Legality
The process of creating elongated coins is legal in the United States, almost all parts of 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 or profiting from the base metal (the pre-1982 copper U.S. cent which, as of 2010, is worth more than one cent in the United States). Because elongated coins are made mainly as souvenirs, mutilation for this purpose is legal, when location of the coin presser has the permit from the mint to do so.
In the UK, the Coinage Offenses Act 1936 prohibited the defacement of any current coins. This was repealed in its entirety by the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981, thus removing the prohibition on coin defacement.
In countries where such mutilation is illegal, such as Canada, blank planchets, slugs, or U.S. cents are occasionally used, though this law is often ignored both by the users of the machine and law enforcement. This method is also often used in countries such as Australia, which never had or no longer have a one cent (or equivalent) coin.
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