You should check out the bar I work in in Southern California. We have a whole bar made out of pennies. Stop in for a beer sometime. The Good Bar, 533 E. Main Street, Ventura, CA 93030. See You There, and dont forget to mention this site….

I cannot imagine how this would be a defacement of US currency since, really, it’s just an unusual display case, no different than a coin collector might use. Ok, that’s a bit of a stretch, but still pretty cool. Oh, and the cost of the flooring goes far beyond the material cost when you calculate the labor involved. I’m guessing $40 a square foot, maybe?

Digging the floor….be cool to do a table top this way.
The black sneakers are from SIMPLE i think….they are all hemp and recycled rubber…very comfy for walking on copper floors

Pennies are legal tender. It is not illegal to deface coinage so long at you do not attempt to claim that the defaced coinage has greater than face value in trying to transact it later. This is on the US Mint web site. I know because my third grader (at the time) tried to punch a hole in a penny and got it stuck in the teacher’s 3-hole punch. His assignment was to go an look up the punishment for defacing currency. I image the teacher was surprised to find out that no jail time was required :-)

Pennies are not legal tender. All other coins are. That’s why you can squish them in those machines. All other coins and bills can not be altered by law but pennies are all good.

In Hollywood there was a chain of resteraunts called the copper penney.
They had penneys enshrined in the tables. But not the floors. A Dennys type chain resteraunt. With this depression I think they should enshrine 20 or 50 dollar bills, or better yet 100 dollar bills that are worth about $27 in 2005 currency. And it still would be cheaper then the 300% rise in inflation of tiles and materials at Home Depot.

According to google, the diameter of a penny is .75 inches, which means 16 pennies to a foot. One square foot is approximately 256 pennies. And really, $2.56 per square foot, not that great a deal…

I like those black sneakers in the top picture… anyone know who makes them?

Sorry, but the Hotel Congress in Tucson did it first. Same place where Dillinger was caught. You know, the character that Johnny Depp plays in Public Enemy. Sometimes good ideas start in the West and head East. http://www.hotelcongress.com/

Paul Smith Shop in Paris has a wall with 1 and 2 pence pieces. We have contemplated it as a wall but floor looks cool too.

I would like to see the different shades making a design!

What happens at the border with the wall? Are the pennies cut in half?

Ironically, we did penny tile in both of our bathrooms. As to the “how” of this project, you can get mesh backing that’s adhesive on one side. Stick all the pennies to that, in 8” or 12” squares, then lay it down in grids like any other tile that’s similar. Grout it & voila! Pretty cool effect, but the anal retentive in me badly wants of them heads-up & facing the same direction!

What are the pennies set in, does anyone know?

This reminds me of a story…
In colonial Venezuela, a very wealthy and eccentric nobleman, whose name I can’t recall, in order to effectively display his wealth and eccentricity, did the exact same thing: he paved the whole floor of his manor’s ballroom in doubloons. It was so impressive that it became known all across the Spanish empire, and eventually even the King of Spain himself learned about it. He immediately gave orders to undo such thing, and the nobleman had no choice but to comply. The King didn’t want his face, depicted in the coins, to be stepped on in such manner.

i have an idea on how they did it, if it was done by hand, but it would be nice to know how they actually did it.

My brother did this in his college dormitory hallway…:P I’m sure the school wasn’t very happy when it came time to removing them…

I makes me think of a Paul Smith boutique in Paris where you can find a room covered with pennies. It makes the most stunning effect.
I found a picture here http://www.rb-architectes.com/media/paul-smith-fbg-st-hon-9-250-1.jpg

Nice! I love it! I might have to do another denomination or country currency. ^_^.

One assumes their per-square-foot cost was easy to calculate, at least.

I like this. is it legal?