Penny tiles, literally

You've heard of penny tiles? Well, these are penny tiles made out of actual pennies, from Modwalls:

Unsurprisingly, tiles made of actual money will cost ya. A square foot is about $70 -- or, get this, for $72.95 you can buy all heads up or all tails up! -- compared with about $10 a square foot for the traditional porcelain version from Modwalls. The tiles are suitable for walls and floors, countertops and backsplashes, says Modwalls, as long as it's not a wet area.

You might be eyeballing your 5-gallon water jug full of pennies right about now and wondering whether you really neeeeeed to buy a mesh-mounted sheet of them. Well, if this chat thread on Contractor Talk is to be believed: No, you do not. Builder Scott Locke of Madison, Alabama, made a whole wall tiled with "exactly 19,400 pennies," and posts the pictures to prove it. Here's how he did it, he says on Contractor Talk:

"I made a panel out of MDF and reinforced it so that it would be rigid. Then I painted it black, superglued the pennies one by one, and then used a bar top pour-on epoxy coating to cover it all. Then I mounted the whole panel onto the wall (YES, it was very heavy!)."

We'd love to see real-life applications of these. If you have photos of such a project, please upload them to Yahoo! Homes' Flickr account and provide details; we'd love to showcase a success story in a follow-up post.