LittleLocus

A place that matters, engraved in metal.

Pick any spot on earth — the street you grew up on, where you met, the hill you got engaged on — and we engrave its map onto a 40 mm coin small enough to keep in a pocket.

Buy on Etsy How it works

Already ordered? Design your coin.

A real coin design — central London, 1.4 km across.

What you get

One coin, engraved on both faces. The map on the front is cut from real survey data, not a drawing of it — every road, building and river inside the circle you choose.

The map face

Roads at their true width, buildings filled solid, rivers and coastline. Detail down to 0.05 mm — about the width of a human hair.

The reverse

Your own words. A date, a name, a line worth keeping. Up to six lines, sized automatically to sit properly on the coin.

No surprises

The preview you approve is the file our laser reads. Nothing is redrawn or interpreted between your screen and the metal.

Take a close look

These are photographs of real coins, not renders. Each step zooms further in, down to the finest detail the laser can cut. Tap any photo to see it full size.

  • A polished engraved coin photographed from above, its whole face covered in a street map with roads, roundabouts, houses and trees
    The whole coin. 40 mm across, engraved right to the edge.
  • The same coin beneath a steel millimetre ruler, showing rows of houses and a roundabout each only a few millimetres across
    Against a ruler. A whole roundabout is about 4 mm wide.
  • A macro photograph of terraced houses engraved on the coin, next to millimetre ticks on a ruler; each row of houses is about one tick long
    Each tick is a millimetre. A row of five houses fits in one, and you can still pick them out one by one.
  • A macro photograph of a dense old town centre engraved on a coin beside a millimetre ruler, with hundreds of tiny buildings, a canal and narrow lanes
    At the limit. A dense old town, hundreds of buildings in a few millimetres. This is as fine as the laser goes; the very smallest start to run together.

How it works

You order first, then design. That way your coin is linked to your order from the start, and you can come back and keep tweaking it.

  1. Order on Etsy

    Check out as normal. Your receipt has an order number on it — keep it to hand.

  2. Open the designer

    Go to design.littlelocus.com and enter that order number to start.

  3. Choose your place

    Search an address, click the exact centre, set how much to include, and add your message.

  4. We engrave it

    Confirm the design you like and we cut exactly that, then post it to you.

You get ten previews per order, which is plenty to try a few framings. Looking at something you have already rendered doesn’t use one up.

What you choose

Everything below is yours to set in the designer, and you see the result before you commit.

The place
Anywhere in the world. Search by address or drop the centre wherever you like.
How much to show
From 200 m across — a single street and its houses — out to 3 km for a whole town centre.
Road detail
Motorways only, through to every footpath and farm track.
Buildings and water
Either can be turned off, if you prefer just the shape of the streets.
Your message
Up to 180 characters across six lines, engraved on the reverse.
The coin
40 mm across, engraved right to the edge with no blank border.

Questions

Will it look exactly like the preview?

Yes. The preview isn’t a mock-up — it is the same vector file the engraver reads, shown at the same scale. What you approve is what gets cut.

What if a building is missing?

We use Overture Maps, which combines OpenStreetMap with building outlines traced from satellite imagery — so new estates that volunteers haven’t mapped yet usually still appear. Occasionally something is genuinely absent from the source data. Preview your spot before you confirm, and get in touch if something important is missing.

Why do I need an order number?

It keeps your design attached to your order, so we know which coin to cut, and so you can close the tab and pick up where you left off later.

Can I come back and change it?

Until you confirm, yes — enter the same order number and your session resumes. After you confirm, get in touch quickly and we’ll see whether it has already gone to the laser.

How small can the detail go?

The laser resolves about 0.05 mm. At the widest setting a residential street is right at that limit, so wide views read as the shape of a town rather than individual houses. Narrow the area and the detail comes back. The preview shows this honestly, which is the point of it.

Can you do somewhere outside the UK?

Yes — anywhere in the world, at the same detail.

Somewhere in mind?

Order your coin, then design it yourself. It takes a couple of minutes.

Buy on Etsy Open the designer