I don’t keep cancelled stamps and I don’t have them in a book or anything but I really enjoy buying cool stamps to use on my outgoing mail. Stamps – Okay so this isn’t really a collection.Other than Pooh himself, I have several wall hangings and other Pooh related items around the house. Winnie-the-Pooh – Pooh is my main bear, as you know from reading my post Goodbye Christopher Robin, and has been for most of my life.And of course, we can’t forget about Vacation Mouse! I also enjoy reading books with mice as characters. I have purged a lot of the knick-knacks through my various moves over the years but I do have several mouse Christmas ornaments remaining. Mice – Because of my nickname ( read all about it in My Name is Mouse), I have a few mouse-related items.

Here’s a quick look at a couple of my other collections. It’s absolutely worth the time to take a virtual field trip, in my opinion. I found this awesome video though about the museum so it’s almost like being there.

Unfortunately I didn’t make it to the museum before it closed. But I’m holding out hope that they’re just hiding. No idea where they ended up but I’m guessing in a box somewhere, maybe at my mom’s house. I dream of the day that I find the squashed pennies from my childhood.I only like to keep pennies that I got myself from a place that I’ve actually been.If I return to a machine on a future trip, I have to try to remember which one I don’t have yet. I choose which design I like the best and only get that one. I rarely get more than one penny from the machine.You don’t want to be around when I find a machine and don’t have the proper coins! This is especially true if I know I have a trip coming up. I try to keep quarters and pennies in my wallet at all times in case I find a penny machine.My kids know how much I love the penny machines so they always point them out to me.The pennies were created off-site by a private roller then sold at the museum at a big mark-up. If I do decide to buy the $1 penny, you can believe I’ll complain about the price! The one exception to this price rule is the $5 I spent to buy a penny for Bella at the Superman Museum in Metropolis, IL. Anything over a dollar and I’m definitely not getting one. Sometimes I refuse to get a penny if the machine costs $1 instead of 50 cents. The automatic machines feel like cheating.

I prefer the machines that require manually turning the handle.

Unfortunately I had no dignity left to walk away with but oh well! The second time I forgot to select the image I wanted so I decided to cut my losses and walk away with the penny (and a half!) that I had. The first time I was spinning the handle backwards and ended up with only a tip of the image once I realized my mistake. I had a few problems with the machine in Deadwood and after two tries had to give up. The latest additions to my collection… here are the pennies I got on our last Big Trip. My pennies are all from the “contemporary elongateds” period (c. The very first squashed pennies in American were made for the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. According to Wikipedia, an elongated coin is a coin that has been flattened or stretched and embossed with a new design. They go by many names – smashed, flattened, squished, squashed, pinched, or pressed – all different names for an elongated coin. I’ve been collecting since I was a kid and I just love them!Īt this point you may be wondering what a squashed penny is. What is it about these flattened pennies that makes me want them so much? Could it be their low price? The interactive nature of creating one? The thrill of the hunt to find a machine? The small size of the souvenir? Probably all of the above to be honest. Of these, squashed pennies are the main one. But I do have a couple purposeful collections. I am a bit of a packrat so I am always collecting, even unintentionally.

Penny pinching packrat