History

The pressed penny and the zipper made their debut at the same fair. The first ones were rolled in Chicago in 1893, and the machine that made them would be recognizable to anyone who has turned a crank at a zoo gift shop since.

Chicago, 1893

Elongated coins first appeared at the World's Columbian Exposition, the Chicago fair held to mark four hundred years since Columbus's landing. Four designs were offered. A few earlier examples are rumoured, but the fair is where the idea took hold, and fair souvenirs are still the backbone of most collections.

How a coin gets pressed

A coin, token, or blank is forced between two steel rollers under tremendous pressure. One roller carries an engraved design. As the coin passes through, it stretches from a circle into an oval and the design is pressed into it at the same time. The mechanism has barely changed in 130 years; what has changed is the engraving, which moved from hand-cut steel to computer-guided milling.

Booms and quiet years

Rolling was popular from 1893 until about 1916, then went quiet until the early 1930s for reasons nobody has fully explained. From 1932 onward production picked back up and never stopped. Today new designs appear faster than any one collector can keep up with, which is why most specialize: space, politics, Christmas, a single theme park chain, or everything from one engraver.

The people who keep track

The Elongated Collectors, known as TEC, has been the hobby's club since 1966 and publishes a quarterly newsletter. Angelo Rosato's Encyclopedia of the Modern Elongateds, 1,700 pages published in 1990, remains the most complete catalog in print. PennyCollector.com has tracked machine locations since 2005, and the record on this site now runs to nearly ten thousand places, including the ones that have gone.