Disneyland Pressed Coins,
The Start of Disney Elongated Coin History
2008-22 © ParkPennies.com

First Our Acknowledgments:

    Special thanks to Mr. Vance Fowler, inventor of the first automated penny press, David Tomita, owner of the first great Disneyland ec web site, Chris Aahz, organizer of our collector group and email list that brought some very early Disneyland pressed penny collectors together. (Members of Chris's early collector group, Bert Creighton, Nancy Wooten, Chris Aahz, Aprille Curtis, Robert Hoff and Anastasia Hoff were key collaborators in drafting "The Disneyland List" which we soon converted into an Excel file. That Excel file became the basis for the internet based Disneyland elongated coin guide, today's www.ParkPennies.com.)We have also spent many enjoyable hours "divining" some difficult coin variation definitions with Lou Smith. Lou made valuable contributions to the Excel file and published "A Guide To The Elongated Coins Of The Disneyland Resort", the first hard copy form of the Excel file. Last but surely not least, our thanks to you, the people that visit this site. Since our start in the late 1990s, your visits, contributions, validations and links to our web sites have made this grammatically challenged collector's efforts at learning how to build a web site all worth while. :-)

    While avidly collecting Disneyland elongated coins beginning in 1989 or so, we have greatly valued the wonderful people we’ve met, the friends we’ve made, the knowledge we’ve gained and the journey. The offerings here would not have been possible or inspired without them. Contributions of both time and knowledge were generously made by Disneyland Cast Members and others in elongated coin related fields. Some of whom have become good friends in spite of our constant interrogations. Equally important have been the collaborations, inspirations and encouragement from Bert Creighton, Nancy Wooten, Lisa Shoup, and many others who have freely shared their time and knowledge of the hobby with us over the years since the first penny was pressed at Disneyland in 1987.

ParkPennies.com believes that one of the best things about the hobby is the people. In the first year of the move to our new, larger ParkPennies.com website, we wanted to acknowledge a few of the early advanced collectors that helped introduce us and other new collectors to this wonderful hobby. They have generously and enthusiastically given their time to sponsor "meets", web sites, coin lists and freely shared their knowledge with fellow collectors. Often also becoming good friends over the years. "Collector of the Month" is ParkPennies chance to acknowledge them even if in a very small way.

Disneyland Pressed Coin History As We Remember It

   Disney pressed coins 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 coin collectors and a wonderful hobby was born. Over the following years, those two initial single-play electric penny press machines have grown into hundreds of souvenir coin press 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, The Disneyland Resort Paris, France (Euro Disney), and The Shanghai Disneyland Resort, China. Based on your visits to ParkPennies.com, the fun of collecting and sharing the hobby has grown just as fast.

    You know, it seems that virtually every year from 1987 to 2020 Disney pressed penny collecting just got better and better. Not long after the first two penny machines were introduced in 1987, guests began collecting the inexpensive fun souvenirs and the hobby started to take shape. As longtime Disneyland guests will remember, early collectors of souvenir pressed pennies were sometimes greeted by a friendly "I didn't know anyone else collected Disneyland pressed pennies!", "Any new penny press machines?" or a "Do I have all the current elongated pennies?" at one of the pressed coin machines in the Disneyland Main Street Penny Arcade. By the mid 1990s, Disneyland pressed penny collectors were organizing, meeting each other via The Elongated Collectors Organization, Disneyana Shows, email "BBS" lists, on-line auctions, coin trading "meets" and of course while pressing pennies at the park. About this time, an early group of elongated coin collectors began the cataloging of Disneyland pressed coins. We have carried it on here as "The Keeper of the List" since the 1990s ever motivated by the collaboration of fellow collectors. The growth of the hobby has been amazing as shown by the increasing utilization of this 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 Disney elongated coin or souvenir pressed penny from every single Disney park in the world. After all, for the first year, there were no retired Disney pressed coins to find, there were only two Disney penny presses in the world, they offered only one coin each and they were both on-stage in Disneyland! So, given a leisurely five or ten minutes inside the gates of the original Disney Theme Park and $1.02, you could press a complete collection of every single Disney elongated penny ever placed on-stage in the entire world! :-) They were easy to tell apart too. One elongated penny was a "mouse", the other a "bear", both were easy to describe and identify. Those were the days! Nowadays many of those early Disney souvenir elongated coins are rare or as we prefer to say "scarce" and can cost a pretty um... penny! As you can see by the ParkPennies Guides, if you want a complete pressed penny collection of all pressed pennies / elongated coin souvenirs from every Disneyland Park in the world today, it is much more fun and much, much more challenging. However, building "a" collection of Disneyland pressed pennies is still very easy. Some elongated coin collectors specialize in a particular park / "gate", type of elongated coin or theme of their choice. Others focus on a single Disney character or series like the Holiday pressed nickel series or the Haunted Mansion pressed quarters or Nightmare Before Christmas pressed quarters or a single ParkPennies "guide / collection" that covers a just a single resort, a single park within a resort or just a pressed coin type like nickels or dimes... (Well, I guess there are people that can eat just a single potato chip too?)

     Today, ParkPennies 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 a Penny Press Machine Locations Page for the Original Disneyland Resort. For visitors asking "Do I have them all?", we offer extensive ParkPennies.com reference guides, news and articles. (Linked at the top of this page.) The guides also include details that aid in the attribution of Disneyland elongated souvenirs and help confirm the completeness of a collection. If you wish to keep a collection "specialized", each guide e.g. Disney California Adventure or Disneyland Resort Hotels and Area guides define 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. All submitted by collectors for collectors and gathered here.

     The ParkPennies reference to Disneyland elongated coins is the sum of several individual guides or "specialty collections". Each 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; SHDL The Shanghai Disneyland Resort Guide, China. We even have some WDW pages about The Walt Disney World Resort Elongated Coins in Florida. (A place that sadly doesn't have a Disneyland, but does have a wonderful Magic Kingdom.) Most resort guides are further defined in by "gates" or "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 Disneyland Resort, 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 Disney "proof" coins pressed from those canceled dies. Do you appreciate "the back side of water"? Well, there is even a guide listing the many Disneyland Elongated Coin Reverses! For those of us who collect elongated penny books often with pressed pennies in the cover 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 internet surfing pleasure, continuously updated articles, coin comparisons, additions, and news on the homepage. Most all pages and guides can be opened via the links and menu at the top of this page. Enjoy and...

Happy collecting, from the folks at ParkPennies.com.