With today being Opening Day for the 2025 Major League Baseball Season and a full day of baseball ahead of us, I thought it was a great time to review a new privately designed elongated coin.

The Lost Angeles Dodgers were the World Series Champions, so let’s review how their season went. They won an MLB-best 98 games. They had acquired reigning American League MVP Shohei Ohtani who put together a historic season in his first year as a Dodger. He was the first player to hit at least 50 home runs, and steal 50 bases. They ended the season 1st plan in the National League West division with a 98-64 record. As the playoffs began they faced off agains the San Diego Padres defeating them in 5 games. Next they went up against the New York Mets for the National League Championship taking 6 games to win the series.

In the World Series they found themselves up agains the always powerful New York Yankees. In game 5 the Dodgers upended the Yankees in a historic comeback to win the series and capture their 8th World Series title.

Coin designer Jamie Bennett created a special elongated coin to celebrate the Dodgers win. The design has a nice border similar to the stitching on a baseball. The Dodgers logo, 2024 and of 8x Champions all included in this fantastic coin.

The design was also made available in a denomination set that included a penny, nickel, dime, quarter, and half dollar. The above photo shows just a couple of the coins from the set.

Now that the 2025 season has officially started, how is your team looking? Need to make some trades already? That’s part of the ups and downs of being a sports fan. I wish you all the best of luck with your teams, and in between watching games be sure to get out there and press some coins.

Play Ball!

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Some of you may not know that we also have a YouTube channel. There we post videos each week similar to our blog here, all about elongated coins, collectible medallions, unique coins and plenty of tip and tricks to help with your own collections. Well recently we crossed a milestone of 1,000 subscribers which is so amazing.

Now this celebration is no just for me, it’s for all of us as this is such as fun community we have created together. So with that said I want to help one of you create your very own custom elongated coin. At the bottom of this post I have a link to the contest form for you to use to submit your design idea. There is NO specific topic, you can create a design about whatever you like so be creative. You do not need to be a professional artist, trust me I know.

You can create either a horizontal or vertical design depending on what you think will work best for your concept. The second page is where you can fill in your contact information so I can reach out to you. Please make sure you don’t use any copyrighted images or logos, and any design considered inappropriate will be disqualified. Once completed you can then email your entry form to the email address listed on the form. Submissions will be accepted until April 30th, 2025 when the contest will close.

CLICK HERE FOR CONTEST ENTRY FORM

At that time I’ll review all the submissions and pick my favorite that we will then move forward with creating. I’ll cover all the costs to produce and press the elongated coins. The winner will receive 25 elongated pennies of their winning design, along with a special denomination set (penny, nickel, dime and quarter) that will only be available to the winner. We will also create an additional 200 pennies of the winning design that will then be available to all of you for free. But we will go over that in a future post when we unveil the new coins design.

I can’t wait to see what you all come up with and hope you have fun working on your own coin design. Don’t forget you will also get nominated for our Top Voted Coin Contest later in the year. Thank you all once again for your support. If you haven’t checked out our YouTube channel be sure to head over an take look I have it linked here.

It’s been a lot of fun sharing the hobby with all of you and I can’t wait to see where we go next. Good luck and Keep on Pressing!

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During our little family vacation to Fort Myers we made a stop at the Edison & Ford Winter Estates. This is one of those vacation spots that is probably more for the parents than the kids. At least my kids weren’t too interested in a bit of a history lesson while on vacation but I was just too intrigued by this place not to stop. Plus I’m sure you can guess, they had a pressed penny machine.

What exactly is this place, well it’s the actual winter homes for Thomas Edison (yes that Thomas Edison) and Henry Ford. Edison build his winter home in 1886 along with a second home for a friend/partner and a laboratory. In 1916 Henry Ford purchased the estate next door called “The Mangoes” in order to spend more time with his friend and mentor Thomas Edison. The two vacationed here until Edison’s death in 1931.

This is quite a sprawling property. When you arrive there is a parking lot that first brings you to the gift shop and museum where you can purchase your admission tickets. Inside the museum is a plethora of artifacts and details about both Thomas Edison and Henry Ford’s life, careers and innovations. One of them being Thomas Edison’s 1916 Ford Model T touring car.

In a separate building from the museum is the Edison Botanic Research Laboratory. In 1927 Edison, Ford and Harvey Firestone formed the research corporation and the lab was build in 1928. The lab was designed with one purpose in mind, to find a natural source of rubber that could be grown in the United States. Divided into six sections, parts of the laboratory operated similar to an assembly line, with critical tasks being performed in each area.

With the museums completed, we had to cross the street over the second part of the property where the winter homes were located. The landscaping was gorgeous, and well kept. There were pathways that allowed you to explore the entire property including Edison’s personal office, outdoor pool area and other maintenance buildings.

The first home we visited was Thomas Edison’s. It’s two buildings connected by a covered pathway. Visitors are not allowed inside the buildings as they are fully furnished and filled with historic artifacts. But the windows and doorways are open so you can peek inside.

A short walk away is the Henry Ford estate. It was a beautiful look two story home, with a huge porch on the front facing the water. Nearby was a garage that Henry Ford used to house and maintain his personal vehicles, but is now setup like a small automotive museum.

Once we had finished checking out the entire estate we headed back across the street, past the gift shop and just before the parking lot was a covered restrooms area. This is where I found the pressed penny machine hiding. I was a bit worried during our visit as I couldn’t find it in the gift shop, museum or any of the estate buildings and thought maybe it had been removed. Thankfully I was wrong.

It was a nice well maintained CTM group machine. The vinyl wrapping on the machine looked great and I had no issues with pressing my coins.

The penny designs included images of Thomas Edison, a Ford Model-T car, and a few of Edison’s famous inventions including the Lightbulb and Photograph.

I really enjoyed the Edison & Ford Winter Estates, probably more than I initially thought I would. My original plan was to just stop by and press the pennies. However I’m glad we decided to purchase tickets and enjoy the afternoon exploring this amazing property. Keep on Pressing!

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Recently I went and spent a leisurely day over at the Universal Florida parks. Part of this was just a day to relax and enjoy the parks, the other part was to work on our coin maps making sure they were up to date. The maps are primarily for elongated coin collectors, but that doesn’t stop me from keeping an eye on for new medallion sets which is what happened on this trip.

I’m not sure why but whenever I visit Universal’s Islands of Adventure park I always head towards Seuss Landing and then work my way counter clockwise through the park. I guess it’s similar to how people have a preference in Epcot going around the World Showcase (Mexica or Canada first?).

This section of the park is certainly geared more around younger guests and their families. However I always enjoy taking my time in this section. The theming, colors, wonky shapes and building designs are incredible, plus if you are lucky enough to have a character interaction they are always a lot of fun an memorable. They do have a few different shops in this area, but one of my favorites is the Gertrude McFuzz Fine Feathered Finery.

This is usually where you can find all your Grinch related items, and during the Holiday season is where the Grinch does his meet and greets.

As I visited this store, originally I was on the look out for the 3-design penny machine that was just inside the doors. Instead of that machine I found a much larger medallion machine in its place.

I love the bright colors of this machine, the red and blue really stand out especially when most of the store is green. The cabinet does have a slight Seuss-like shape to it that I thought was a fun detail.

It has been a little while since I last collected medallions from Universal, and I noticed that the price seems to have crept up a bit on the individual coins. If you only want one it will cost $7.00, but the cost for the entire set is $20. So you definitely get a much better deal per coin picking up all four. The designs include some classic Dr. Seuss characters including The Cat in the Hat, Thing 1 and Thing 2, The Grinch and Max, and Sam I Am with his Green Eggs and Ham.

The reverse image is the same for all of the coins in this set and features the Dr. Seuss logo with the Cat’s hat overtop of the “S” and the trademark information along the bottom.

This is another fun set of collectible medallions, but seems to have been released at the cost of a pressed penny machine. I’m not sure how I feel about that since my collection is primarily elongated coins it’s a little upsetting to see them be replaced by these much more expensive medallions. I hope this does not become a trend so we will have to wait and see. Keep on Collecting!

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