Why converting a penny press to a quarter press makes cents for the owners of Spokane’s Bullseye Amusements

A fortune-telling, future-seeing animatronic Chewbacca, a Big Buck Hunter arcade game with orange toy rifles, and a line of metal shelves (taller than the famous wookie from Star Wars) filled with pool balls are just some of the toys, trinkets and other terrific things inside Bullseye Amusements workshop.

Bullseye’s warehouse is filled with various games and oddities, many of which are awaiting repair.

Toward their lobby, the owner and his daughters are converting a penny press into a machine that stamps designs into quarters.

With the termination of penny production in November 2025 after 232 years, Shawn McKay, the co-owner of Bullseye, thought the city of Spokane needed a coin -pressing machine more current to the times.

Since at least 2011, McKay has operated, and occasionally fixed, the penny -pressing machines at Riverfront Park – one each at the Looff Carousel and the Numerica Skate Ribbon. His daughters, Kristen Hyde and Kelsey McKay, already have started creating four new, Spokane-specific designs to press into quarters.

So far, Hyde said her two concepts are of ducks in the Spokane River and a confined view of the Spokane skyline, including iconic structures like the Washington Water Power Building, the Great Northern Clocktower, the GESA Pavillion and The Spokesman-Review tower.

The other two quarter sketches still have to be dreamed up, but Hyde and Kelsey McKay said they’re working on them.

“I would look at it as, what’s the rest of the world doing?” Shawn McKay, 65, said. “When you go to Disneyland, which is the crescendo of penny smashing, quarters are taking over.”

But what about the fabled penny elongating machines? Are they going away to make room for the quarter press?

No. At least not yet.

McKay imagines the two penny presses at Riverfront Park and the one at Market Street Pizza in Hillyard will remain where they are for the time being. If there’s a significant downward trend in the number of users, it’s entirely possible that penny pressers disappear .

As for the unveiling of the quarter press, McKay said Spokanites can expect its debut within the next couple of months. They have to tweak some of the inner workings of the penny elongators to fit quarters, including the industrial-strength rollers that exert tons of pressure into the coins to create a souvenir.

“It needs a whole different device that’s gonna press it because the penny is smaller,” Hyde, 34, said. “It (the roller) needs to be able to grip it a little better and have a bigger printing surface.”

One metal roller slightly smaller than the average man’s palm costs around $700, McKay said. The original penny -pressing machines cost between $6,000 and $7,000 to procure from the manufacturer.

McKay said they have hundreds of games, including retro arcade games and billiard tables, installed all across the region. Bullseye’s farthest client is in Priest Lake and it’s entirely possible for McKay to receive a call from a customer on a random Saturday morning uttering the five worst words in his line of work: “A machine’s out of order.”

When repairs need to happen, McKay said he sends one of his six employees out to the scene immediately. Having a broken machine anywhere is not only bad for their customers’ business, but it gives Bullseye Amusements a bad rap.

Along with pizza parlors and arcades, Kelsey McKay said their company is “basically on call” for another, fairly well-known client.

Joe Russo and his brother, Anthony, have reached filmmaker stardom over the last decade for their work on the Marvel movies. In 2019, the Russo brothers released “Avengers: Endgame,” which was for a time the highest -grossing film of all time.

Shawn McKay said Joe Russo, who lives in North Idaho, has all the games one could think of . His game room is larger than McKay’s 6,000-square foot house.

“He’s got a bowling alley in there. This guy’s got it all,” McKay said. “And he just said, ‘Shawn, I want one of everything.’ ”

When it comes to making a buck, McKay said their agreement with their clients range. In the case of the penny press, he said it’s a 50-50 split. In 2025, both the city of Spokane and McKay took home about $1,600 each from the penny elongators that depict the carousel, the Garbage Goat, the Skyride and Spokane Falls and other designs .

About 12 years ago, McKay said he lost a treasure trove of games when his shop burned down. Over 100 machines, some of which were a part of his penny gumball machine collection dating as far back as 1905, were lost to the flames.

It was a huge blow to their business, but one from which they eventually recovered with the creation of a bigger and better workshop. The onslaught of COVID-19 was another hindrance to their operation, causing them to shut their doors for a year and a half. Through a series of grants and the fact that some bars in Idaho didn’t really care about a global pandemic, Bullseye Amusements was able to survive. Many of their employees had to go on unemployment, but luckily, they all came back once public spots began to reopen.

While Bullseye Amusement was founded by McKay and has been around since 1987, McKay’s roots in games of all kinds stretches even further back.

Before he could drive in the state of Washington, McKay had three semitrucks filled with video games from the 1980s. When he enrolled at Eastern Washington University in the ’80s, McKay said he had to buy parking permits for his vehicle. Instead of one spot, he bought 14.

He ended up paying his way through college by providing the dorms at Eastern with all the arcade games they could ever need. His uncle used to run a traveling carnival of about 25 rides that would start in Spokane, go over the border to Calgary, Winnipeg, down to North Dakota, Wyoming and end near Spokane. Today the moving fair is called Paradise Amusement and is still run by McKay’s aunt.

Consoles, like Xbox, and even virtual reality headsets represent a new wave of games slowly seeping into the mainstream. But McKay and his two daughters believe there will always be a space for older, retro games, like Space Invaders and Pac-Man. Other games, like pool or darts, also withstand the test of time.

McKay said the business they’re in is not one where you “get rich quick.” It’s an investment, one he compared to owning a family farm. He said it takes a lifetime to create the business the way he wants and now that he’s where he wants to be, he has no plans on giving it up. Although, slowly his daughters are taking the reins and more responsibility.

Standing inside the 40-foot shipping container they use to store the prizes for all their games, Kelsey McKay plucked a plushie toy from a shelf and turned it over in her hand.

“It’s a business that brings joy to people,” the 28-year-old said. “Just knowing that what you’re doing is making other people happy (is rewarding). They could be having a down day, but they can just stop in a place, play a pinball machine, and then their mood’s better.”

“Seeing all the kids at a pizza parlor on Saturday,” Shawn McKay said, picking up where his daughter left off. “Birthday parties and everything, screaming, jumping for joy – that’s what makes you feel good about it.”