The First Pressed Penny Style Medals of
TDL Tokyo Disneyland ® Park
Years 1996, 1997, and 1998
© 2004-2010 ParkPennies.com

Pressed Pennies from Tokyo Disneyland Park make a fun collection and can make a very large collection if you wish. The TDL collection outline talks a bit about this set, the graphical pressed penny collection guide shows how it relates to the rest of the Disneyland coins, and provide a quick overview. So, if you wish to specialize and collect only these medals or a collect all the pressed souvenirs from all the Disney Resorts in the world, it can be a lot of fun!

The Tokyo Disneyland Resort reference guides cover the first fifteen years¹ of Tokyo Disneyland Resort and Hotel "pressed pennies". These "early" or "Classic" pressed penny souvenirs were cataloged as they were placed onstage by Robert and Anastasia Hoff, a difficult task especially over the first 10 years or so. However, with the help of fellow collectors both in Japan and the United States, this guide was compiled and vetted over the years. As you can see, these medal souvenirs are divided into several sections and some sections are divided into several pages for specialized collecting and easier attribution. Combined, the guides linked above feature all known on-stage Tokyo Disneyland Resort issues as well as key prototype coins issued from day one through the 15th year. The main guide sections include the TDL guide, which includes medals pressed inside the gates of Tokyo Disneyland Park, TDR guide, which includes medals pressed in the Tokyo Disneyland Resort, but outside the gates of Tokyo Disneyland or TDS guide, which includes medals pressed inside the gates of the Tokyo DisneySea Park, TDRB guide covering the medals enclosed in the Penny Collecting Books, TDRP guide featuring the Prototype coins advanced collectors treasure, and two Indexes, the Variations Index displays pictures linked to detail close-up pages for attribution of similar coins, and the COM page 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!? Around the turn of the century the number of coins issued each year began growing rapidly. From just a hand full of new coins each year to hundreds. Thankfully, Kuniaki Hiraki has developed an English based web site that benefits from his extensive knowledge of the near by Tokyo Disneyland Resort and his love of the pressed penny hobby. Guide numbers and images for the rapidly expanding number of coins issued after the first 15 years are updated regularly at his English Language TDR Medals web site.

Although these Tokyo Disneyland Resort medal souvenirs are often referred to as "pressed pennies", "pressed nickels" in Japan 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, also known as flans, disks, blanks, or slugs. The blank medal planchets are held inside the penny press, and then pressed to order for the collector. Other common names for these souvenirs are flattened pennies, crushed pennies, squashed pennies, rolled pennies, mashed pennies, smashed pennies, stamped pennies, squished pennies, smushed pennies, stretched pennies, memory pennies, and keepsake pennies... or just fun! :-)

The planchets used are metal disks are about the size of a US nickel or Euro five-cent piece. In the park, to this date, only two kinds of planchets have been used. (Although non-native coin and planchet examples are known and often prized by advanced collectors, they are not currently listed in the guides.) One standard type planchet or blank is made of solid, bare copper and the other standard type is also solid copper with a chrome or nickel plating. 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 real coins were actually pressed as they are currently in the United States.

¹ Kuniaki Hiraki's web site in Japan offers a very timely and complete guide to coins beyond the first 15 years including the standard collector guide numbers with web sites in both Japanese and English. Kuniaki's contributions to the hobby are most generous. We hope you will support his efforts.

These blanks or planchets provide a very clean, high quality Japanese elongated 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. At the same time, planchets also provide an enhanced level of "seigniorage" or coin pressing profits for the location owner when compared to the use of coins found in circulation which are typically pressed and then returned to the customer rather than kept by the vendor.

Tokyo Disneyland Park
15TH ANNIVERSARY, 1ST SEASON Type II
Pressed NICKEL Guide No. TDL9818_T2
Zoom or Compare in Window # 1 2 3