In case you missed it we created another custom elongated coin. The twist however is that we are awarding them to elongated coin designers by having all of you in our collecting community vote for your favorite design. You can read all about the our new design here.

The voting response was incredible and we actually ended up with two designs tied with the same amount of votes. So I made the executive decision to aware the top four designs that received the most votes. In no particular order let’s take a look at your favorite designs and learn a bit about the creative people behind them.

Sunflower by Kristina Griffiths

This beautiful design was inspired by Kristina’s favorite flower and is also the symbol of her Youtube channel called Pocket Poet. Paul Connor helped create the final design and rolled the elongated coins. This was created as a promotion for her channel which you should go and check out. There re lots of fantastic videos sharing her coin collection and holiday travels vlogs. She does have a few copies of her Sunflower coin still available, and if you are interested in one you can reach out to Kristina through er Youtube Channel linked here.

National Bacon Day by Scott Eddy

This fun design was created to celebrate December 30th which is known as National Bacon Day, definitely a holiday I can get behind. Scott has been creating elongated coin designs for about 3 years and is up to 24 designs with help from Oded Paz, Paul Connor, and Alex Mruk. He has a group called the Fresno $1.00 Copper Penny Club. Members of the group can get copper elongated at the low price of $1.00 each, and the pennies are acquired from various group member travels, bulk and collection purchases. These are offered exclusively through Fresno Elongated Pennies Facebook group linked here. Scott is also a new TEC Board member governor and looks forward to meeting new faces and there TEC members. His coin designs are available through his eBay store linked here.

Steamboat Willie by Oded Paz

This familiar character is Steamboat Willie (Mickey Mouse) on an elongated coin. The design was created to celebrate this version of Mickey entering the public domain. Oded has been creating elongated coin designs for quite awhile with his first design back in February 2006. He has over 270 designs already crated, and is currently working on 18 that he has been commissioned to make. Most he designs and rolls himself, and others he designs and has engraved on a die-ring or die-shaft that is then sent to the customer for their own machine either in home or publicly placed.

Oded wanted to let you all know that the process of making a custom design is very simple. All you need is an idea. Nothing more. If you are interested in working with Oded on your own design he can be reached by email to elongateds@sbcglobal.net. He will help take your idea of what you want t see on the coin, and help crate it for you. Not all designers and rollers are the same. Responsiveness and punctuality are important factors to be considered, as well as their previous work, how long they have been creating designs as well as their name and reputation. Most times great work is not cheap, and cheap work is not great.

Paris Olympics 2024 by Alex Mruk

This is a set rather than a single design making it an even larger project. Together these designs make up the Paris Olympics games series of 10 elongated coins depicting different sports. Alex started making his own designs in late 2023. Over the last year he has made over 100 engravings for himself and other creators. The designs he makes can be completely unique or heavily inspired by what’s around. He tries to create his own images for the engravings but does occasionally use a graphic artist when the subject is outside his ability. He engrave this own dies and rolls all his own coins. He is happy to help anyone that is interested in making their own design. His contact email is CopperKeepsakes@gmail.com or you can visit his Facebook group Copper Keepsakes linked here if you are interested in more information.

There you have it, those are our first group of Top Voted Privately Designed elongated coins as chosen by all of you. Thank you all so much for taking the time to check out the designs, and place your votes. This is an amazing community we have created here and I love the positivity of sharing our love of this hobby, and am grateful we can celebrate all of our amazing design creators.

I’m planning on doing this again later this year, and want to try and focus on as many privately designed coins this year as I can. I’ve already started acquiring a lot of new ones and can’t wait to share them with you. Be sure to follow here on our Blog, and Subscribe to our YouTube channel to get notified of all our new uploads. Please be sure to check out all the links above to our top Voted designers. Whether you want to pick up a copy of the winning design, or check out any of their other available coins. Shower them all with heartfelt congratulations for their hard work and dedication to helping expand all our collections. Keep on Pressing and Keep on Creating!!

Happy Super Bowl Sunday everyone. Later this evening one of the largest sporting events will take place Super Bowl LIX (59). It will feature the reigning Champions Kansas City Chiefs against the Philadelphia Eagles.

The game will be played inside the Caesar’s Superdome in New Orleans Louisiana that has been home to seven previous Super Bowls, and this will be it’s eight time hosting.

Whether you are there for the game, the commercials, or maybe just to hang out with family and friends to eat some amazing food it’s always a great time.

Above is a special Privately Designed pressed penny from Wichita Peng feating the Eagles, Chiefs, Vince Lombardi Trophy and of course Super Bowl LIX across the bottom. Wichita has made quite a few elongated coins but they are also created in small batches and can be quite the collectible if you are able to snag one. His designs are available through his eBay store link here.

Enjoy the game, and even if your team doesn’t win at least you had a fun evening and hopefully you can add one of these pennies to your collection. Keep on Pressing!

Ever since I was young I’ve always really enjoyed the Halloween season, there’s just something about the spooky decorations, haunted attractions and of course the costumes. Then once it’s over, we immediately move into the Holiday season which is also one of my favorite times of the year. Not often can we blend two Holidays together but in this post we are going to do just that. Have you ever heard of Krampus?

Krampus appears in many variations, most share some common physical characteristics. He is hairy, has one foot that is a cloven hooves and horns of a goat. His long, pointed tongue drops out, and he has fangs. He carries chains thought to symbolize the binding of the Devil. He thrashes the chains, and is sometimes accompanied with bells while he carries a bundle of birth branches with which he occasionally swats children. On Christmas Eve, Krampus travels with a sack or basket strapped to his back which he uses to cart off evil children. These stories were told in what seems like a bit of an extreme attempt to make sure children were good.

Our friend, collector and coin designer Amy Brennan has released her new Holiday pressed penny and this year it features this mysterious creature Krampus. The design features Krampus front and center, with a fist full of birth branches, and his basket strapped to his back with the phrase Merry Krampus.

This character has quite the dark background and I tried to include as much PG rates details as I felt was appropriate to share. Not always who you would associate the happy Holiday season with but he makes for a fun elongated coin design. If you are interested in this coin, or many of Amy’s other elongated coins you can contact her through her Facebook group Pressed Penny Mafia – PPM.

Happy Holidays and Merry Krampus!

Here I am at the TEC Booth during the F.U.N. Coin Show in Orlando Florida. You can reach about the show in a little more detail here. Now you may be asking why I’m behind the table, well that’s because I decided to Volunteer for a day at the show. Before I go over how it went and what I did, let’s go back a few months so I can explain how we got here.

Back in October I received my copy of TEC News and was enjoying the articles and pictures when I came across an article from Cindy Calhoun. She was asking for volunteers to help during the coin show in Orlando. This was something I’ve wanted to do for awhile but my schedule never really allowed for it. This time however it was going to happen. I quickly sent Cindy an email offering to help and she responded back thanking me and confirming I was on the list. It was that easy.

When I arrived I was happy to see both Cindy and Les already there. They are both such sweet friends and a wealth of knowledge. I was looking forward to our day together. To start things of Cindy ran us through our tasks for the day and then she had to run off for a little while to do some judging of the educational exhibits.

I will admit most of our time was spent catching up with each other and gossiping about new coins being released at the nearby theme parks. The table did get a lot of traffic and quite a few visitors so there were a few things we needed to help with throughout the day.

Cindy’s table was right next to the TEC Booth and had a large selection of elongated coins for sale. Some were in dump bins or bags for visitors to comb through. Les had been helping to organize them by location which helped collectors narrow in on exactly what they may have been looking for. There were also some special show coin denomination sets, books and plenty more for purchase. We help people find what they were interested in, and assisted with collecting payment and documentation the sales.

Throughout the day we did get to meet quite a few other TEC members, and even signed up a few new members. It was fun chatting about the club and letting newcomers know about the perks of membership.

Something that I was tasked with and really enjoyed was helping with the kids trivia challenge. This was a free activity that kids visiting the show could sign up for at the Coins and Kids table. They would get a blue paper with questions on it they needed to answer and could then turn in for a prize once completed. They had to find certain tables or booths around the show with an orange placard signifying a t trivia location. The volunteers at that location would help the kids answer the question and then they were off to their next location. All right get ready, here was the TEC booth question:

So how did you do? Well just to confirm the answer was (C) both A and B. To help them answer our question we would give them one elongated zinc coin and one copper to exam. I would have them try bending each coin to see which was softer or easier to bend. Then we would closely examine the color, noticing how the zinc coin’s coating stretches and cracks revealing the silver core color below the surface. It was a lot of fun and the kinds really seemed to enjoy our little experiments.

Once the kids figured out their answer they earned a special elongated coin with the TEC Owl in the c enter and “I answered the TEC question” along the bottom. Then before they left we offered them the opportunity to use our penny press to create their own show coin as a souvenir.

We had plenty of show coins pressed on both copper and zinc pennies available for anyone that stopped by, and they were definitely very popular. Many people said they always make sure to stop by every year to get the new coin for their collections.

Now speaking of the penny press machine, something we had a lot of fun with was pressing all different types of coins. Many people would stop by to just press some spare change they had in their pockets including quite a few nickels and quarters. At one point we did have a visitor with a 1/10 oz silver coin he wanted to press, and Cindy was happy to help make it happen. It turned out fantastic.

I knew about this little tradition ahead of time and wanted something unique to press during my visit but all I could find at home was a Canadian loonie or one dollar coin. It rolled a little short but I still think it came out great and you can even see the Queens face peeking through the design. Maybe next year I’ll have to try pressing one of those colored Canadian coins, wonder how that would press?

Jim McNally from zzzcoins.com was in town and stopped by for a few hours. It was great to finally meet him in person after years of online communications, and we have featured a few of his shop coins here as well. He brought a bag of about 50 brass tokens from a Chuck E Cheese and was looking to press them all. It took a little while to go through them, but they all came out great and he even gifted each of us one for our collections.

The rest of our time was just a lot of fellowship and coin collecting nerdom. I met so many friends like Joe Watts and even had a few people recognize me from our Youtube videos which was amazing and I was so happy to meet you all.

I had a fantastic time during my day volunteering at the TEC booth and wish my scheduled allowed for another day or two. I’m looking forward to next year and hope to see some of you there. You can get details at Funtopics.com including the dates and locations of the upcoming coin shows. Also if you aren’t already be sure to check out TECNews.org and become a member of our ever growing group of elongated collectors.

New Year and that always means the big F.U.N. Coin Show is taking place once again in Orlando Florida. This has become and annual tradition for myself and I am always blown away with just how huge this show is. So many vendors, clubs, exhibits and lots of friends we have made along the way.

As with previous events this was once again held at the Orange County Convention Center which itself is an incredible place. After getting my visitors name tag I headed down to the show floor.

If you have haven’t attended this show, these pictures just won’t do it justice. There are aisle after aisle of vendors buying and selling almost anything Numismatic themed that you can think of, and even some things that fall outside of that category.

This was during my visit on Thursday which was the first day it was open to the public and you can see how busy it was. I’ve never seen crowds this large on opening day in the past. That’s usually why I go since it’s a little less busy and easier to take my time and explore all there is see and do.

Towards the back is always the large Wizard Collectible supply shop. I head in each time thinking I’ll see something new, but I’m almost positive these elongated coin booklets are the same ones each year. Maybe I need to buy them so they get some new fresh inventory.

Of course the U.S. Mint is always on hand to show off some new products and coin designs for the upcoming year. There is a change machine available where you can usually get the new years quarters, but we must have been too early as it was still giving out 2024 quarters.

The mint usually has quite a line of visitors inquiring about special collectibles, or purchasing all the new items available. It’s always a fun section to spend some time in.

All the way in the back were the Educational Exhibits which is always a personal favorite of mine and I could just spend hours looking and reading all the information. These themes and topics are of things I would have never known or even thought of which is part of what I like about it. Pictures above was a great exhibit all about the start of elongated coins and even had a photo of Mr. Ray Dillard.

There was another exhibit I found very interesting about coins and the devastation of fire. It even includes some coins that had served a fire but lived to tell the tale. You never know what you will learn in these exhibits.

One reason I absolutely love the Winter version is our friends from TEC The Elongated Collectors are able to attend and host a booth. I made sure to stop by and visit with Cindy and Les who were handling the tables throughout the weekend.

TEC also always had their elongated coin press and plenty of free elongated show coins available for anyone to grab as a souvenir. Or you can use your own spare change or unique coin to run through the press and make it yourself.

There were two elongated coin designs available. One from TEC was the Show coin with a clock in the center, A Great Time to Collect FUN 2025 around the border. The second coin design was from Cindy’s Cents table running along with the TEC table and had a beautiful design saying Feliz Cumpleaños which is Happy Birthday in Spanish.

Once again this was a fanatic show and I always have a great time. This is going to end this little summary overview of the show. But stay tuned for our next post as I’ll give some more details about what it’s like behind the table. This year I volunteered to help at the TEC table which was a whole new experience and I can’t wait to tell you all about it. Keep on Collecting!!

I’m sure you realize by now that I visit the Walt Disney World parks quite often, and even Disneyland out on the west coast a few times. However I’ve never visited any of the international parks, and hope to do so sometime in the future. Even though I’ve never been there that doesn’t stop me from following news about them whether it pertains to new attractions, merchandise or food. Among all those parks the items released in Tokyo Disney almost always blow me away.

I remember seeing things like a hand soap dispenser that would dollop soap in the shape of a mickey head. It was so simple but something I’d never seen before. Food items like little mocha ice creams designed to look like the little green men from Toy story, or even an incredible Curry dish with the rice shaped like Baymax from Big Hero 6. Of course they have more standard souvenirs like clothing, pins and yes even elongated coins or what they refer to as medallions.

A few months ago as I was perusing TikTok I came across a video of a new souvenir medallion book available in the Tokyo Disney Resort. At first glance it seems like a standard storage booklet, but a little further into the video there were some close up clips showing the inside and what appeared to be images of specific coin designs that were meant to be kept inside. I thought this was such a cool idea, definitely more interesting that just the plain books we have here in the States. I knew at that moment I wanted one but as I started looking into online resellers to acquire it the prices were astronomical. Instead I headed to Facebook and reached out to friend and fellow collector Betty who lives in Japan and graciously offered on her next trip to the parks to try and get one of the books and the specific coins to go inside. It took some time, and I can happily say that they arrived safely not too long ago.

The first photo above shows the front of the booklet. The cover has a three-dimensional map of the Tokyo Disneyland park on it with some of the iconic attractions. On the back, above photo is a similar style map of their second park Tokyo Disney Seas and some friendly faces along the bottom.

As we open the book, the first page has a clear pocket with a sheet of labels that can be used to organize your coin collection within this booklet. I’ll go over where these can be used shortly. On the other page is a combined map of both parks, and one additional storage sleeve at the bottom for any coin you like, but I’m sure you would save this for your absolute favorite.

Betty picked this one out for me and I think she made a fantastic choice. With the iconic castle in the center, Mickey and Minnie Mouse on either side and the resort copyright info along the bottom.

Let’s skip to the back pages of the booklet next. On these pages are additional sleeves for up to 30 coins. Underneath each sleeve is where you can attach those labels we found on the first page. This way you can document where you found each coin, or note them in any way you like.

Now let’s check out the main event of this booklet and what called out to my inner collector. On the left side is the Tokyo Disney Sea park map surrounded by eight elongated coin designs. One each for the different sections of the park like Port Discovery, Fantasy Springs and Mermaid Lagoon.

On the right side is the Tokyo Disneyland park map with seven coin designs around the perimeter featuring some recognizable lands like Fantsayland, Toontown, and Tomorrowland.

Here you can see the booklet with those specific coins collection and installed inside the protective sleeves. The machines there supply bright, shiny blank coins not actual currency and Betty does an amazing job keeping them so clean and fingerprint free.

Now the big question is do I think something like this will ever make it to the American parks. Unfortunately I doubt it, but I really wish they would. Even for a collector like me, I love this sort of small mini-set and storage idea and would definitely head out and get it for my own collection. Not to mention that I think this would be a fun activity for kids and their families to do while visiting. They can use it like a scavenger hunt throughout certain areas of the park, or maybe even a specific theme like Snow White, or Zootopia characters. The possibilities are endless.

However the issue is that at least here in the Florida parks, the machines are operated by an outside vendor, while Disney handles their own merchandising. I’m sure it would be quite the coordinated effort to try and release a coin booklet with specific coin designs and make sure those same designs are actually available in the park. Disney can’t even keep their mobile app updated with the penny machine locations. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that maybe they do try it out and I’ll be one of the first to work on it. Thanks again to Betty for all her effort in finding the booklet and then trekking all over the parks to get the coins to fill it up, I truly do appreciate it.

Enjoy the rest of your week and as always Keep on Pressing!

What many of you have been asking about and waiting have finally started to arrive. The highly anticipated new 2025 Pressed Penny designs at Walt Disney World. Word on the street is that due to some slow sales of the previous years’ dated designs that were located inside the different resorts, this year 2025 the dated designs are being kept just inside the four theme parks. Hopefully this should make it a little easier for everyone to be able to find the pennies they want without having to travel all over WDW property. Not sure if this will change, but if you find a new design along your travels please leave a comment so we can help everyone with their collections. Keep on Pressing!

Magic Kingdom

Tony’s Town Square Restaurant

Just inside the Magic Kingdom along Main Street USA is Tony’s Town Square Restaurant themed around Lady and the Tramp. Just outside the restrooms is the 3-design penny machine, however only one of the designs is dated for 2025 and features Stitch. Found / Reported by Amanda Wheet

Main Street Emporium

Continuing along Main Street if you enter the Emporium from the front side of the park the first penny machine will be right inside the door. This is an 8-design machine, but only 4 of the designs have been changed for 2025 and included Mickey, Minnie, Goody and Cinderella Castle.

Walk a little further into the Emporium and you will find the second penny machine near the large wall of Disney Pins. As with the other machine here, this is also an 8-design machine with only 4 new designs for 2025 featuring Tinker Bell, Donald, Pluto and Chip & Dale.

EPCOT

Port of Entry Gift Shop

Inside EPCOT as you head beyond Spaceship Earth towards the World Showcase head right towards Canada and you will come to the Port of Entry Gift Shop. Towards the right (Canada) side of the store near the doors is the pressed penny machine with the new 2025 design featuring Chip & Dale.

Disney Traders Gift Shop

Head across the courtyard towards Mexico and you will find an identical store but with a different name called Disney Traders. There is a pressed penny machine near one of the side doors and there you will fine the new 2025 Penny design with Figment and Spaceship Earth.

Now it’s time to start heading around the World Showcase, with our first stop being inside the Norway Pavilion. Towards the back of the various stores is one called The Fjordes, here just inside the door will be the penny machine and the 2025 penny design with Olaf the Snowman.

One more stop inside EPCOT and that’s at the store near the side park entrance / exist in between France and the United Kingdom Pavilions. This is where you head if you are looking to take the Disney Skyliner. Just before the park exit is the International Gateway gift shop. Head to the back corner and you will find the penny machine with 2025 penny design with Sorcerer Apprentice Mickey and Spaceship Earth.

Hollywood Studios

Oscar’s Super Service

At Hollywood Studios there is only one new penny to acquire here and it’s just inside the park at Oscar’s Super Service which is also where you would go when renting a wheelchair or ECV. Inside is a 3-design pressed penny machine but only one of the designs is for 2025 and has Sorcerer’s Apprentice Mickey.

Animal Kingdom

Discovery Trading Co – Gift Shop

Inside Animal Kingdom as you walk towards the big Tree of Life there is a large gift shop on your right side called the Discovery Trading Co. Outside one set of doors is a bank of three penny machines, and one of them has the new 2025 penny designs featuring Chip & Dale with a map.

Dawa Bar

Next we head back into the African section of the park, just as you walk over the bridge from Discovery Island you will see the Dawa Bar. The machine is right nearby and currently has the second 2025 pressed penny design this time with Minnie Mouse holding a Parrot.

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!

I cannot believe that I somehow completely forgot to write about a visit to Kennedy Space Center that my daughter and I took quite a few years ago at this point. There were quite a few penny machines, it made for a really fun and educational visit. Below I’m going to recount trip but wanted to preface it with a note on the penny machines. The photos are going to show that the machine cost was at that point $0.50 plus my own penny to press. I have been informed that all of these machines more recently have been converted to the new $1.00 price point and the machines now supply the penny. The designs have not changed and if I ever do get an opportunity to visit again I’ll make sure to update the machine photos.

Located in Cape Canaveral Florida it took us about an hour and half drive from the Orlando area to arrive. It is kind of surreal just to think of all the history that has taken place on this very property.

As soon as you can your ticket and enter you are immediately drawn to the rocket garden, with its various rockets all standing tall like skyscrapers in a city. The closer you get to them, the reality of just how big they are is almost overwhelming.

There are so many different things to see and do here. My daughter enjoyed a space themed playground, there is a movie theater, space simulators, hall of fame, memorials and much more. We eventually found ourselves heading into the World’s Largest Space Shop.

There was definitely a lot of items inside this shop including quite a few penny machines. Near on of the entrance/exit doors we found the first few machines.

The machines were all pretty standard CTM (Pennymen) models. They were well maintained and I didn’t run into any issues pressing my pennies. The designs available were also fantastic with images of all different space themes both historical and more current.

I especially enjoyed the Space Shuttle designs. I think it may just be that the shuttle was the primary space craft used during my youth and I remember seeing and hearing about it on the news during that time. It’s such and iconic creation, and soon I’d be up close and person with one of them.

There were three penny machines on the first floor of the gift shop but I also found a collectible medallion machine near one of the checkout areas.

The coin designs had some great images on them, and I thought the above design on the reverse side of each coin was a nice though with the Kennedy Space Center logo and established date.

We headed up to the second floor to see what they had and ran into a few more penny machines.

These two machines were kind of tucked away in a back corner away from much of the other merchandise. If you head towards the elevator you will have no issue finding them.

This was the final penny machine inside the souvenir shop making for a total of five machines, 20 penny designs and also that medallion machine. Quite a nice collection for just one stop, and we still had a huge part of the property left to explore.

We headed back outside and wondered around just taking everything in, but we were eventually drawn towards the large orange boosters standing tall in from of the Space Shuttle Atlantis building. This is (other than the pennies) the reason I wanted to visit.

After we entered in the building, we walked up along some long ramps and then were guided into a dark theater. There were no seats, we just stood there as the show began. We watched a video about the Shuttle program and Atlantis specifically. Then as the video faded, the wall behind seemed to fade away and we were given an incredible view of the actual Space Shuttle Atlantis. The effect of this transition was simply incredible and even now I’m kind of at a lost for words to how to properly explain it.

The shuttle was just gorgeous, such an incredible piece of history and engineering. I loved seeing the Canada Arm extended in the back cargo bay area. There were burn marks and other signs of its trips through space and reentry into our atmosphere. I was truly in awe.

If you remember when we first entered the Atlantis building we had walked up quite a few ramps. So after seeing the shuttle we worked our way through the exhibits down to the first floor that was filled with quite a few interactive activities. Near another flight simulator I found another pressed penny machine.

Before we left the building we had to exit out through the Shuttle Express Gift shop.

Inside we were able to fine a couple more pressed penny machine. This set of pennies was one of my favorites with all the Shuttle themed designs.

On the opposite side of the gift shop we the second machine with a nice NASA logo design, and I thought the penni with the Saturn V Rocket was fantastic.

Inside this gift shop I also came across a penny booklet for Kennedy Space Center, and it even included a special pressed penny in the cover.

Our day was quickly coming to an end, but there was still one place I wanted to try and visit before we had to leave. That was the Apollo/Saturn V Center. It’s on property, however you can’t walk there and need to get into a special line to board a tour bus that will transport you over to the separate building. Along the way the driver will give you some information about the buildings and even wildlife along the route. One of the most impressive was the humongous Vehicle Assembly Building and if you are lucky you may even get to see the flat crawler vehicles that move the rockets to the launch pad.

At the Apollo / Saturn V Center you begin by watching a little video about both programs, then you enter into a viewing area of command central where they simulate a rocket launch. After that you exit out into a long room with an actual Saturn V rocket suspended from the ceiling. Being able to walk underneath each section of the rocket shows exactly how large they are. It was simply incredible.

As we have come to expect there was another gift shop called the Right Stuff we had to cut through in order to leave.

We had found the last two pressed penny machines just outside of the gift shop. The first machine had a design of the Apollo program patch, the Apollo 11 lunar module, and a Saturn 5 rocket.

The last penny machine was right next to the previous one. I didn’t notice at the time, but once I got home I thought I had pressed one of the machines twice as I had two of the exact same designs. As it turns out this last machine had the exact same designs as the very first machine we used inside the World’s Largest Space Shop.

With my pockets weight down by pressed pennies we had finished our visit to Kennedy Space Center. It was truly an unforgettable experience and I look forward to being able to visit again some time soon in the future. There was quite a bit we didn’t get to experience but what we did see will be a fond memory for a long time. Keep on Pressing!