Pressed Penny Style Souvenir Medals
TDS Tokyo DisneySea ® Collection Guide
Year 2004
© 2004-2010 ParkPennies.com

At last, pressed pennies have arrived at Tokyo DisneySea! As described in the Tokyo DisneySea Medals Collection Outline, this collection / guide, these coins are a small, manageable, part of the complete Tokyo Disneyland Resort pressed penny collection. You may also see how DisneySea pressed souvernirs relate to the other Disney elongated "coin" souvenirs in the graphical pressed penny collection guide.

Collecting all these pressed "pennies" or elongated "coin souvenirs" from scratch might still be too large a task for some collectors. However, a sub-collection of themes, characters or type coins for a framed set is an alternative. Unless, as many readers, you want a complete collection and more medals to frame!

The Tokyo Disneyland Resort reference guides are divided into seven sections and some sections are divided into several pages. Combined, they feature all known on-stage Tokyo Disneyland Resort issues as well as key prototype coins. The sections are all linked above. They include the TDL guide, which lists medals pressed inside the gates of Tokyo Disneyland Park, the TDR guide, which lists medals pressed in the Tokyo Disneyland Resort, but outside the gates of Tokyo Disneyland or Tokyo DisneySea, TDS guide, which lists medals pressed inside the gates of the Tokyo DisneySea Park, TDRB guide, the medals enclosed in the Pressed Penny Collecting Books, TDRP guide, the Prototype coins advanced collectors often treasure most, and two Indexes, the Variations Index which displays pictures linked to detail close-up pages for attribution of similar coins, and the COM page which is dedicated to the cool Coins of the Month that are currently issued at both Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea. All have links above. Can you believe when we started this project, there were only about a dozen Tokyo Disneyland Resort coins in total!

Although these souvenirs are often referred to as "pressed pennies", "pressed nickels" and even "elongated coins" by some collectors, no coins were injured in their production. Tokyo Disneyland Resort Souvenir Medals are made by pressing vended planchets, flans or slugs. The blank medal planchets which are held inside the penny press and then pressed for the collector, are about the size of a US nickel or five-cent coin. To date, only two kinds of blanks have been used in the park. (Although non-native planchet examples are known and often prized by advanced collectors, they are not currently listed in these guides.) One standard type is solid bare copper and the other standard type is also solid copper with a chrome or nickel plating on it. In Japan, some collectors call them by the names of "penny" and "nickel" because of their color, maybe also because of the nostalgia of pressed coins, but not because coins were actually pressed.

These blanks or planchets provide a very clean, high quality souvenir. They are all equal in size and appearance, and do not suffer as much from maintenance issues, governmental changes or regulations. The vending location can also easily change the "color" of the "coins" for different events etc. while providing an enhanced level of Seigniorage / coin pressing profits for the location owner when compared to the use of coins found in circulation.