I have a hand cranked machine called a Xyron. You buy these different cartridges and it 
can make things sticky with permanent or temporary adhesive, or it can do one 
or two sides lamination. It's a COOL machine which I use mostly for 
scrapbooking my pictures. Well, we WERE storing our ECs in negative holders, 
pages all divided up to go in a three ring binder? That didn't work well at 
all because if I didn't tape the tops closed just right, the minute you 
closed the notebook you had pennys falling out. We didn't like the round 
coin holders because most people seemed to staple them. So, anyway, one day 
I was looking at my Xyron machine and said, I WONDER????.....

I sat down at my computer and in wordprocessing did a table that had like 
five rows across and six down - then I typed at the top of each box the 
location of the machine (city-state) sort of thing and at the bottom of the 
box what the picture was or what the coin said - Like, at the top I put New 
York City and at the Bottom I put Statue of Liberty, Head. I printed this 
out on a piece of white cardstock (8-1/2 by 11). Then I took my Xyron with a 
single sided laminating cartridge in it and put the sheet on the tray. I 
then arranged the pennies in each of the boxes they coordinated with and when 
they were all laid out, I cranked the sheet through the machine. It came out 
the other side laminated, the pennies held in place by the lamination.

This sheet was then put in a 81/2 x 11 page protector. Then the page 
protector was put into the binder I was orignally using. Got rid of all 
those negative holders and now it's practically a joy to sit down and look at 
the collection. Oh, at the top of the page, ABOVE the table I would title it 
like US coins or ANTIQUE coins, or FOREIGN coins, whatever. This may be 
difficult to visualized, but it really worked out so well. 

The Xyron machines are located mostly in Art stores. Flax, a catalog I get 
out of San Francisco, carries it in the catalog. Whether they had a brick 
and morter place in SF, I don't know, but I also have an art store called 
Pearl here that may be nationwide. They carry the machines AND the cartridge 
refills. None of these are cheap, the machine itself is nearly 200 bucks. 
However, I find myself using it for more and more things lately. The 
cartridges sell for 30 to 40 bucks.


Katherine Genung
02/05/2001