just has a few murals for the ride that you can take photos in front of. Along one of the walls is the 8-design pressed penny machine.
The designs in this set are really great and all themed for the new attraction including some familiar faces and some new ones created just for the updated ride. There is also one right in the middle that is dated for 2024 so you know that one won’t be around for long. I’ll be curious to see if in the future they just change out that one design, or because each die ring has 4 designs, maybe we will get 4 new designs next year. We will be sure to keep checking back on this for updates.
Then as you exit you will pass by some restrooms, and then back into a courtyard. This is where you will want to turn to your left (opposite from the ride outside queue area) and you will see a new 4-design pressed penny machine tucked away near some water fountains.
I do like that the machine cabinets are all similarly designed with the wood carving This machine was a bit of a surprise as it was released a few weeks after the medallion and 8-design set.
These designs are really great and have so much detail to them. I hope we continue to see new designs like these moving forward.
For anyone that is interested I really enjoyed the new updated attraction. I think the story, music and new characters are wonderful and I’m looking forward to being able to experience it again in the future. For these medallions I really enjoy them as well and since one of them is dated for 2024 I’m thinking we can assume this will change at some point. Every year? That I don’t know. I feel this may be an “opening year” version, and it will change to something that will be around for a longer period of time at some point in the future. But either way I’ll keep an eye on it, and will report back with any changes.
With the summer in full swing that means it’s time for the Summer F.U.N. (Florida United Numismatists) Coin Show. Once again (thankfully for me) it was back at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando Florida.
You do need to pay for parking at the convention center, however there is a bit of a discount if you mention you are attending the coin show. There is no admission cost to attend the coin show, however you do need to fill out a little form with your name, address and contact info. Then take it to the check-in booths to receive your name tag, a souvenir tote bag and if you ask real nicely a special coin for the show, but we will talk about that a little later on.
Inside there were over 300 vendors, countless coin clubs, the U.S. Mint and the educational exhibits that are always great to check out.
It’s always amazing to see what’s available at this show. It can definitely be a bit overwhelming when you first walk in. I usually just start at one end and slowly make my walk through each aisle. Many of the vendors are very friendly and always looking to chat. Most of them have certain niches of the hobby that they specialize in, while others have quite a selection with a little bit of everything.
I did mention earlier that the U.S. Mint has a large area that is always very popular with collectors. They had a nice display with all the new 2024 proof sets. There are quite a few new coin designs this year which is nice to see. They also sell these sets as well as other limited edition coins so you can take them home with you immediately.
I’ve mentioned in previous posts about this event that even thought it’s labeled as a coin show, there is so much more available here. Lots of paper notes, sports cards, jewelry, comic books and I even saw a few Pokémon cards. Unfortunately not many elongated coins.
The educational exhibits are always fun to check out. The amount of work that members put into to these is incredible. In case you didn’t know I actually submitted an exhibit back in 2023 that you can read all about here.
This years event actually didn’t have a very large selection of exhibits and some of them looked familiar from previous years, and only one had some elongated coins.
It was an exhibit about the Central Florida Coin Club: A Journey Through Our Years. There were some very interesting documents and other items from the club’s history on display.
Then right at the top of one of the exhibit cases I saw a nice row of elongated coins that were commemorating the club’s 40th Anniversary in 1995. Not just that, but the coins were also rolled by Mr. Elongated Ray Dillard.
Now let me take some time to go over the coins I was able to collect during my visit. First was that coin show medallion I mentioned at the beginning. In years past they would just include one of these in the gifted tote bag, but I was informed that due to limited quantities they were only given them out upon request. You may notice in the pictures above that the January (winter) coin show dates are listed as this was originally created for that show and they then offer the left overs during the summer show.
While I was at the check-in booth, after I was given the show medallion the kind lady asked if I was interested in an elongated coin. My eyes immediately perked up and I nodded yes that would be wonderful. Above is a photo of the pressed penny that was designed and rolled by former TEC President Cindy Calhoun. Similar to the medallion this was created for the Winter show back in January which I was unable to attend this year. This was a wonderful surprise that I was able to acquire one for my collection.
The event adveterised there was over 300 vendors and I can honestly say I visited with almost all of them. I inquired whenever I could if anyone had any elongated coins for sale, or if they knew of anyone that had any for sale but no one seemed to have any. Except for one small table I came across about halfway through the show. There were two elongated coins sitting in a case among mostly some baseball cards. You can see the picture earlier in this post. I inquired about the coins for purchase and was given a little bit of a discount. They were both listed as $3.00 each but was able to get them for $4 total. The first one was of New York Yankees first baseman Don Mattingly.
The second coin was of Nolan Ryan celebrating his 7th No Hitter that happened on May 1st 1991. These both look to be part of a series. I’ve still been trying to find more information on these coins, who designed them and if there are any others as I’d love to work on collecting them all if they are part of a larger set. If any of you recognize these or has more details please leave me a comment below.
As always the show was great and I really enjoyed just taking my time walking around the entire show floor multiple times just seeing all that was available. Most of it was not what I’m into collecting, but that doesn’t mean they are any less important. Sometimes I see the dates listed on the coins and am just blown away realizing the history that has taken place during that coins life. These are small tokens that can definitely tell a story and is an amazing way to actually hold history in the palm of your hand.
It’s been a few weeks since my family last visited a Florida State Park. There are still quite a few that we haven’t explored yet.
This time we were heading towards the Gulf side of the state in Dunedin we crossed over the causeway bridge and into the Honeymoon Island State Park.
This trip was a bit unique. My parents have an adorable labradoodle named Sammie, and we found out that this State Park is animal friendly with a specific area of the beach set aside for dogs. Basically a Dog Beach and we thought this would make for a fun outing for our entire family including Sammie.
As with the other State Parks we have visited, there were plenty of nature trails. The only issue we ran into is that the pathways were made up mostly of basically beach sand since we were so close to the actual beach. This made walking a bit of a challenge, and certainly gave our legs a workout.
In the short time we have lived in Florida our family has checked out quite a few different beaches both on the Atlantic and Gulf side. In our opinions we always prefer the Gulf side and this was no exception.
Unfortunately for most of our day we had heavy cloud cover. This made the temperature quite a bit chillier than we were expecting, and the water was void of swimmers due to it’s low temperature a well. It always seemed like we were moments from getting rained on, thankfully we were able to avoid any precipitation. This also meant that not many other dogs made the trip out that day.
There is a fairly large Pavilion on the South Beach side of the island. This is where you will find the restrooms, changing rooms, and a small snack stand.
However, if you are interested in the pressed penny machine you actually need to go underneath this raised pavilion. It seems like a strange place for the machine, and if I hadn’t read about it in pennycollector.com I probably would have missed it and assumed the machine had been removed.
The machine located here is another of the Penny Pincher style models. Not my all time favorite as I find the final pressed penny can be hit or miss with the design either being cut off, or the penny rolled short.
As you can see from the image above, all of my pennies on this trip rolled short. Thankfully the main part of the image was fine, just the dotted border along the right side was cut off. I’ve definitely had worse results with these type of machines, but I was happy with these once for the most part.
With many pressed pennies I get from zoos, aquariums and other places with animals in the designs I’m usually just guessing as to what they are most of the time. This set however has a fun feature, on the reverse of each penny has the name of the critter along with the park website. I honestly wish they would do this more often, as it really is a huge help to us collectors when trying to identify the design.
It was a bit sad that our day was not a usual sunny Florida afternoon, and Sammie didn’t have too many other dogs around to play with. This park though was fantastic and we will definitely be coming back. I’ll just have to do a better job at double checking the weather conditions in advance. That makes one more Florida State Park we can check off our list, leaving quite a few more still to explore. Keep on Pressing!
The Elongated Collectors Club was founded in 1966, and since its creation has had thousands of members. Many are serious collectors, some just casual, and everyone else is somewhere in between. Then there are a few that have become synonymous not just within the elongated coin clubs, but also within the larger numismatic communities. Names like Dottie Dow, Lee Martin, and Frank Brazeel. However one probably stands out more than the rest and that is Mr. Raymond Dillard.
Photo Credit: Tyler Tyson
Born July 3rd 1925 on a farm outside of Parma Missouri, Ray was the 10th of 11 children in the family. He graduated high school in 1943 and soon met his future wife Elizabeth Stirling. They married in 1944 and raised two daughters Sherrie and Kathy. He enrolled in courses at General Motors Institute and IBM, eventually landing a position as an “office boy” at Chevrolet manufacturing. He was promoted many times throughout his career, and eventually found himself in the General Motors Central Office. He retired after 37 years with the company.
Photo Credit: TECNews
Ray started collecting coins in the 1960s, and then in the mid 1980s he began brining his elongated machine to ANA conventions. At coin shows Ray was easy to spot with his iconic blue jacket. He and his penny machine were well known at shows across the country.
Photo Credit: Cindy Calhoun
He has won numerous awards including being elected a numismatic ambassador, the ANA Presidential awards, and was inducted into the Numismatic Hall of Fame in 2017.
The Elongated Collectors club also created The Dillard Exhibit Award starting in 2014 that is given out to anyone who creates and elongated themed exhibit displayed at a coin show.
I had communicated quite a few times with Ray through email over the years, and was even lucky enough to acquire some elongated coins from his collection during a period when he was auctioning some of the off. One of which was this 1893 Columbia Expo seated dime which is one of my most prized elongated coins in my collection.
I also met him a couple times at a few coin conventions including the F.U.N. show here in Orlando Florida back in January 2020. We chatted for a little while and I’m always grateful for the time he took to sit and talk. Unfortunately what we didn’t know then is that would be the last event Ray would attend.
Ray Dillard passed away on March 8th 2020 at his home in Fenton Michigan. He is survived by his daughters, grandchildren and great grandchildren.
Photo Credit: Cindy Calhoun
Over the years Ray had created somewhere around 1800 coin designs. His estate is working with The Elongated Collectors to try and update his coin catalog. There were over 60 crates in his basement of all the elongated he had created over the years. This is a massive project but one that Ray would have loved to see completed, and will be an important part of elongated coin history.
When Ray passed away he had been working on the Central States Numismatic Society’s 2020 show coin. This would end up being Ray’s last project. The die for this coin was still in his machine, and a bag of rolled pennies was discovered nearby. These coins were sent by TEC officers to the CSNS to fulfill Ray’s obligation of creating the coins. The convention however was canceled due to the pandemic and the coins then sat in storage until 2024 when they were then offered at the convention in May. The design was rolled on copper U.S. cents, and depicts a steam locomotive emerging from the CSNS logo, with dates and location for the canceled 2020 show.
Friend and fellow collector Jim McNally was able to get permission and acquired some of the coins to share with other collectors. He also created a souvenir card about the size of a baseball card in an eye catching blue color that reflects Ray’s iconic jacket. The card is a great keepsake that highlights the coins unique story.
Past TEC President Cindy Calhoun said that the best tribute we can pay to Ray is to be like him. Keep smiling, pass on the joy of elongated with everyone we meet, and do what we love until the very end.
David's Coin Travels 