For anyone who's not familiar: all over the place at tourist attractions and airports you can find mechanical presses that will squish a penny with an embossed image. You pick one of 4 images, put in your penny + a couple of quarters and then turn a big crank handle until your newly pressed penny comes out the other side. You'd then collect squished pennies in a little collector's folio/pouch/thing for later viewing.
I guess now that pennies are getting phased out they'll have to "upgrade" the machines to work with other coins...
They do exist here in Germany as well, mostly in tourist destinations. The map does not show any outside the US, though. OpenStreetMap has 662 of them here.
Many traditional machines where you put in 2-4 quarters and a real penny have been phased out for credit card readers now that just drop a penny from inside the machine. It does kind of ruin some of the charm.
You don't see a lot of sites that use a window.alert() to tell you to sign up like that... would love an about us to know who had the passion to make this.
Does anyone know how to get a "good" penny for these machines? Often mine are hard to interpret when they're done and just look like a garbled mess. Do I need a penny that is sufficiently old or what
I'd imagine that pennies minted before 1982 (those that are mostly copper) are best for these machines. The newer pennies (now discontinued R.I.P.) probably aren't great under pressure.
The new machines I’ve used lately, my kid is into it, take credit card and have the penny preloaded
It’s probably more expensive usually $3-5 but also, it’s usually tourist trap pricing. I never have carried a penny on me since probably the 80s when I could actually use it to buy gum
Are these a thing outside the US?
For anyone who's not familiar: all over the place at tourist attractions and airports you can find mechanical presses that will squish a penny with an embossed image. You pick one of 4 images, put in your penny + a couple of quarters and then turn a big crank handle until your newly pressed penny comes out the other side. You'd then collect squished pennies in a little collector's folio/pouch/thing for later viewing.
I guess now that pennies are getting phased out they'll have to "upgrade" the machines to work with other coins...
They do exist here in Germany as well, mostly in tourist destinations. The map does not show any outside the US, though. OpenStreetMap has 662 of them here.
They have this sort of thing on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, but I think they take nickels now (since pennies haven't been minted since 2012).
Many traditional machines where you put in 2-4 quarters and a real penny have been phased out for credit card readers now that just drop a penny from inside the machine. It does kind of ruin some of the charm.
Destroying currency is crime in Australia, so no, this has never been a thing, here.
It's technically a crime in America too, but I guess Americans are more outlaw than Australians in that rather specific regard.
I saw one in El Salvador recently (they use US currency, including pennies).
If you are into the ones at Walt Disney World, https://www.presscoins.com/
There's also https://www.pennycollector.com/
You don't see a lot of sites that use a window.alert() to tell you to sign up like that... would love an about us to know who had the passion to make this.
I should have posted the plain URL https://pennypresses.net/ they have an About Us section and more info about the project.
Does anyone know how to get a "good" penny for these machines? Often mine are hard to interpret when they're done and just look like a garbled mess. Do I need a penny that is sufficiently old or what
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I'd imagine that pennies minted before 1982 (those that are mostly copper) are best for these machines. The newer pennies (now discontinued R.I.P.) probably aren't great under pressure.
The new machines I’ve used lately, my kid is into it, take credit card and have the penny preloaded
It’s probably more expensive usually $3-5 but also, it’s usually tourist trap pricing. I never have carried a penny on me since probably the 80s when I could actually use it to buy gum
Best to use an old solid copper one, for the USA that's before 1982, for the UK before 1992.