The First Walt Disney World Pressed Coins

The First WDW Pressed Pennies

Based on our research, the first two WDW pressed penny machines offered four coins each. One of the first WDW pressed penny machines offered Walt Disney World titled coins with images of: Mickey Mouse rays, Mickey Mouse standing, Minnie Mouse and Chip N Dale. (As pictured on the marquee above and similar* to the coins offered with chains.) The second WDW pressed penny machine featured Walt Disney World Typhoon Lagoon titled coins with images of: Shark Submarine, Ship Tillie on the mountain peak, Snorkeling Mickey Mouse, and Surfing Mickey Mouse on an inner tube. Subsequent machines offered a selection of only three coins until The Penny Men introduced their four play hand crank penny press machines at WDW.

The first onstage machine offering Mickey Mouse rays, Mickey Mouse standing, Minnie Mouse and Chip N Dale pressed coins was taken offstage in the 1990s and then to the surprise of many Walt Disney World pressed coin collectors, the machine was placed back onstage in the early 2000s for a short time and the machine was often out of service. (Probably due to the age of the machine.) However, during that short time, it was able to bring the value of that first, scarce and valuable set of coins down to 51 cents each and with that the confidence of many WDW collectors. Much of that damage has passed with time, but for some WDW collectors, confidence has not healed as quickly.

These are the earliest WDW pressed penny die rolls known to ParkPennies were made for Marvin Huth circa 1991 by Frank Brazzell. We are aware that Walt Disney World has published dates of 1994 as well as 1995 as the first years pressed penny machines were placed at WDW. However, based on the WDW pressed coin records kept by Frank Brazzell the engraver of the early WDW dies, ParkPennies staff's recollection of our visit to WDW in 1995 and of our WDW elongated coin collection at that time, it is our opinion, that the first year pressed pennies were available at WDW could have been as late as early 1992. We would welcome any additional history / evidence that we could add to this article. Our thanks to the Cast Member that contacted ParkPennies in January of 2017 to say "Just confirming the date of the original WDW pressed pennies in the penny arcade on Main St were on stage in 1991, the year I went to work there."

Walt Disney World pressed pennies or elongated coins as many purists call them, are great collectibles. On this page we have links to some WDW files and some great WDW web sites. (Of course, for Disneyland USA, Disneyland Tokyo, Disneyland Paris, and Disneyland Hong Kong, we hope you will visit our main pressed penny index page. :-)

Happy Collecting,
Boomer

*One of the several small differences between the vintage on-stage coins vs. the vintage necklace / good luck chained elongated coins is that the necklace coins featured thicker coin grips compared to the on-stage coins which featured thin coin grips. When comparing these very poor images of the early WDW coins, you will also find differences in the ©Disney etc. as the coins were pressed from different dies. However, the coin grip size would probably be easiest to spot for most of us. We believe this is evidence of a second machine with similar designs of Mickey Mouse rays, Mickey Mouse standing, Minnie Mouse and Chip N Dale. Possibly the second machine may have been offstage and used for the production of the necklaces pictured above. No coins matching the necklace coins are known to have been pressed in a machine onstage.)