Robot Claw – Page 41 – “Life In The So-Called Space Age”

Elongates: Familiar Shores

November 15, 2024

You knew it was coming… here are the ‘pennies’ from Japan:

A quick look at one of the collectors websites shows many machines scattered across Japan. As usual most of these are at tourist sights, and the coins shown above were no doubt pressed at such machines.

The Japanese machines dispense blanks into the die and are all electronically made (so no turning of cranks). They’re a little more expensive as well, at ¥100 per coin. Unlike US machines they usually only offer a single image. They coins are notably higher quality, with lots of crisp detail, such as the above from the ‘Odaiba Takoyaki Museum’.

Looking ahead to our next trip (in a month) I see a few machines at some of the locations we will attend. Maybe I’ll be adding to this collection sooner than I expected!

And finally we end this showcase with the coins pressed in Australia. Once again these use blanks instead of real coins, and the quantity I have suggest the machines are reasonably common.

As usual these are mostly found at tourist locations, but I don’t recall if they resemble the US machines (with multiple designs) or the Japanese ones. I find it amusing the relatively small gift store at The Big Banana had a coin machine: I suppose they’re inexpensive to manufacture and presumably pay for themselves since these coins are cheap souvenirs.

I’ve got a little more to say about this collection, but I’ll save those thoughts for a final post tomorrow.

Elongates: Distant Shores

November 14, 2024

As I’ve said these penny squashing machines aren’t unique to the USA, and the collection includes pennies from seven other countries.

The above were all collected during our German trip back in 2015. They came from at least four cities, so we must have found quite a few machines during our trip. I don’t remember pressing most of the above; perhaps Bernard made them himself?

A cursory inspection shows these to look more or less identical to the US-pressed coins, but these aren’t actually pressed pennies. Instead the machines in Germany (and most foreign countries) use blanks the same size and material (I think) as US pennies so they look the same when made. You simply feed coins in to pay, and the machine drops the blank into the die itself.

The above all came from England, and again were obtained in various cities. These are a bit different from the German ones since they use real coins: specifically British pennies!

I neglected to mention until now, but sometimes the machines press both sides of the coin. In the examples I have, the reverse is always the name of the attraction or shop in which the penny was pressed. The various pennies from The London Eye I own have pictorial fronts with no logo, but as you can see they put that on the back. These are perhaps the most detailed backs on any of the pennies in the collection.

Some of these Irish pennies are hilariously low quality: as if the machine was broken and not applying enough pressure. I’ve only got six but they’re all from different locations which intrigued me since I wonder what the other designs in the machines must have been since I pressed only one?

That’s the sixth Irish one (not in the previous pick) and looking at the reverse it seems this is also a real coin, specifically a 5 euro cent coin. We saw puffins when we visited Ireland, but our puffin experience in Scotland were much better.

Speaking of Scotland, these four were obtained there. Once again these are British pennies, and once again they all came from different locations which leaves me wondering why I pressed only one at each machine.

Urquhart Castle stands on the shores of Loch Ness, and we visited back on June 9, 2018 which is when I must have pressed this penny. Pressed pennies are often blurry or imperfect, probably because the die has worn down over the years or is slightly misaligned, but this one from Urquhart is unusually fine and detailed. It’s impressive compared to many I’ve showcased so far, but the best will come tomorrow.

By the way, do you still have the Nessie postcard?

I’ll end today with these three, which are amongst the few in the collection not originally collected by me. Obviously from New Zealand, these seem to have been pressed from blanks and not actual coins. To repeat my previous statement, we’ll see more like this tomorrow…

Elongates: Amusements & Animals

November 13, 2024

A shorter post today, wrapping up the rest of the American pennies. We’ll start with these from Disney and Universal Studios:

These were obtained at Disney and Universal parks and I think one of these may be the oldest pressed penny I own. Specifically, this one:

If my memory is correct, the above was pressed when we first went to Disney (in Florida) in 1996, which I just learned was only two years after they first added penny machines to the park. In the parks the pennies cost $1 (as opposed to $0.50 almost everywhere else) and I’ve read that today there are dozens of machines across all the Florida parks, with about 240 unique pennies available. If you’re a diehard penny collector, you’ll have a great time hunting them down at Disney!

It seems Disney pennies are particularly popular with collectors, and in the 30 years since they added the machines there have been an astonishing 2500+ different pennies! Since Disney owns so many licenses now, this includes such examples as Star Wars, Marvel and even Tron pennies (none of which I own):

It’s also worth nothing that Disney parks in other countries have pressed ‘pennies’ as well, but I’ll get back that in a few days…

As for the Universal coins, I’ll spotlight this one:

Shortly after we went to Universal the ET ride was closed. We knew it was on its last legs and rode it several times, enjoying it quite a bit, so this penny – which would no longer be available – is somewhat nostalgic.

Let’s move on now, to animals:

Zoos are common locations for penny machines, and the above are some examples of coins pressed at zoos or animal parks. Many of these don’t even have the name of the zoo on the penny and I like this. Australia never had pressed coins when I was a kid, but I imagine if they did I would have preferred the animal ones over all others…

Except maybe for the dinosaur ones! 🙂