Disneyland Pressed Pennies,
The Start of Disney Elongated Coin History

   Disney pressed pennies or Disney elongated coins as numismatists call them, were first offered by Disney in 1987. Their arrival at The Original Disneyland Park, marked the introduction of the first ever Disney souvenir stretched penny press machines to the first ever Disney pressed penny collectors and a wonderful hobby was born. Over the following twenty plus years, those two initial single-play electric pressed penny smasher machines grew into hundreds of souvenir Disney pressed penny 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 Disney pressed penny collecting hobby has gotten better. Not long after the first two squished 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 elongated 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 pressed penny collection of all pressed pennies and elongated coin souvenirs from all Disneyland Parks it is much more fun and much more challenging today. However, building "a" collection of Disneyland pressed pennies can still be very easy and manageable if you wish. Some elongated coin collectors specialize in a particular park, type of elongated coin or theme they chose to collect. Other pressed penny collectors focus on a single Disney character or holiday elongated coin series 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, news, and articles linked at the top of this page, to aid in the attribution of Disneyland elongated souvenirs and to help evaluate the completeness of a collection. If you wish to keep a collection "specialized", each guide defines a separate sub-collection of the Disneyland pressed penny or elongated coin universe. All Disneyland Parks are represented featuring current and retired pressed coins, images, descriptions, guide numbers, elongated coin comparisons and variation listings. Additionally, for collectors looking for general collecting tips, we have a Frequently Asked Questions page offering definitions, pressed penny cleaning techniques, pressed penny albums books and other ways to store and display pressed pennies, elongated coins and more.
     The complete ParkPennies.com Disneyland elongated coin collection is the total of several individual guides. Each Disney pressed penny guide is a well defined, key collection or specialized sub-collection 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 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 Coin 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 smashed or squished penny books of the past live on here. We have a pressed penny albums, pressed penny books and pressed penny holders page with pictures of Disneyland pressed penny books, past, present and even a prototype pressed penny collection book or two! We also have for your surfing pleasure, continuously updated articles, coin comparisons, additions, and news. Most all can be opened via the links in this Disney pressed penny history page or the icons at the top of this page. Enjoy and...
Happy collecting, from the folks at ParkPennies.com.