Aaron Kramer makes art from trash and found objects. This is his hand-cranked selfie-drawing machine. The crank turns a cam that prescribes how the pen moves on the paper and recreates the image. I immediately thought of the flattened-penny1 machines and now I want a version that takes a flattened penny as payment for a drawing.
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Exonumia are numismatic items other than coins and paper money. Once the penny is mutilated it is no longer a penny and, somewhat ridiculously, this is legal as a person can’t use it fraudulently: as a counterfeit coin or to profit from the base metal. Questions remain, if a machine were made that exclusively took the elongated coin would that make the coin illegal as it is now a form of currency? Would it make the machine illegal as it only accepts a mutilated coinage? Would anyone care enough to do anything about it (this is rhetorical - the answer is always “yes”)? ↩