From the Feb. 10, 2010, National Geographic.
I'm pretty sure most of you have ne or more of those funny-looking pressed oval pennies somewhere in a drawer or box. Call them "Penny" souvenirs if you will, but there is money to be made with them.
In 1893, a Chicagoan jeweler used a metal-rolling machine to stretch coins and press the words "Columbian Exposition" into them. Today, thousands of these pressed coins say "I was there" not only in the US, but around the world.
There is even a company called Press-A-Penny that manufactures the rolling machines. American customers put two or four quarters into the machine along with a penny which will be pressed. Probably four quarters in Chicago where you go to get ripped off.
Few of the coins are worth anything, but then there's that memory thing.
Some neat and somewhat rare ones:
1893-- Columbian Exposition
1927-- Lindbergh's flight (some of the ones from this era had a punched hole in them for a key chain or necklace.
1963-- Oswald shot.
1991-- Desert Storm
1904-- St. Louis World's Fair
1935-- World Series
1977-- Hindenburg anniversary
2004-- West Nile Virus
I Think i Have About Ten or Twenty. --Cooter
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