Pressed Pennies – jellyworms

My Penny Collection

Last year at the start of Summer 2024, I decided to pick up a new hobby… elongated coins otherwise known as smashed or pressed pennies. I had enough of lugging around my childhood piggy bank (literally) from the 90s and started throwing the coins into the machines around town. There are quite a few of them since we live in a tourist area. My collection has grown to over 230 and most of them are from the Vegas/Mojave area. I’ve even gone on little road trips out of town (Goodsprings, Primm, Searchlight, Zion, Pahrump, Baker, Barstow and theres some in Laughlin but I haven’t been there for them yet!) just to grab the pennies for something to do to get out of the house for a little bit. Most of the machines are inside so it’s something to do in the summer as well.

They are a nifty little souvenir and possibly one of the cheapest you will find in town. If you find an old school machine, it will run you 51¢ per design. The newer machines come preloaded with newer shiny zinc pennies and often cost a dollar per design or $5 for about 4-8 designs.

Some of us nerds like to press on pennies older than 1982 because they are made up of the most copper. I do a mixture of both. I was favoring coppers, but I have to get around to figuring out how to clean them so I’ve been using the shiny new zincs lately.

Even though there are a lot of machines in town, they are often retiring or getting broken and take a long time to fix. I’ve got several in my collection from town that no longer exist like… Circus Circus recently retired their machines and replaced them with new designs. There were 2 machines at the Mandalay Shark Reef but people are reporting that they have been removed…..

I find the machines using the website PennyCollector.com – you can navigate to a locations list per state and see what machines exist or no longer exist. Users like me make little updates occasionally to keep the website up to date, letting others know when machines appear, are retired, moved to a new location or currently out of service.

I hope this page inspires you to start building your own.