I’m a bit embarrassed to admit this, but I just recently was going through some old posts about pressed pennies I had acquired during some vacations and realized that some were missing. A few years ago my family took a week vacation to the Fort Myers area of Florida, and apparently I completely forgot to write about it. We visited a few different places during that trip, and I pressed quite a few pennies so I’m going to try and catch up on those coins.

On our first day after traveling to the Fort Myers area, my kids were anxious for a beach day. We got up early had a nice breakfast and then headed to the beach to setup for the day.

Thankfully we had a beautiful day to enjoy the beach. It’s a long sprawling area which was nice and we didn’t feel like we were right on top of other visitors. Eventually as we always encounter in Florida during the summer is the daily rain shower. We took that as a good opportunity to pack up our things and head back to the hotel after a nice long visit to the beach.

While my family was relaxing in the hotel, I decided to head out and try to track down a couple nearby penny machines. I always love these beach town areas, the color of the buildings is fun and bright, and thankfully during this trip there wasn’t a lot of traffic. Coming from New Jersey, parking is always an issue at the shores.

The first penny press I tracked down was located on the front porch of a store called The Cigar Hut. The machine was even placed right on the edge of the porch so I was able to access it from the sidewalk and not disturb any shoppers heading inside.

The machine had a cute cabinet with some images of the nearby beach and shopping areas. However this style of machine has never been my favorite. I find they usually don’t roll very well and it’s difficult to know if you have selected the correct design. Plus with this machine being outside and dealing with the nearby beach salty air they take quite a beating and could definitely use some oil inside to help those gears work a bit more smoothly.

Once I had finished pressing the set I was actually pretty impressed with the final results. Only one design rolled got cut off a bit on the left side. The others came out complete for the most part.

Back near the beach there was this fun little area with plenty of souvenir shots and places to grab some food. It reminded me a lot of the boardwalks back in Jersey. During my research of pressed penny machines prior to this trip I didn’t read about any in this area, but it just seemed like a place that would have one. I wondered around and went into many different stores however came up short with no unlisted penny machines.

There was still one more machine that I knew should be available somewhere. The only issue was that the address wasn’t really a physical address just more of a guideline.

The location of the machine was right on the side of the sidewalk near the entrance to a parking lot. Thankfully it was just a few streets over from where I had originally parked. The machine definitely had an interesting looking cabinet design. I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be a pirate themed machine, or just using a white barrel because of the nearby bars. In any case I think it was a unique design that had seen better days.

This machine also could have used a good dose of oil or lubricants to get it back into a more functional state. It was able to press a full set of the designs but that one with FMB (Ft. Myers Beach) I tried a few times and the one pictured above was the best I could get.

With my two new sets of pennies packed away in my pocket I headed back to our hotel for a little down time. Those beach days with all the sun, and salt water definitely take its toll and I was ready for a nap. Stay tuned for more adventures and plenty more elongated coins from our trip to Fort Myers Florida.

Keep on Pressing!