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Kohl'd Cache (A smashed penny exchange & more!) Mystery Cache

This cache has been archived.

kingsting: Archived

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Difficulty:
2 out of 5
Terrain:
2 out of 5

Size: Size:   regular (regular)

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Geocache Description:

Melanie may hate micros but she loves smashed pennies!

Taken from Wikipedia.com:

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 is a branch of numismatics. Elongated coins can also be categorized as exonumia.

The first elongated coins in the United States were created at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois held in 1893. Several designs were issued to commemorate the fair, and such coins can still be found in circulation in the elongated coin collecting community today.

The earliest elongated coin designer on record is Charles Damm, who created the design for the elongated coins available at the 1901 Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. (Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Elongated: A Complete and Authentic Description of All Modern Elongateds, 1960-1978 by Angelo Rosato)

The most well-known and prolific engraver is Frank Brazzel. Brazzel died in the early 1990s, but many of his designs are still being rolled today. He helped establish many rollers (those who roll elongated coins) in their businesses. Another of the most famous engravers is Jim Dundon of Florida. His designs, and those of his son, James, can be found across the country.

The hobby of collecting elongated coins (token coins) has expanded throughout the United States and the world. Most modern coin elongating machines can be found in museum or landmark gift shops, souvenir stores, zoos, amusement parks and other locations of this kind. Private engravers make special-issue elongated coins to commemorate historical events, personal landmarks (such as marriage or birth of a child), or other events warranting celebration. They also design elongated coins for private clubs and organizations.

Process

Most people are familiar with the idea of smashing pennies by leaving them on a railroad track. When a train rolls over a penny, the force is sufficient to cause plastic deformation that flattens and stretches it into an oval, showing only the faintest trace of the original design.

Modern elongated coins are created by inserting a standard, small denomination coin into a small rolling mill consisting of two steel rollers pressed against each other with sufficient force to deform the coin. One of the rollers (called the "die") is engraved with a design that imprints a new image into the metal as the coin passes through it. The resulting coin is oval-shaped and shows a design corresponding to the design on the die in the mill.

Legality

The process of creating elongated coins is legal in the United States, Japan, South Africa and parts of Europe. In the United States, U.S. Code Title 18, Chapter 17, Section 331 prohibits "the mutilation, diminution and falsification of United States coinage." The foregoing statute, however, does not prohibit the mutilation of coins if the mutilated coins are not used fraudulently, i.e., with the intention of creating counterfeit coinage. Because elongated coins are made mainly as souvenirs, mutilation for this purpose is legal. While it is no longer illegal in the United Kingdom to mutilate the image of the Queen, it is still illegal in Canada. There, blank planchets, slugs or U.S. pennies are occasionally used, though this law is often ignored both by the users of the machine and law enforcement.

*****

This cache consists of three stages. The first one will take you to the other two.

To find the containers, you must first locate two sets of numbers. They are at the posted coordinates above. (Not on the big green electrical box.) These numbers will take you to the hides. There is no need to touch or move anything. They are out in the open. Once found, plug them into here:

N 40 XX.XXX W 076 XX.XXX
and
N 40 XX.XXX W 076 XX.XXX

One hide is a small Lock & Lock container. It is for exchanging elongated coins. It also has room for little travel bugs. To start it off, it contains 8 pennies from local tourist attractions. ONLY trade smashed pennies and bugs at this location.

The other hide is for you trade swag hounds. It is an ammo can loaded with goodies.

Only one of the caches contains the log. We're not saying which one....

Both of these hides are located off of the nature trail that runs around the outside of the park. They are much easier to get to from the trail. Please don't try to bushwhack in from the paved areas of the park. It's shorter but is more dangerous and may create geotrails for curious muggles to follow. The trail begins at the park entrance by the creek and ends by the tennis courts out front and playground equipment in the back. After you make the finds, be sure put everything back and to cover them up well. We're not sure how bad the muggle population is around here.

Additional Hints (No hints available.)