{"id":1509,"date":"2008-04-15T00:13:02","date_gmt":"2008-04-15T08:13:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.krunk4ever.com\/blog\/2008\/04\/15\/are-elongated-pennies-legal\/"},"modified":"2008-04-15T15:13:28","modified_gmt":"2008-04-15T23:13:28","slug":"are-elongated-pennies-legal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.krunk4ever.com\/blog\/2008\/04\/15\/are-elongated-pennies-legal\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Elongated Pennies Legal?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m serious that those pennies you crush up or press at theme parks and tourist attraction locations with the location&#8217;s emblem are called <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Elongated_coin\">elongated coins<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Elongated coins<\/strong> are coins that have been flattened, stretched and imprinted with a new design with the purpose of creating a commemorative or souvenir token. The collecting of elongated coins is a branch of numismatics. Elongated coins can also be categorized as exonumia.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;ve always wondered if it was some trickery or if it was really legal to destroy U.S. issued currency for something silly like these elongated pennies.<\/p>\n<p>But while I was at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.photosleeve.com\/user\/krunk\/album\/snoqualmie-falls\">Snoqualmie Falls<\/a>, I noticed this sign on the Penny Presser:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/gallery.krunk4ever.com\/v\/Misc\/penny-pressers-legality.jpg.html\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/gallery.krunk4ever.com\/d\/17941-2\/penny-pressers-legality.jpg\" alt=\"penny pressers legality\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>IS IT LEGAL?<\/p>\n<p>Yes, it is legal to elongate coins under <a href=\"http:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/uscode\/18\/331.html\">331, title 18 of the United States Code<\/a>. It is illegal only if someone <u>fraudulently<\/u> mutilates the coin, so elongating coins in this manner is legal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;m not exactly sure how fraudulently is defined, but does that mean when I defaced all those pennies back in Jr High by rubbing it against the asphalt, that it&#8217;s technically legal since I wasn&#8217;t defrauding anyone? Ooooh! Shiny! I hope I didn&#8217;t just self incriminate myself.<\/p>\n<p>While I was at the Space Needle, I noticed they also have Quarter Pressers. However, they cost 50 cents more. $0.51 = 1 elongated penny. $1.25 = 1 elongated quarter. What a rip off. However, my sister collects them as souvenirs, so oh well.<\/p>\n<p>I guess pennies do have a use after all! And Congress was thinking of scrapping away the penny. Think of all the penny elongators that will have to be scrapped! ;p<\/p>\n<p>Now, if I light my cigarette with a $100 bill, I wonder if that&#8217;s still legal:<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/gallery.krunk4ever.com\/d\/7049-1\/smoke_money.gif\" alt=\"lighting cigatter with dollar bill\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m serious that those pennies you crush up or press at theme parks and tourist attraction locations with the location&#8217;s emblem are called elongated coins. Elongated coins are coins that have been flattened, stretched and imprinted with a new design with the purpose of creating a commemorative or souvenir token. The collecting of elongated coins &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.krunk4ever.com\/blog\/2008\/04\/15\/are-elongated-pennies-legal\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Are Elongated Pennies Legal?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[500,496,495,497,491,490,499,498,493,488,486,487,489,492,501,494],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.krunk4ever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1509"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.krunk4ever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.krunk4ever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.krunk4ever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.krunk4ever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.krunk4ever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1509\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.krunk4ever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.krunk4ever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.krunk4ever.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}