LOOSE CHANGE: FEBRUARY 16, 2020

Inside the Bank of England Gold Vaults

Bank of England gold: Rare look inside the vaults
The Bank of England’s gold vaults hold £194bn worth of gold bars.

If you stacked them all on top of each other, they would be the same height as 46 Eiffel Towers.

They hardly ever let anyone in to film, but the BBC’s Frank Gardner has been given access to the Bank of England’s gold vault.

To watch the video, see:
Bank of England gold: Rare look inside the vaults (https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-51416500/bank-of-england-gold-rare-look-inside-the-vaults)

Hawaii Man Designs, Collects Elongated Cents
Michael Mochizuki has amassed a huge collection of pressed pennies.

"In my collection I probably have about 6,000 or 8,000," he said.

The technical term is elongated coins. They are one-cent pieces flattened by a machine that simultaneously squeezes and engraves an image into the coin.

“I learned from a website how to collect them, how to mount them and put them in binders, and which type of pennies to use because that matters,” he said.

Mochizuki also designs pressed pennies that are sought after by collectors. Since 2010, he’s created more than 300 different Hawaii-themed designs.

"I've done Hawaii statues, the historic Hawaiian railroad, I've done 20 different lighthouses and landmarks," he said.

Mochizuki takes photographs of places and things he wants to feature on a coin.

He sends them to a friend in Missouri who turns the photos into etchings and then presses the images onto pennies, a process called “rolling.”

"I feel like I'm contributing to a hobby," he said. "When I'm long gone somebody's going to pick up one of my coins and say, 'What's the story behind this?'

Mochizuki, 68, retired from a career in retail management. Now he has a lot of time to turn one-cent pieces into tiny works of art.

To read the complete article, see:
From retirement hobby to passion: Aiea man’s pressed pennies are tiny works of art (https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2020/02/14/retirement-hobby-passion-aiea-man-turns-pennies-into-tiny-works-art/)

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web