Charlie and I visited the American Museum of Natural History today and went to a counter to change a dollar into some quarters for the smashed penny machine.

The clerk asked, “Oh, do you want some blank pennies?”

I didn’t know want to say and must have looked confused because he added, “Because they are phasing out pennies, we keep these on hand for the souvenir machines.” I had a penny in my wallet, but I thanked him and took the blanks because I had never seen them before.

Neat!

It looks like you can buy a box of them online, though at $75 for 1000, they are a steep markup from regular ol’ pennies.

They seemed to work just fine in the machine, though they seem to match the modern post-1982 zinc-core penny, not the pre-1982 mostly copper penny.

Souvenir/smashed penny machines are already much harder to find than when I was a kid. My Dad had a collection, which I added to significantly, and now I’ve passed the collection and hobby on to Charlie. We still find them occasionally, though now I wonder how much longer they will last. Will anyone make new machines going forward, or will we be left searching out old ones in dusty tourist traps?

Will Charlie remember real pennies, or will the word become synonymous with a blank copper-colored circle used for novelty?