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Carissa Gooding, a pressed-penny collector in Columbus, Ohio, who makes very satisfying-to-watch TikToks in which she cleans souvenir pennies with a Q-tip and metal polish while telling stories about where she pressed the coins, recently had a self-described “penny mental breakdown.”

She found an old pressed penny from the Cincinnati Museum Center among her things, which led her to drive two hours to the museum, both to see a Barbie exhibit and to check out the machine—but it was nowhere to be found. An attendant told her they’d gotten rid of it last year, a result of the cost of maintenance compared to the money they actually make from the pennies, not to menti

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