The purpose of the elongate is to be an inexpensive, novel, advertising, souvenir.

A small coin is forced through two rollers and as the coin passes through the rollers the image from a die on one of the rollers is pressed on to the coin. Such a pressure is applied that the original design of the coin almost disappears. Also the newly produced elongate will usually be somewhat curved and initially it will be quite hot. (A small number of double sided elongates exist from the U.S.A.)

Elongates have been a big thing in America for a long time with the U.S. 1 Cent coins being the pieces most often elongated there. However since law changes here in Great Britain in 1981, the use of such machines has been legal here. Over the last few years the machines seem to have caught on. Quite possibly all of them are intended for creating elongates from our 1 Penny coins.

A forerunner to the British elongate was surely the Encased Farthing - these did not require a coin to be damaged and so these were agreeable to the "old" laws here. Perhaps Encased Farthings were more "advertisers" and less "souvenirs". (More info on British Encased Farthings can be found on this website under bi-metallics coins and tokens.)