‘Smashed Penny’ or ‘Pressed Penny’. It depends on where you live as to what you would call these copper tokens made out of your discarded money. Last I checked it was illegal to deface anything legal tender. But every Disney Theme Park has dozens of machines designed to crush your pennies into flat canvases for Mickey and his friends.

Let’s have a quick look at some of the offerings from Disneyland:

Usually each land in a Disney Park will have a machine that will give you around three options to choose from. Each will feature a different character doing something themed to the Land in question with the name of the Land on the back of the pressing.

Alternately, the image could feature a character interacting with an attraction from the Land in question, or it could just be a rendering of the attraction itself.

Now let’s look at a couple of offerings from Disney’s California Adventure:

I would consider this Tinker Bell example to be pretty generic. It just has a Disney character imprinted over a name on one side and the name of the Land and Park on the other. Pretty basic. And yet I paid 50 cents to get it!

Although Goofy’s Sky School is basically a children’s attraction, my wife and I enjoyed riding it! And being as Goofy is my favorite Disney character, I just had to have a pressed penny to commemorate our ride. And yes, I prefer ‘pressed’ over ‘smashed’!

Do you think it’s worth 50 cents to press a penny into a picture disc? I’ve heard some places provide blank tokens to use instead of pennies. Perhaps to avoid the currency issue, or maybe to make you buy something else? Ah, capitalism!