excerpted from The Washington Post
Unusual Suspects
By Jeff Bagato Friday, September 1, 2000; Page N31

Watcha gonna see next? A real castle built from scratch by amonomaniac's bare hands? The "Indian shooting buffaloes" painting hanging from a Merrifield auto body shop? The tin man costume from Broadway's "The Wiz"? How about opium pipes, real corpses as anatomical models, tiny trees, or tinier zoos? Would you like to type on an old WWII encoding machine once used by real spies? Hunt forghosts on King Street?

#23. Squished Penny Museum, Northwest Washington. 202/986-5644. By appointment only. Free. Web site: www.squished.com. The ongoing show "The Open Road: Touring America Today" highlights 250 souvenir pennies flattened, elongated and embossed by hand-cranked machines at tourist attractions across the country. Marvel at a penny squished at the 1901 Pan American Exposition's Temple of Music and those commemorating Seattle's Sylvester the Mummy, the Circus Museum of Sarasota, Fla., and even "Cadiz, Kentucky: Home of the Ham Festival." Come prepared to trade squished pennies—and stories of how they got that way.

© 2000 The Washington Post Company

Voyages (a Belgian travel magazine)
The Squished Penny Museum A very special collection

Two metro stops from downtown (exit: Howard University), we met Pete and Christine, two americans, 26 and 28 years old, who had a hair-brained idea: the collection of pennies, little one-cent copper coins. Up to that its nothing extraordinary. But they weren't interested in just any pennies, only "squished" pennies (pennies that have been flattened) facinate them.

Is there anything too "sacred" to be on a squished penny?
Before, I thought that Elvis was too sacred, Christine told us. But since then I've seen a squished penny with him on it. Its a question of taste...I also thought that using the image of Bill Clinton would be a little excessive.

Who is the ideal individual to be on a squished penny?
Abraham Lincoln, who is on the face of the penny, is invariabley squished. It would have been an injustice to not pay hommage to the man to whom the coin is dedicated.

Would it make a difference if it were another coin, say a squished nickel?
Of course! Everyone has pennies. It is one of the most common souvenirs there is. If we started using other coins, it wouldn't make any sense.

If you have already traveled to the U.S., you have surely seen in the big tourist areas those machines that, in exchange for two quarters (25 cents), squish pennies to engrave a new illustration on them, representing, for example, that place in particular. The exhibition of some 2,000 squished pennies is set up in the living room of these two charming individuals. What completes the collection is clearly the welcome that they offer you.

The dream of Christine and Pete? To one day be able to buy their own machine in order to offer everyone a penny symbolising their little museum.

[translated from French by SPM fan Kristina Goings]

excerpted from The San Diego Tribune
It's smashing: Flattened pennies make uncommon cents
By John Wilkens, Thursday September 18, 1997

The lure of the highway is also at the heart of the current exhibit at the Squished Penny Museum in Washington, D.C. Called "The Open Road: Touring America Today," it features about 250 pennies.

The museum is viewed by appointment only. That's because it's operated in the living room of co-owners Christine Henry and Pete Morelewicz and it takes them a while to set up the exhibit panels. Henry and Morelewicz also put out a newsletter, called the Centinel. It's published "periodically, as we see fit."

A recent "squissue" included a mostly serious story about how disappointed Henry was when she went to the Osmond Family Theater in Branson, Mo., and tried to get pennies commemorating an ice revue. The machine was broken.

Two readers arranged for pennies to be made at the theater and sent to the museum. "People really went out of their way to get them for us," Henry said.

This kind of camaraderie, collectors said, is what they like best about the hobby.

But hold on to your pennies, folks, not all articles are so complimentary toward flatenning your loose change. The following appeared not too long before the Post first mentioned the SPM. Perhaps their experience with us has changed their minds:

The Washington Post Editorial
A Penny for the Fourth
Friday, July 4, 1997

AMERICANS taking their leisure at amusement parks are encountering a puzzling plaything.

For 50 cents plus a penny, "The Penny Machine" allows you to smash a specimen of official U.S. currency almost beyond recognition. The idea is to flatten the copper coin into a wide oval shape that then is imprinted as a souvenir. The machines come labeled with a disclaimer that it is all legal under Title 18, Section 331 of the U.S. Code, which permits the mutilation of U.S. coins as long as it is done without fraudulent intent.

Now, we don't want to make too much of this defacement -- kids have been putting pennies on railroad tracks to be flattened by passing trains practically since the invention of the steam engine -- but it is the Fourth, and a little respect for the basics is warranted, of which there is nothing more basic than the penny.

It is, after all, our most common coin (that's why we made so many of them), and long a symbol of frugality, continuity and respect for the nation's 16th president: Lincoln on the front, his memorial on the reverse side. And it does have a history. American colonists resented British laws restricting their ability to create coinage that was physically durable and not merely a profit-making tool for the absentee English. One of the risks of using the hodgepodge of Spanish and English coins available then was precisely the practice of defacement, or "clipping." The greedy or uncivic-minded scraped off and melted down bits of silver.

The penny, by contrast, has a certain hardy, unclippable integrity. True, people have for some time considered it a pain to haul around in their pockets, and something close to dead weight in the age of rising consumer price indexes. But that hardly justifies squandering 50 cents to turn one earnest and durable coin covered with patriotic symbols and sentiments into something resembling a potato chip. Better it be tossed into a wishing well or the Reflecting Pool, or piled up with hundreds of its like in jars. At least that way pennies are being used in ways that bespeak charity, bright hopes for the future and a decent respect for the opinions of mankind.

And taken all together—"E Pluribus Unum," as it says on the penny—they do add up to something impressive. Despite proposals by some people in Congress to phase out the penny and round all prices to the nearest nickel, the coin still is usefully produced at a rate of some 13 billion per year, and an estimated 170 billion of them are in circulation. That'll buy a lot of Roman candles in the few places in this country where they're still legal. So for the Fourth at least, don't mash that penny; give a little thought instead to what went into it and on it.

© Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company