You often hear about hobbies being passed down from parents to children and grandkids. I would believe that most coin collectors came into collecting because of their parent or grandparents. However, for my mom and I the roles were slightly reversed.

I started collecting pressed (elongated) pennies over 25 years ago with my son. I was a single mom who really wanted to show my son that there was more to the world than his backyard. It was always a struggle to take the vacations, and we never had money for all the expensive souvenirs, so we would collect our pennies and quarters all year long and the pressed penny machines became our souvenir memories from the places we would take trips to.

As my son got older and our adventures branched out, we would try to find a penny that we thought other family members would like, and we would bring them back a penny. Back then all machines were coin operated and only cost $0.51. Fast Forward to 2016 - I took a job that had me driving around the country. During this time my mom became an avid collector of elongated pennies, and I would bring her pennies from my travels.

Sadly, my son and I have since lost most of our pennies from our early travels, However I can proudly say that I sparked my mom’s passion and collections from my discovery all those years ago, and today our travels today almost always include “finding the penny machines”