Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Pressed Pennies

Episode Date: August 3, 2026

Alex Schmidt, Katie Goldin, and special guest Jamie Loftus explore why pressed pennies are secretly incredibly fascinating. ***SIF members get a special digital art poster, to celebrate 300 episodes! Find it in your BoCo: https://maximumfun.org/howtoboco/ Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode. Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5 Visit http://sifpod.store/ to get shirts and posters celebrating the show. Help support this show and unlock bonus content! Become a member at https://maximumfun.org/joinsifpod

Pressed pennies, nor for being squished, famous for being souvenirs. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why pressed pennies are secretly incredibly fascinating. There folks, hey there, Ciphalopods. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt. I'm very much not alone. I'm joined by my co-host, Katie Golden.

Hey, Katie. Hello. Hello. I just decided to join Match. And we are joined by a wonderful guest this week. She's a comedian podcast, your bestselling author you can hear every week on the Bechtel cast and hear lots more places to Jamie Loftus. Hi. Hello.

How are you? Great. We were telling you about our heirs and we're doing good. Yeah. Oh, incredible. Yeah, I'm working on it. And my air is still at present, a Cocker Spaniel, but. working on it.

Yeah. I guess my two cats are also in the line of succession and I don't want like a fight, you know? That's tough because there's two. You do have to file something to, unfortunately. Yeah, they've been kind of disinherited. It's not fair. Yeah, yeah. Because they are the eldest.

They are the eldest you would think. But yeah, there's some technicalities there. How have you been? How are things going? Oh, man, I've been good. I'm good. I've got a new book coming out next year. It just be my first indie feature.

So those are my dependence at this time or those things. So yeah, I'm good. I'm chilling. That's incredible. And also thank you to many folks and I discord for in the future. We're going to do an episode about hot dogs. And they just said, please have Jamie on the show one way or another. And we're like, great, let's do it.

Because your previous book is all about the history and everything of hot dogs. We subpoenaed Jamie. So she's legally obligated to be here. Yes. It's true. I mean, truly, it's summertime right now, and it is, this is my, this is my season. This is my season. I'm called forth very often. Instead of a bad signal, it's just fireworks broadly. Just all fireworks all the time. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Bastille Day fireworks still, like, okay, sure. Yeah, I'm here. I'm here. Yeah, I'm here. Yeah, nothing's changed since last year. Except, you know, yeah, yeah. Joey Chestnut is shilling for Polly Market now. That's the update this year. And we can all circle back up again next July.

So Joey Chestnut, is he the hot dog eating guy? He is, yes, yes, he is the hot dog eating guy. I've always thought that was odd, given that his name is Chestnut. You'd think he'd be like a chestnut eating guy. Well, he does do other stuff. Don't count him out. He does a lot of different. He was briefly endorsed by pistachio, which is close, closer.

I guess that there's not like a prestige chestnut brand that I know of, but he was endorsed by pistachio and dude wipes simultaneously at one point, which was kind of fun. Yeah. I mean, that has an implication about the conception of pistachias. I don't love. With Joey Chestnut, he's not shy about letting people know, you know, what his body does after.

76 hot dogs. That's where the dude wipes come in. Right. Are dude wipes for the butt or are they for the face? I feel and I have weirdly been kind of like tracking how dude wipes are marketed because I think they're such a diabolical product where they're just like they're baby wipes, but they're but they have to be like that like like it's so intense and yeah very musky. Oh do they have an, I didn't realize do they have an odor like a musk odor? They do. Yeah, I volunteer and we were previously trying to like, I mean, dude wipes made a donation and we were trying to like distribute the dude wipes and everyone was like, I'm good. Like no one wants them. Yeah, Joey Chestnut was one of the only sponsors who was not shy about being like, I wipe my butt with these. I use these for my butt. I think some of them are like in a masculine way. I freshen up. But Joey Chestnut's like, this is going straight to my butt hole after 76 hot dogs, which is a coup for them. Yeah. Right.

I think that that's what you're supposed to do, but most celebrities are not willing to say that. Wasn't in the contract at all. He was like, I got it. I got it. It's fun. Yeah. I mean, whatever they got to do to switch the narrative on butthole cleaning being masculine, I'm 100% for it. Even if it kind of has to be a little silly, right, with like some sort of a, a first.

whipe because those but holes need to be cleaned. It's a gender affirming wipe for cis men specifically. And yeah, yeah, I don't know. I think it's certainly a less harmful endorsement than polymarket. But, you know, he sort of seems to take the checks

where they come. I mean, what do you have against polycules, Jamie? You know, I'm very, hateful. I'm a hateful person. I reject it because it doesn't make sense to me. I reject but I don't understand that old classic. Speaking of the nation, right? We have a topic selected this week by folks who listen to the show. Thank you to Jaron on the Discord for suggesting it. And we always start with what's our relationship to it or opinion of it. And I think, Jamie, you can start. How do you feel about pressed pennies? Oh, oh,

This is exciting. Press pennies, I'm a fan. I'm a fan. I would say I was a collector as a kid. I remember having, it was like some regional theme park where they would have the little albums that you could buy that specifically have press penny size slots, which is a weird shape. I'm pro, but the machines are still around, and I've been on two road trips this year. So I've had the opportunity, but I never have a penny anymore.

So I don't get them due to. to, I don't know, it seems like maybe a dying art form. I hope not. I did, I figured Jamie's traveling, I was curious if you're like just passing these by because you have no interest. It's like, but like, no, I just, I don't have the coins. Oh, my pockets. Yeah. I want to participate. But it's, I feel like I would need. It's like having one of those mini Polaroid cameras. You need the correct album and a very specific like the right thing at the right time. It's hard to optimize yourself for that. that's true and katie what about you to me this is like a it really highlights how it's the process

not the product uh watching that pity get squished is incredible oh yeah 10 out of 10 so satisfying um it's fun to pretend the penny did something bad and deserves it uh and it's it's an incredible mechanism you watch it go in there's all these gears there's sort of like you know a Kafka-esque torment machine inside of it, and then the penny gets squashed, and then you get this squash penny. The actual product of the squashed penny is not cool. And it hurts to say this because I really want it to be,

because it's not like I didn't do it. Every time I came across one of those machines at the zoo, I'd get that done. And it'd be kind of neat because if you did it at different parts of the zoo, you got a little different animal on it. And like theoretically, that's really fun. But you're like, great.

Now I kind of have this squashed penny. And I didn't know what to do with them. I guess if I had one of the books, that would have been fun. But I had no plan once I had the squash penny. So I just was like, can I still use this? Yeah, the end game is pretty nebulous. for the penny.

Right. By researching this, I learned those books exist. I had never even conceived of that when I was getting pressed pennies. I wish I had, yeah. Like what I concluded was like now this is like a finger snowboard

that I just sort of do finger snowboarding with. But like I love like I would always and the thing is I didn't have the ability to articulate because I would always want to do it. And my mom would be like, well, but you don't like, you have a lot of squashed pennies and you don't like them. And I was like, yeah, but. Okay.

When she puts it that way, it's pretty. I still want to see the penny get squashed. And if you think about it, it's the most conspicuous consumption there is. I don't know. Because it's entirely money. Yeah. Yeah. We're just, it's just like the destruction of money for fun.

I'm, but I'm not, I'm not an anti. I want to make that clear. I'm not anti. I think it's deeply philosophical and touches upon what makes us yearn. Oh, okay. That's weird. I, I did feel like I was connecting with people about something only I knew about somehow as I read about this, even though everybody knows about them. But like, it turns out I called them pressed pennies, but other people call them squished pennies. And the big fans of this might call them. them elongated coins as a name. Ooh, that's fancy. That's, yeah, that's really trying to make it a thing in a fun way.

Yeah. Because they do elongate, but I think of it as being like pressed, squished. But yeah, they are getting longer. It's true. What about legal tinderbender? Oh, that's the best one. Trademark, copyright. Elongated coins is a way to, like, craft a phrase that you could add the word community to the end of.

We're like, us in the elongated coin community actually really prefer this model of penny, of coin elongator, not this. It's become a fine wine. It sounds like you just got corrected. Like you said, like, oh, is that a pressed penny? It's like, we actually prefer the term elongated coin. Right. Oh, this sounds like a sitcom character. I'm into this.

True. Yeah, I'm surprised there isn't like a Seinfeld in my mind or something, right? It feels like something they would obsess over for a whole episode. But no, it's just something we all did at zoos and aquariums, museums, tourist stops. Yeah, you know. Heck yeah. And we have like numbers and takeaways of more about them. And on every episode we lead with a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics.

This week that's in a segment called, The stats are all around. Stats are all around. Bound da-da-da-do. I said the stats are all around. And then we're cheering. We're standing and cheering. We're clapping so loud.

I wish I had a drum kit. This name was submitted by Johnny Davis on the Discord. Thank you, Johnny. And he also noted that the band, Finn Lizzie is a fun band name for pressed pennies. Thin Lizzie. It's a good idea. It's a good bit. We have a new name for this segment every week.

Please make them as silly and whackings by as possible. Submit through Discord or just at pot. at gmail.com. And the first number this week, it feels very elongated coin community. The number is 11 years. 11 years is how long a family in Washington, D.C. turned part of their home into the Squished Penny Museum. They, for 11 years, exhibited squished pennies every weekend.

That's a good run. That's kind of like a version of the Sagrada Familia when you think about it. It is the local version of it, yeah. Yeah, this is Pete Morlewitz and Christine Henry. They turned their front entryway and another room into a squished penny exhibition starting in 1996. And then they told the Washington Post they decided to stop in 2007 because they were just spending every weekend on it. And they would like to vary their lives, you know, and do other stuff on the weekend. I don't understand.

Same, incomprehensible. And they had a collection of 250 pressed pennies. I sort of expected more. Yeah. And then the Guinness Book of World Records, which is not super research or anything, but they say that someone named Robin Kern in the town of Wycliffe, Ohio, has 2,220 pressed pennies and is the world record holder.

Okay. Yeah, that's what you open a museum for. 250, they didn't get, yeah, because that's only 20. 25 bucks. Isn't $2.50? I don't know math or money, so. Sorry.

That's pretty weak. That's pretty weak. And honestly, and not to like shame them, but, but I will. They had 11 years and they couldn't find more. I think you could get more than that at like one week at Disney World. You could exceed that. Do you remember the last press penny that you got? remember mine very vividly. I think mine was polar bear press penny from San Diego Zoo. Nice.

It's not necessarily my last, but I know I had at least three of the Shed Aquarium in Chicago. It's a penguin. Oh, that's so sweet. Yeah. Mine was at Avatar Land. It, uh, at they, I was like, which is very good. It's beautiful. And I did not want to pay, I'd already paid so much to be. there that I was like, my souvenir will be a Navi elongated coin. And I of course immediately lost it, which is another issue of not having an elongated coin album, but it was fun to watch. Yeah. That's such a good image for it. Was the machine navvy coded at all or was it just kind of stuck in there among the trees? I don't remember the degree. of world immersion they went for

with the elongated coin. Although that park is very bizarrely themed. I think it's very funny. Well, it's a little bit like freaky where they need you to forget that the story is about colonialism in order to engage with the park.

So they've added seeming to assure you that the Navi are, it's all good. It's all good. And we've we've resolved our differences. There's literally a picture of a guy shaking a Navi's hand. It's a little chilling.

Is there like a Navi Earth Thanksgiving that like they're like, see this and everything was fine after this? That is the vibe. It is like false textbook energy, but also it's so beautiful when you walk into Pandora, but you are an intruder, but they're trying to tell you you're not. I don't know. I don't know. I got an elongated coin there.

Nice. I haven't done enough reflection about my time in Pandora. Yeah. It's wild to imagine like that Jimmy Carter kept David picture where he's in the middle, but then it's a Navi and the evil colonel guy. When you have a movie that it's a metaphor for racism or colonialism, there's always something that is bad about that metaphor. It's because like you have to go all the way.

Yeah, the metaphor itself is flawed. But then making a theme park about the flawed metaphor is just, it's so many steps removed. Right. No, exactly. Yeah. I do kind of want a press penny with an avi on it because, like, it was basically impossible to find, like, what's the weirdest press penny design? They're all weird and great. And in my experience, searching online, it took me straight to Reddit threads of, like, dirty pressed pennies, like risque pressed pennies. So people are excited about that too.

I see. Okay. There's a German, there's a natural spring in Germany called the Blautoff, which is just this beautiful natural spring. But there's a legend about a mermaid living in it. So people online are like, oh, there's a mostly nude woman on a pressed penny. Nice. So you find that kind of thing if you try to find the weirdest one. Sure.

Nice. Yeah. But yeah, brothels in Nevada offer them. The Erotic Museum in Amsterdam offers them. There's a fudge shop in the town of Richmond. Indiana where the shop is named Uranus, like the planet. So then their slogan and the pennies say, the best fudge is in Uranus, right? Like we all see where it is going.

That's, yeah, it writes itself. It's like doo-do pooh is what they're saying, because it's fudge. Exactly, yeah, yeah. It's brown. That's hilarious. Look, I'm not above it. I mean, it's out there, yeah. Yeah, I'm well below it.

The other weird things. thing about pressed pennies is that they're often literally dirty looking because the number there is 1983. 1983 is when the U.S. changed the composition of pennies to be almost all zinc instead of copper. And apparently zinc is trouble with pressed pennies because once it's exposed to the elements, it gets much darker looking very fast and kind of grimy looking. And so according to the elongated coin community, you want to find pennies from before 1983 to press. Otherwise, you will end up with a pressed penny that they've nicknamed a Stinky Zinky. Oh.

So much. This is my favorite. Oh, Sable. It's a really good subculture now. Stinky. Are you kidding me? That's so good. I think that like activated my inner middle school bully. I'm like so they need to be stopped. I vociferously disagree. That's the best thing I've ever heard. A stinky zincy. A stinky zincy.

Oh, it's so good. Yeah. Yeah, because it is the coin is now 97.5% zinc. There's only a tiny amount of copper on the outside. So that's what people are worried about is it'll look bad. Right. That does make sense, though, because I feel like that that's a lot. lot of press pennies that I've made and I just assumed I had bum pennies, but that's, I didn't

know that was just the law of the land. Yeah, yeah, US pennies used to have a lot more copper in them, and then that would be a better looking press penny. So the fans are like, I got to find old pennies, give me your old pennies. And everyone's like, I never think about pennies, but sure. Get these stinky zinkies away from me. Yeah. Do they bite down on the, elongated coins and they're like uh-oh this tastes like is stinky zinky I can I can taste zinc anywhere let me tell you and then back in the days of a lot more copper the next number is 1893 the year 1893 that's basically the origin date of pressed pennies because the first popular machine for these was at the 1893 Colombian exposition in Chicago the famous world's fair

That damn world's fair comes up every other thing I want to learn about. It goes back to that or the 1900 World's Fair. It was just a lot of hot dog lore happens at those two worlds fairs too. I'm not kidding. That makes sense. That's so interesting. They were really cooking. They were really cooking at those fairs.

Cooking the dogs, yeah. Cooking the dogs, pressing the pennies. lot going on. Yeah, that fair at the time the U.S. had a population around 65 million, and the fairs sold 27.5 million tickets. So some of those are international or repeats, but still, like, this was a place where it influenced the whole country. And somebody modified a metal press for making jewelry into a press to turn any coin into a souvenir from the fair that said, Colombian Exposition 1893. Oh, cool. Oh, that has to be super. rare.

Apparently they made so many of them they are not that valuable. Oh, okay. But they are worth like, you know, more of money than the average press penny. Yeah. Okay. So they are worth more than one cent? Yes. Yeah, basically like so many of them were made by so many millions of fairgoers that

they're actually not worth that much, even though you would think they would be. Could you counterfeit them? Ooh. Like find the press. Counterfeit them. And then you have a bunch of pennies that are worth a little bit more than a penny. You just have to be really careful the kinds of pennies you're oppressing because a stinky zinky is a dead giveaway. You can't have a stinky zinky.

I'm really trying to come around to stinky zinky. I'm doing my best. You have to have a proper cop or not a stinky zinky. Oh, okay, okay. Katie, I feel like you're making a pretty good pitch to lead the elongated coin community. These are great names. Like if you vote for me and I'll reinstate mandatory proper coppers if you're going to get your coin squeezed. Yeah, yeah.

And then from this fair, we don't know exactly how many were made. We do know that coin collectors were already a community and wrote about this as an innovation in an 1894 issue of the American Journal of Numismatics. They described this as an entire new category of coins to collect. Sorry, what was that word? You said, numismatics? Newmismatics is the fancy name for coin collecting. Yeah.

Is that, are you saying new mismatics or numismatics, one word? All one word, yeah. N-U-M-I-S-M-I-S-M-I-S-M-M-N-M-A-S-M-M-A-S-N-M-A-S-N-N-A-N-N-M-A-N-M-A-N-M-A-N-M-A-N-M-A-R-N-M-N-A-R-N-U-M-N-U-N-R-N-A-R-N-R-U-N-R-N-R-R-U-R-R-W-R-R-R-R-R-R-W. Yeah. I was born in the wrong century. The Colombian exposition ones people usually paid five cents as a fee on top of contributing a coin to get their pressed whatever. But this was such a new concept. It wasn't specifically for pennies yet. It was geared for just any piece of metal that you gave them basically.

Isn't that the case for modern machines as well? You don't just put a penny in. You put money and the penny in. And I think it was more than five cents. I think it's like 25 whole cents. The last one, because I really, I was really hoping at like a rest stop on my last road trip. I was like, oh, I want a South Dakota pressed penny. And now I did not have the correct amount of change for it.

So it didn't happen. But they don't even expect you to have a penny. They would need you to have the quarters, but you don't need to have the penny. they sort of anticipate you're not having one penny included in the cost are they preloaded into the machine or do they like hand you a penny no they're in there yeah yeah i'm sorry i kind of don't like that i want to be sort of the one you want to bring like well because how do you how do you verify the year of the penny the the year veracity you're statistically going to get a stinky zinky and you're already it's too late i'm willing to

to take responsibility for that, I think, because it's like, I think it's a power thing for me, because it's like I've decided the fate of this penny. It's like I'm the captain of my own Penny's destiny. I don't know. That's beautiful. That's really beautiful. Thank you. He's really seizing life by the pennies, you know?

Right. Just grabbing them. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and it's exactly like Jamie said. We'll dive more into that later. Apparently, also, fans will purchase copper blanks online. You can just buy copper discs that would be for making coins. And nobody worries about you counterfeiting because why would you counterfeit pennies?

So you just buy those discs and bring them with you. Yeah. Right. If you're like way into this. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Do those make a cleaner print or just easier to get?

It seems like it's mainly to avoid stinky sinkies. I know it sounds like I want to say that a lot, but it's really the reason. They just want a pure copper situation and then it'll be a nice looking pressed penny. Yeah. Okay. Mm-hmm. And then my other favorite number here with currency and inflation is the year 1857. So earlier than the pressed penny, the year 1857, that's when the U.S. retired a currency

denomination of half pennies. Oh, the hay pennies. Yeah, I had no idea that was not just like a British coin. The U.S. minted hay pennies from 1792, the beginning of us making money, all the way to 1857. Right. Wow. Was there a guy on them? Who got the axe?

It was often like Lady Liberty, like the woman who represents Liberty. Of course, the woman coin. A typical. Typical. Oh, get rid of her. Sure. Yeah. It really feels like they were like, it's okay.

But yeah, in the U.S. started making those mostly because Alexander Hamilton said we needed that. And he said it was, quote, to enable the poorer classes to procure necessaries cheap. And he argued that if our smallest coin is a penny, everything will cost at least a penny. And because pennies are valuable, that's going to make life expensive. So we needed to change the system and have half pennies so that people who do not make a lot of money can afford anything at all. And it seems like he was basically right. Apparently the average annual wage in 1791 was $65 in an entire year. So yeah, you need half pennies at that point, sure.

Sure. Why not? Yeah. And the whole thing felt very Charles Dickens England to me, but it turns out we had half pennies as a long time for a country. And they were also big. They were slightly more than an inch wide and they were twice the weight of a modern quarter. So this was a huge coin. And presumably if it was still a coin in 1893, that's what we all would have been pressing, like, forever after.

Right. So we'd have big elongated coins. Yeah, they'd be huge. Yeah. Oh, that would be cool. The community would flip for that. Big honking coins. Yeah.

They'd be really excited. And with coin retirement, the next number is November 12th, 2020. That's when the U.S. mint in Philadelphia produced the final U.S. penny, November of 2025. Womp, that's sad. It is sad. I guess, you know, we've got bigger fish to fry, but it does feel like, I mean, that's a whole name, you know? People are going to have to explain what that name means. Yeah.

What pennies are. Yeah, it's in so many sayings and stuff. Like to their grandchildren. Denaries, Terrigan, tarragon, sorry. We'll have to ask what kind of weird name is Penny, Mom, Grandma. And to have to say it's an ancient coin, that's not going to feel good to say it's an... Yeah. It's no longer in mint.

Yeah. When you said ancient coin, that sounded pretty good, honestly. It's like, kind of like, okay, cool, cool, cool, cool, yeah. lore you know it's so fun to like listen to how kids talk about things that to them are just so abstract that you're like no it was a it was a penny it was normal i was like oh god we're getting we're getting old it's like explaining to my my neighbor's obsessed with 9-11 he's a 7 year old boy and you're just like i don't know what to tell you like he's like were you there i was like no yes and no we were all there in a way

like I feel like it says a lot about our values retiring the penny because like according to the guardian the final penny was minted in the U.S. with kind of nobody noticing and the U.S. is expected to save $56 million annually by not producing them and like the thing people say which is true is the value of a penny as cash is smaller than the cost of producing a penny but to me that's like also not an argument to retire something you still need. Like a lot of things we need cost money regardless of whether I could then spend it for its own cost, you know? It's a funny thing. Yeah. I wonder how American coins in general and cash has been so sort of disincentivized. I think about that a lot. Anytime you're at a cash only business, it is like kind of violent

in a way that is like, I feel like not discussed. I don't know. It's interesting. Yeah, it's harder on people who are not necessarily wealthy. Or don't have a smartphone or like, yeah, it's like if you don't accept cash, it's like you're kind of trying to keep people who can't afford a nice phone out of the business. Yeah, and that idea has been very relevant with these penny changes, especially in some other countries. Because we'll at the end of the show talk more about other countries besides the U.S., but it turns out probably the leading country in getting rid of pennies is Canada.

They minted their final Canadian penny on May 4th, 2012, long before the U.S. got around to it. The finance minister of Canada went to the mint in Winnipeg to press the button and do the last Canadian penny. Since 2013, they've rounded cash transactions to the nearest five cents. And then in the European Union, countries are starting to not mint the one cent coin any. more that they don't necessarily call a penny. And then Estonia and Lithuania in 2025 started rounding cash transactions to the nearest five cents. But with the European Union, that sparked more worry about people just trying to get

rid of cash altogether. Because starting in July, 27, the entire EU will ban business cash transactions of over 10,000 euros and also require identity checks for businesses to make cash deals of more than 3,000 euros. And the stated reason is to stop money laundering, but some people are seeing that change on the big end of money and the penny change on the little end of money and saying they're coming for money, like they're trying to get rid of it. Interesting. That's scary. That's scary to hear. And apparently individuals can still exchange cash that way, but they're trying to stop like businesses from exchanging suitcases of euros, which I kind of get. But it also

feels anti-money too. But when you need like 10,000 espressoes, like the, what Italians do is they'll just slap a suitcase of money coins onto the counter and you stand there while they make you 10,000 espresso. So I don't think Italians are going to go for it. I can't believe the barista is going to have to say, forget about it, the typical Italian statement in that situation, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't realize you spoke Italian. I do. Yeah, and into further laws, we have a pressed penny.

Takeaway number one. U.S. law strictly prohibits pressing a penny or pressing any other coin on Earth unless you specifically remove it from circulation. It turns out they had to make exceptions in a bunch of very specific coin counterfeiting laws, either consciously or unconsciously, those exceptions. were made to let things like press pennies happen. So like by once the penny is squished, you shall not use it to buy things? Is that the idea?

Yeah. There's a part of the U.S. Code, Title 18, Chapter 17, Section 331, that apparently is often printed on the side of a pressed penny machine. I'm going to link to, it's a blog about going to the Disney parks. It's called Touring Plans.com. They have a picture of one on the side of a Disney. pressed penny machine. Interesting. If you have the boldness to bring an avatar penny to the store, you should be allowed to use it as money. Like, that's not, you have to, you have to have, like,

some real Hutzpah to be like, I would like to use my avatar penny to pay for this. That's awesome. You should be rewarded for that. Yeah. Especially because you probably need, like, 200 of them to buy, You know, like any items at least $2 or whatever. So, you know, you bring the sack in. What a glorious sound that would be. The clanking of 200 avatar elongated pennies. You'd be like, one snickers bar, please. Well, that's what we'll do.

Like, when we're of a certain age, once we're in our golden years, we'll go to the store and try to pay for stuff in Navi, squished pennies. while Generation Omega or whatever we're at that at that point has to wait behind us

and that's only fair Look, we were alive for 9-11. Show some respect. Show some respect. The Titanic of our generation. Yeah. Yeah, this

is such a specific law And it basically exists because of late 1700s coin counterfeiters. Because when the United States started being an official country and started making money, we didn't just have, you know, quarters and even dollar coins. We had extremely valuable coins made of actual gold or silver. The most common one was it was called the Eagle. It was a $10 golden coin made of $10 worth of gold. That's so cool.

Yeah. The U.S. Mint would make them and people would spend them. And then there were related like a half eagle coin that's $5. A quarter eagle is worth $250. Apparently there were double eagles worth $20. Like most of the transactions, people were like, I have a cool golden eagle coin to give you. It's cool. That's cool.

Yeah. And that only stopped kind of recently. It stopped in 1933. Okay. Because new president Franklin Delano Roosevelt was trying to solve the Great Depression and too many people were moving gold out of the United States without bringing in more gold. Okay. To make their awesome coins.

Fair, I guess. No fun. Yeah. That's my favorite prepper thing is like the like hoarding gold like leprechauns. Just I don't know. I like it. I like the idea that like you're holding a precious metal that you slap down on a counter and get like a bag of grain. Yeah.

Call me trad if you'd like, but if I'm not, if I'm not getting like a big sack of flour with some like gold dust, then I don't really trust it. It's a non-starter. Gold culture is so, it's so retro. My like high school algebra teacher instead of teaching us algebra would always be online looking at the price of gold. And I was like, what does she know that we? We don't know.

Where did you grow up? Because I had a teacher that would... Also prospecting on the job? I... Sort of. I was in Southern Massachusetts. Like, was that just a thing that teachers did back then? Because, Jamie, you had the same thing happened.

Yes, I had a prospecting teacher. I don't know. I'm not sure. But it stuck with me. They hadn't gold rush to Katie's location yet. They hadn't gone yet. They were loading the wagon. How did she relate it to algebra?

No, she didn't tell us she was doing it. She was like, work quietly. Oh, I see. So she didn't use it as like a lesson. No, it was not integral to the lesson at all. Unfortunately, I feel like part of the reason she wanted the gold was so that she would no longer be teaching algebra. So it was never going to be a part of the class. She was trying to get the hell away from us.

So she was sort of a kind of leprechaun. I guess she was a bit of a tricks. If stealing company time makes one a trickster, then yes. Boss makes a dollar. I make a dime. That's why I prospect for gold on company time. On company. Yeah.

This was the real mindset in the past. People were like, I'm exchanging gold all the time. Why don't I shave gold? off the coin and still pass it off as being the whole amount of eagle gold. Nice. And apparently they also did this with Spanish silver coins. If folks have heard the passive about the dollar sign we talked about silver coins made by the government of Spain being a huge U.S. currency until after our civil war in the

1860s. So the U.S. government made laws against manipulating any kind of coin, not just the ones the U.S. minted because they needed to have sound money. The other really weird coin counterfeiting thing is apparently when the U.S. became a country but didn't have the Constitution or the Bill of Rights yet, they tried to really aggressively catch the coin counterfeiters. And Atlas Obsciras says there was like an all-time iconic U.S. coin counterfeiter named Glazier Wheeler. He was a guy in Middlesex County, Massachusetts. And he apparently was so good at skimming metal off a coin, he could pass off a silver coin after taking half the weight out. Like, you'd think it would be way different feeling, but he could, he was just really good at the art of taking metal out of a coin.

Nice. And then in 1783, a court in New Hampshire sentenced him to be arrested and to have his ears chopped off as a punishment. Oh, dang. Luckily, they didn't catch him. And then later we got the Eighth Amendment and that's not allowed anymore. But there was a really brutal time early on where they were like, finally, we can catch coin counterfeiters in our new country. How did they decide? Like, why is it years?

for coins. Yeah, I'm trying to, I'm like, get the fingers, right? I have no idea. Not to support the mission at all, but that's what you used to touch coins is your fingers. So what's? Yeah, there was like an archaic word for the punishment called being cropped, CROPT. I think it was like a medieval English thing that they carried over or something. Yeah, it's nuts. I'm glad they didn't do it. But yeah, so like to this day, for one thing, you're not allowed to burn U.S. paper money at all. You're not allowed to destroy paper money. But then there's a super specific chunk of the laws about coin counterfeiting that is often printed on pressed penny machines because the Disney sign says it prohibits, among other things, the fraudulent

alteration and mutilation of United States or foreign coins. The statute does not, however, prohibit the mutilation of coins if done without fraudulent intent or if the mutilated coins are not used fraudulently. Which means as long as you're pressing a penny to make it a little souvenir that you'll probably lose someday, it's fine. But if you ever try to spend it, even though it's beautiful navvy press pennies, it is like a significant federal crime. You'll face a fine and up to five years in jail.

Well, I mean, I'm willing to, a risk I'm willing to take if I can keep my ears in the process. Yeah, yeah. Worth a shot. I mean, like they might, they might chop off your Navi ears. Like, if you have those. They'll chop off my horny tail. Yeah. I can't have them chopping off my sex tail.

That would be a punishment worse than death. Well, and folks, if you can believe it, we're going to get we're going to get weirder and two more takeaways. But first, we're going to take a quick break. And then we'll be back with some, like, international and stranger pressed penny stuff. And we're back. And we have two more stories that go kind of beyond the United States. Because takeaway number two, the 1893 Colombian exposition invented regular pressed pennies and generated a much creepier second kind of pressed penny. In the run-up to the fair, people put coins on railroad tracks because the largest artillery gun ever built was being shipped to Chicago.

And they wanted it to crush their coin and make them a fun flat coin. Wait, they wanted a huge gun to make them. Interesting. That feels very American. I want to get squished by it. I want to watch a gun squish something really big. That's like a very American specific kink. I want to get stepped on by a gun.

Yeah. In like April of 1893, people wanted to do that all the way from Baltimore to Chicago as a gun was shipped originally from Germany to Chicago. key sources here, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper covered this in 1893, and then we'll link to digital resources from the U.S. Naval Institute, and also an article by physics professor Christopher S. Baird of West Texas A&M University. Regular press pennies, they came from a machine in like a souvenir selling area of the Chicago Fairgrounds. And then meanwhile, there was a company called the Krupp Company in Germany, a father and son, last name Krupp. They were a seal company and arms manufacturers, and they wanted to show off the largest artillery gun ever built in all of

history, which was a gigantic cannon that sits on a rail car because in 1893, that was the only machine that could move at any distance, was a giant train on rails. So you'd have to, like, if you wanted to shoot someone with it, it has to be near a train? Yeah, and apparently this kind of gun had been used a bunch in the Franco-Prussian War two decades earlier because there were rail lines all over that area and you could kind of do it. This is one way to get America more public transit if you're like, hey, but if we bring back

these giant guns that sit on rail cars, like maybe we can have like trains. We'll take it under consideration. Someone tell Hegseth that it's super alpha to shoot big guns from train tracks. But we need more train tracks because otherwise we can't shoot them at poor people or whoever he doesn't like right now. Yeah, yeah. Like, you know what's high tea?

Trains. It starts with tea. Yeah. Be dumb and do the thing I want. Please. Thank you. When they talk about high tea, they mean trains and also the little snack that British people have in the middle of the day. We could make it do so much stuff.

Yeah. So this gun weighed 100. 120 tons. Apparently it had to have a truck on each side of the railway to like help lift the weight of it. Otherwise, it would kind of collapse the ground under the rails. Oh. Okay. So they shipped this on a boat from Germany to the port at Baltimore.

And then they were going to go by rail from Baltimore to Chicago. And according to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, somebody just west of Pittsburgh had an idea. Quote, as soon as the big train hauling the gun started slowly out of the east, Union Depot last Wednesday morning, a big heavy set man stooped down in front of the engine and put a 25 cent piece on the rail. A lot of people saw him and made a rush to get in front of the train and do likewise with pennies, five and ten cent pieces. The train went slowly over the coins and the way they did smash was wonderful, end quote. I mean, look, people will be forever the same no matter what century. Like right now there's so many YouTube videos of hydraulic presses.

Oh, that's true. A smashing stuff. Yeah. And like, Yeah, it's cool. I love it. It's a community event. It's a, it's a weirdly community,

community-based thing. We all desire to be squished. Maybe because we yearn for the womb. I don't know. It's free entertainment, you know. It's, it's hard to find things to do with your kid. So just bring them out to see the big old gun as it squishes past. apparently people had put coins on railway tracks before to have them smashed by trains.

And within that, this guy's logic was right. He was like, this is the heaviest thing that's ever been on rails. I'm going to get the flattest coin that's ever been made. Like in that YouTube sense, it's pretty cool. Yeah, it's nice. Man, it probably felt really good for the coin for a short amount of time. Yeah. And I'm also linking to Christopher S. Baird physicist at West Texas A&M University.

NEM University because he says there's a myth that coins can derail an entire train. And the spooky reality is actually that it's much more likely to shoot the coin. And apparently newspapers have covered people being harmed or killed by the coin. They tried to smash with a train. So don't do that. Damn. So it like squishes it, but it pushes it out. Like if you squish your cheeks and peas come out of your mouth, I don't, or coins.

I don't really know. No, that's it, that's it, that's it. Pretty much, yeah. Or like, I don't know, John Belushi and Animal House with the ice cream or something. Yeah, like it'll like fire the coin and then somebody receives it like a bullet. So never do this. Don't do this thing. Yikes.

Yikes. And then also the train is just too heavy to be affected by the coin. And it takes bigger stuff or snowy weather or something to really derail it. And even then, trains usually derail for mechanical problems. So the train will be fine. but you could be in danger if you try to do this version of a pressed penny. So use a pressed penny machine. They're good.

They're great. Yeah, I mean, I guess the only way you could actually derail a train with a coin is if, like, the conductor is like, ooh, a penny. And he leans out and tries to grab it. And he leaps from the train. Right. And he, like, and he steers the train to the side to try to get the penny because you can do that. That does happen.

That does happen. happen. And then it's the trolley problem. Man, darn it. And separate from this, we have one last takeaway number three. Pressed pennies will probably outlive the penny. And one big indicator of that is life in Canada. Like we talked about the machines supplying your own blank before that. But the other like leading experimenter in what happens if you'd get rid of pennies is Canada. And pennies are still widely available despite Canada doing an even better job than the United States of kind of gradually retiring this coin. Right. And at least it sounds like giving it a send-off that we just didn't. Yeah, they did a ceremony of it. And they did it before similar countries were doing it. They

really led the way in a way that I think Americans didn't hear about, really. Yeah, that's sad. It's like someone, you know, you work at the same company your whole life and you think surely there'll be a grocery store cake for me on my last day. But no, he just clocked out and left. It's sad. Yeah. Yeah. How many pennies are there? And apparently in Canada, they minted $35 billion over the whole life of having pennies, pretty much. So that's like $35. Yeah, that's right. With the exchange rate, You know, yeah. Sorry, I got that wrong. 35 Canadian dollars.

Yeah. There we go. Yeah, and key sources here are the Bank of Canada Museum in Ottawa and also the Minnesota Star Tribune newspaper and PBS News Hour. Canada didn't just stop minting pennies. They also made an effort to actively collect and recycle them in a way that I don't think the U.S. has. We just said they're trash, deal with it, even though they're still legal tender.

It doesn't sound like something we would do, something that takes effort and would have a positive result. Could we put all the pennies in like a pool and then people could do a Scrooge McDuck? Or is that like dangerous? I mean, yes and yes, you know? Like we could do it and sure it hurts. And so best of both worlds. Yeah, like Canada, within a year of not making pennies anymore, they had collected and recycled four billion of them and collected a few more billion after that.

There's a facility in Montreal that sorts them by metal content and recycles them. And within that first year, apparently they earned about $40 million for the Canadian government and new revenue by selling the old metal. Nice. Really good system. I think if we did it, we would use it to create another huge, gun. We would just melt down all the pennies and create a huge zinc-based gun. And it shoots pennies that are also made out of stinky zinkies.

As long as we got more stinky-zinky in there. That's what counts. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No enemy could withstand it. Yeah. And yeah. And so between that and also then Canadian collectors got more excited about pennies because they were no longer new ones. Like you would, think these kind of processes would mean there just aren't very many pennies anymore in Canada. But you just still find them a lot, even though we think about 20% or more have been recycled. It's mostly out of habit. It's also because pennies are so low in value, the recycling doesn't get you a lot of money in exchange. They would just give you the cents back.

And then also Canada is an indicator that pressed pennies will probably live on because it is illegal to press a Canadian penny. Whoa. Their laws are different than the U.S. You just simply cannot manipulate a Canadian coin at all. The funny thing with laws, it's often hard to find super clear sourcing on why the law exists. But people's main theory about why this is such a strict law is that the British monarch is on the coin. And they respect the monarch. We can't squish her.

God, now I really want to squish those pities. You're like, oh, you can't do it because the queen and or king is on. on there. And then I'm like, hey, Boston Harbor tea party, let me squish them, pennies. Stepping on pennies, maybe she'll feel it in hell. Yeah. I feel like that's also part of it that most of the pressed penny era, it's either been Queen Victoria or Queen Elizabeth II. And we just like respect those ladies, you know. Yeah, people don't want to mush them, unlike Lincoln or previously, tragically a Native American person.

If they put Charles on a coin, I think the squishing would be legalized in pretty short order. Yeah. I mean, like, I feel complete, to be honest with you, I feel utterly neutral. But when you're like, oh, you can't, you can't squish that. It's the queen or the king. That makes me want to do it. Yeah. So bad.

It wouldn't have occurred to me otherwise. Yeah, you're like, don't squish the king. And I'm like, no, let me squish the king. I'm an American. Or a Canadian, I guess. They're like, her impression of our accent is very respectful. I think we should let her. I think we should let her do it.

Most respectful British accent impersonation. Yeah, so like Canada has had pressed penny machines for a long time at all sorts of the same sites in the U.S., but it's either a machine that gives you a blank without you needing to provide it, or it's just one of the machines geared toward American pennies because there's a lot of American currency floating around there. Because otherwise it would be illegal to, like, gear it for Canadian pennies. They wouldn't let you do that. So it's like, oh, we can squish U.S. presidents.

We don't care about that. Like Lincoln can get squish, but if it's the queen. Yeah. Interesting. So, yeah, so like Canada is kind of pointing the way forward. They indicate that, you know, their country doesn't let you make pressed pennies and they don't make new pennies anymore. And you can still press a penny in Canada about as easily as here.

So it seems like this novelty will last even if our countries and others stop having pennies. Wow. That's kind of comforting. Yeah. Right? Yeah. The penny may be a long gone memory, but the squires. version with the Navi.

Right. I was like, I can still get my Navi penny to this day. They're reselling them for $350 online. That feels pretty. Oh, damn, you should have kept that. What are you doing?

I know, that's more than the net worth of that entire museum. When did you get the Navi penny? Like what year? 2022. If you kept that for 50 years, I've reached the limits of the math that I can do.

You'd be rich. You'd just be rich, I think. Yeah, yeah. I think you'd just be rich. Yeah, I'm planning to retire on Navi coin. So if this doesn't work out, there's no plan B. No. That's it.

Folks, that is the main episode for this week. And thank you again to Jamie Loftus for joining us and adding something special to this episode. You can hear her every week on the Bechtel cast. And also, I'm going to link off to other shows she's done, especially mini-series that are a complete unit and finished. She does so much amazing audio, and as she mentioned, is in a film coming up, has a new book coming up. Please check out her work. It's always awesome. I'm also going to link a past SIF episode where Jamie and her Becdelcast co-host, Caitlin Durante, appeared on a SIF episode about tires that the three of us did. So you can also hear Jamie on a previous SIF if you want to.

And welcome to the outro of this SIF. We have fun features for you, such as Help Remembering this episode, with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, U.S. law strictly prohibits pressing a penny or pressing any other coin on earth, unless you are careful to remove it from circulation and prevent it from ever being spent in any way. Also, the next time you see a pressed penny machine, there might be a little plate on it if it's in the U.S. that references U.S. Code Title 18 Chapter 17 Section 331. That is the relevant part of U.S. law. Takeaway number two, the 1893 Colombian Exposition invented the regular kind of pressed pennies and also generated a much creepier second kind of pressed penny when the largest gun in the world rode a train from Baltimore to Chicago. Takeaway number three, pressed penny souvenirs will long outlive pennies and the biggest indicator of that is life in Canada. And then this was a numbers and stats heavy episode this week, partly because hey, pennies are coins and money.

We talked about collections and museums of pressed pennies. Also, these surprising half penny coin that was pretty dominant in U.S. currency for a long time. And we also got into the end of pennies and one cent coins in the United States, Canada, and increasingly the European Union. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode, because there's more. secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at maximum fund.org. Members are the reason this podcast exists. So members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode.

This week's bonus topic is three of the most confusing versions of a penny in world history. Visit sifpod.f.fod.fund for that bonus show for a library of more than 25 dozen other secret incredibly fascinating bonus shows and a catalog of all sorts of max fun bonus shows it is special audio it's just for members thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation additional fun things check out our research sources on this episode's page at maximum fund dot org key sources this week include digital museum resources from the bank of canada museum that's in ottawa it's a museum for the entire canadian monetary system over time also leaning on digital resources from the Illinois History Journal, especially about the 1893 Columbian Exposition. And then for that giant

gun story, I'm leaning on digital uploads of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper, specifically the issue on April 16, 1893. And digital resources from the U.S. Naval Institute are also useful for illustrating the role of that gun in history. It's the predecessor of stuff like the Nazi guns on the Bismarck battleship in World War II. It's really freaky that it also press coins for people in the Pennsylvania countryside. Lots of other journalistic resources this week, too, from Atlas Obscira, Canadian Broadcasting, The Guardian, and lots more. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca.

I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenape Hoking, the traditional land of the Muncie Lenape people and the Wappinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skategoke people, and others. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy. Jamie taped this on the traditional land of the Gabriel. Alignor Tongva and Kich and Chumash peoples. And I want to acknowledge that in mine and Jamie's locations and many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode.

And you can join the free SIF Discord where we're sharing stories and resources about Native people and life. There's a link in this episode's description to join that Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord. And hey, would you like a tip on another episode? because each week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 39. That is about the topic of playing cards. And one fun fact there, during the second, I guess, U.S. invasion of Iraq, there are some archaeologists who tried to make playing cards that would help the troops identify and appreciate and protect archaeological sites in the Middle East. So I recommend that episode.

I also recommend Katie Golden's podcast, Creature Feature about animals and science and more. Our theme music is unbroken, unshaven by the Budo's band. Our show logo is by artists Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Sousa for editing this episode. Special thanks to the Beacon Music Factory for taping support. Extra, extra special thanks go to our members. And thank you to all our listeners. I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating.

So how about that? Talk to you then. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network. Of artists' own shows. Supported. Directly. By you.