My main collecting interest is elongated coins, and I know some of the people quoted in the article.

Penny presses won't go away. Plans are underway to use blanks that are around the size of the penny, even if it means making adjustments to the machine. The industry has been going more toward pre-loaded pennies anyway. Another option is to switch to nickels, but nickels will disappear soon too if the same reasoning that killed the penny is applied (it costs more than 5 cents to make nickels).

Canada has a lot of machines that take nickels or blanks. Sometimes the blanks are in the penny press, and sometimes they are in a nearby change machine. Japan uses blanks dispensed by the press. In the U.S., you can find dime and quarter presses, but they have been getting scarce since Disney cut back on those types of machines in its theme parks and hotels.

The ghost coins are like a lot of cottage-industry "cutout" coins. They seem to have replaced the old pennies that were counterstruck with images, like the old "Kennedy looking at Lincoln" pennies we saw in the 1960s.