Disneyland Pressed Pennies,
The Start of
Disney Elongated Coin
History
Pressed pennies or elongated coins as numismatists call them, were first offered Disney in 1987. Their arrival at The Original Disneyland Park, marked the introduction of the first ever Disney souvenir penny press machines to the first ever Disney pressed penny collectors and a wonderful hobby was born. Over the following twenty years, those two initial single-play electric pressed penny machines grew into hundreds of souvenir Disney pressed coin machines greeting millions of guests at The Original Disneyland Resort, Anaheim, The Walt Disney Word Resort, Florida, The Tokyo Disneyland Resort, Japan, The Hong Kong Disneyland Resort, China, and The Disneyland Resort Paris, France (Euro Disney). For us, the fun of collecting and sharing the hobby has grown just as fast, thanks to your visits to ParkPennies. com.
You know, every year it seems the hobby has gotten better. Not long after the first two penny press machines were introduced and guests began collecting the inexpensive fun souvenirs, the hobby started to take shape. As long time collectors will remember, early collectors of souvenir pressed pennies were sometimes greeted at the Main Street Penny Arcade by, "I didn't know anyone else collected Disneyland pressed pennies!", "Any new penny press machines?" and "Do I have all the current elongated pennies?". However, by the mid 1990's, Disneyland pressed penny collectors were organizing, meeting each other via The Elongated Collectors Organization, Disneyana Shows, email lists, on-line auctions, coin trading "meets" and of course while pressing pennies at the park. (An early group of elongated coin collectors began the cataloging of Disneyland elongated coins at about this time. We have carried it on here ever motivated by submissions from fellow collectors and the growth in the hobby as shown by the increasing utilization of our humble reference site via Historic Hits, Recent Hits, Unique Visitors and Visiting Country Flags. )
For awhile, it was easy, maybe too easy, to collect every single elongated Disney coin or souvenir pressed penny from every single Disney park. After all, for the first year, there were no retired Disney pressed coins, only the two single-play penny pressers were on-stage and both of them were at the same park! They were easy to tell apart too. One elongated penny was a "mouse", the other a "bear", both were easy to describe and identify. So, given a leisurely five or ten minutes inside the gates of the original Disneyland and $1.02, you could press a complete collection of every single Disney elongated penny ever on-stage. Those were the days! Matter of fact, many of the early Disney souvenir coins are now rare or as we prefer to say "scarce" and can cost a pretty, um... penny! As you can see, if you want a complete collection of all elongated coin souvenirs - pressed pennies from all Disneyland Parks it is much more fun and much more challenging today. However, to keep "a" collection of Disneyland pressed pennies can still be very easy and manageable if you wish. Some collectors specialize in a particular park, type of elongated coin or theme they chose to collect. Pressed penny collectors sometimes focus on a single Disney character or single holiday like Christmas, New Years, Halloween, or a single "guide / collection" that covers a single resort, park, area or pressed coin type. (Well, I guess there are people that can eat just a single potato chip too?)
Today, Park Pennies content is guided by those original questions. For visitors asking "Any new machines?", we offer insider news pages and related articles for each Disneyland Resort and Penny Press Machine Locations for the Original Disneyland Resort. For visitors asking "Do I have them all?", we offer several ParkPennies.com reference guides to aid in the attribution of Disneyland elongated souvenirs and to help evaluate the completeness of a collection. To keep a collection "specialized" if you wish, the guides each define a separate section of the Disneyland pressed, smashed, squished or elongated penny universe. All Disneyland Parks are represented featuring current and retired pressed coins, images, descriptions, guide numbers, elongated coin comparisons and variation listings and thumbnail images. Additionally, for collectors looking for general collecting tips, we have a Frequently Asked Questions page offering definitions, pressed penny cleaning techniques, ways to store and display pressed pennies, elongated coins and more.
The ParkPennies.com guides represent common Disney pressed coin collections based on well defined, key collections and specialized sub-collections as shown on The Disneyland Pressed Penny Collections page.
Key guides / collections include: DL The Original Disneyland Resort located in Anaheim, California USA; TDL The Tokyo Disneyland Resort located in Urayasu-shi, Chiba-ken, Japan (非常に貧しい日本語訳); HKDL Hong Kong Disneyland Resort located in Lantau Island, Hong Kong, China; DLRP The Disneyland Resort Paris (Euro Disney) located in Marne-la-Vallée, France. We even have some files for WDW, The Walt Disney World Resort Elongated Coins , located in Lake Buena Vista and Bay Lake, Florida. (A place that sadly doesn't have a Disneyland, but, does have a wonderful Magic Kingdom.) Most resorts are further defined in our collection guides by "gates" or sections of a resort that have separate "parks" requiring a separate admission ticket, as well as the areas on Disney owned property, but outside of the Disney gates and turnstiles. For the advanced collectors, our Elongated Coin Variation Guides attempt to divine the small differences between some very similar coins, the DN Prototype Disney Elongated Coin Guide shares the images of some scarce / rare coins that were never seen on-stage, the DS Disneyland Arcade Shop Elongated Coin Issues Guide offers rarely seen coins engraved by Cast Members at the park, the TR Elongated Coin Test Rolls Guide gives a few examples of production variations, the CDL Canceled Elongated Coins Guide is a growing list of the dies that have been canceled including the "proof" coins pressed from those dies. Do you appreciate "the back side of water"? Well, there is even a guide listing the many Disneyland Elongated Coin Backstamps. For those of us who collect elongated penny books with pressed pennies in the cover, like the ones at many museums, space centers, national and state parks, zoos, aquariums, theme restaurants, and amusement theme parks, the Disneyland penny books of the past live on here. We have a pressed penny collection books and holders page with pictures of Disneyland pressed penny books, past, present and prototype! We also have for your surfing pleasure, a bunch more stuff I forgot!?
Happy collecting, from the folks at ParkPennies.com.
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DL Disneyland USA Pressed Penny Collection Guides Index 
