Privately designed elongate coins has quickly become one of my favorite niches within our hobby. There are so many talented designers and the themes are infinite. I try to check out as many as I can to help get the designers some more exposure and this weeks coin design is one that I really think you will enjoy. It’s known as the Pig Penny, and has become an annual tradition created and released by Dwayne Padon from Lexington Kentucky.

I first came across the Pig Penny back in 2024 and immediately placed an order to acquire one for my collection. The cute pig design ridding a motorcycle had just caught my attention. As I always do, I wanted to try and learn more about the design and designer. Dwayne was amazing to reach back out and share his coin story with us.

Dwayne came up with the idea to produce a collectible souvenir to help promote his hometown of Lexington North Carolina about 15 years before he ever made one. He always had 20 projects on 20 different topic in the works at the same time. In 2006 he started doing some research on all kinds of things like having tokens, souvenir coins, plastic items and elongated coins made. After much thought he decided to proceed with creating elongated coins, mainly because after all the pieces were in his hands, he could control production through the sales on his terms.

He came up with the name Pig Penny after trying to think of a simple but memorable name. His mom Don Rea Padon had always been a great artist and he asked her to draw the first design featuring a pig. Lexington is officially the BBQ Capital of North Carolina, along with Pigs is all a big theme within Lexington. They have fiberglass pig statues on display all over the downtown area that have become big tourist attractions.

In September 2007 he completed the first three designs, and the local newspaper feature Dwayne and his Pig Pennies on the front page, creating an unexpectedly significant domino effect. The day he debut the coin locally at his mother’s store, they had at least 200 people standing in line waiting for her to open. The next few hours where a whirlwind of customers, buying anything and everything with Pig Pennies involved. He just made and packaged the coins, but his mother and others had used the coins to make all kinds of items like bracelets, jewelry, ornaments, bookmarks, earrings rings and downs of odds and end items.

Dwayne had joined a few online elongated coin collector pages like on Yahoo groups and TEC News to name just af ew. He mainly just read and learned without posting much about the coins he had in the works. His plan was to just get through the local BBQ Festival and then release the information about the coins to all the collector pages afterwards. However, when the newspaper article was released someone in California saw it somewhere online and shared it with several of the same online groups. Orders started flooding in and everything hit all at once from all over the world at the same time. Dwayne bought two maps to keep a record of the states and countries he would shop the coins to, and eventually placed those pins in all 50 states and over 50 countries around the globe. All of this from his living room operation.

Each year his mom Don Rea Padon (you may noticed her initials DRP on the coin designs) helps design each of the coins. These have become quite the collectible and I know quite a few other collectors that have been trying to complete the entire set. Since my first one in 2024 I have acquire a few of the other designs but still have quite a few to go including the new 2025 design.

Dwayne has had quite a lot of success with this Pig Penny designs and has been featured on the news, on the radio, numerous print articles and of course he gets recognized in public. “Being recognized, especially by kids, was cool though. Many times I hear a kid yell “Look, mama, it’s the Pig Penny Man.” A title he wears proudly. If you are interested in more information about the Pig Penny you can visit Dwaynes website PigPenny.app or his Facebook group linked here.

Keep on Pressing!