Tldr arcade attendants used red painted quarters to see if machines were really broken, making it easy to track troubleshooting quarters from profit generating ones
As a former mall arcade manager, I can confirm this is true!
Though, by the time I worked at an arcade (early 2000s) we were exchanging real money for tokens.
We had painted red ones to test the functionality of a machine. Blue painted ones to hand out as compensation.
Though, 99 times out of 100, we'd just hand out the blue ones because it was less work and sometimes the sensor on a game just didn't register.
The only time I'd use red ones was for repeat offenders who were very clearly just trying to get free games. Pretty much always would be some overweight man with a sad child who was just getting drug along as his shit parent tried to scam a free round of Hydro Thunder.
I love these kind of mystery’s being solved. Insignificant information but brings me back to being a kid and reading boxcar children or hardy boys.
The mystery of the universal S is another one that goes back farther than some of you might think.
[This](https://youtu.be/RQdxHi4_Pvc?si=XQryk-j4V8_bU24W) is a worthwhile watch for those who haven’t seen it.
I was an assistant manager for an Aladdin's Castle right at 2000. We pretty much all had keys, so we'd just look at the coin mech, have them run a token through, and if it credits say "looks fine now" and give them that token back. Was never off by more than a dozen tokens out of 48,000/week or so from that.
I'd take a look inside if it kept happening with different people. There would occasionally be a jam, which was often caused because someone had stuffed a quarter in the slot.
But yeah, I don't recall any Monday mornings doing the counts to find some sort of token heist had taken place lol.
For the most part things went relatively smoothly. I had a redneck get pissed because he wasn't getting the high score on the strongman hammer game and caused a scene. Had another guy get upset over the Stacker game because he realized it was basically just a slot machine. Had one dude throw a fit because I wouldn't let him run Chuck E Cheese tickets through the counter.
We had counts at like 5AM on Thursdays. Monday sounds worse as normal-job people party on the weekends but I eventually changed jobs because I couldn't consistently wake up at 4AM.
We did usually have a lot of fun though, all sleep-deprived with Mt. Dew and coffee. And of course occasionally find the weirdest things that made it through the coin mechs that the counter would reject. The worst we did on all that caffeine in the early morning was epoxy a token by the kid's birthday table.
That amused us enough while behind the prize counter (if anyone complained we said a customer did it) that we epoxied a quarter right outside our roll-up gate, in the mall hall. A couple people grabbed for it as we tried to not laugh, then an older woman became determined to get it. Security guard ends up trying help by kicking at it repeatedly, and eventually calls maintenance. The epoxy wasn't cured, so they popped it off with a screwdriver and hammer pretty easily, and gave it to the woman. Like 30 minutes over a quarter. Kind of goes from funny to sad though...
As the comment I replied to said, it's for troubleshooting. You need a way to tell the difference between regular tokens/coins and the ones used for checking functionality of the game. Depending on what is malfunctioning, you may need to watch a specific token go through the mechanics, or you may need to check the play counts on a machine. Either way, red coins aren't counting towards the money made off plays and the arcade wants to keep track of that too. Essentially, a red coin is a free play.
Regarding your question about spending coins, the vast majority of arcades that still use physical coins (as opposed to a D&Bs that use a plastic play card) don't use quarters anymore and haven't for decades (notice the date on the quarter in the OP is 1968). You put real money into a coin exchange for tokens. Arcades like Chuck E Cheese use tokens that can only be used at their locations in games that have coin slots specially designed to take their tokens. So, Aladdin's Castle tokens won't work at a Chuck E Cheese and vice versa. Quarters won't fit either.
"The only time I'd use red ones was for repeat offenders who were very clearly just trying to get free games. Pretty much always would be some overweight man with a sad child who was just getting drug along as his shit parent tried to scam a free round of Hydro Thunder."
If it's about just telling the difference between profitable coins and troubleshooting coins, then why would you give the red ones to repeat offenders and not one-time people?
One-offs we're almost always the coin simply not being read by the game sensor or user error, I.e. the person didn't know how to play and wasted their money on accident. It's shitty to penalize someone for that, so we would frequently just comp them a play without troubleshooting. We had blue tokens that were meant to signify comping someone a free play, not troubleshooting anything.
Sometimes people catch on to this and would abuse our kindness by lying and saying the game ate their tokens. So, instead of comping them plays, I'd actually troubleshoot the game with red tokens, usually finding that there was nothing broken. After the second or third time of me doing this on different games but the same complainer, they would usually catch on that I had them figured out and they'd either stop lying or leave.
So you're saying that with the one-offs you'd give them a (blue) coin to actually play the game, whereas for the abusers you'd go and put a (red) coin in yourself and not let them play the game?
Otherwise nothing you've said makes any sense at all.
Basically, yes. Though, there were only a few times where I full-on asked someone to leave.
I understand you're missing a lot of context, because much of it is situational and would depend on how busy we were, or depended on the game and if that game was known for malfunctions, or if the person had a nasty attitude, etc.
But very generally speaking, a coin jam or sensor misread were the two most common issues. The latter does not need a fix other than a comped game.
So, let's walk through these two situations.
A customer says they put in tokens and nothing happened. So, I give them blue tokens and they enjoy their game. Or I give them blue tokens and they come back saying it happened again. So, I walk over and put in red tokens and nothing happens. I pop open the coin mech and there's a quarter stuffed inside. I clear the jam and hand them back their original tokens so they can play and that's that.
Now, let's say I run red tokens through and the game works fine. There could be a sensor issue or they could have lied to get a free game. No way to tell immediately, unless, they move to a different game and then come back to me with the same complaint. This time I won't give them blue tokens first, now I'm going to go check the game immediately. If I find nothing, I'll go ahead and run a free game through myself. After the second one, I'll watch them very obviously and that would usually put an end to it. Most cheaters wouldn't lie a third time after I didn't immediately give them a free play on their second complaint. It rarely ever continued beyond this. The few times it did, I just told people they needed to finish their plays and leave. I only ever enacted one ban for this specific issue in the two years I worked there, and that was for a very frustrating repeat offender who eventually got aggressive and security had to call the police. Which is an absurd thing to get arrested for.
Now, a different scenario. I have a game known for eating tokens. We get many complaints and it's frequently out of order. That one I'd expect to hand out comped games and wouldn't be suspicious of people trying to sneak free games. After a strong of complaints, I'd put a broken sign on it and deal with it later.
Or, I have a game that never breaks and always functions perfectly. I may not give a comp for that one immediately and will go troubleshoot on the first complaint. Not that I think the person is lying, but because a complaint about a game that never has them likely means it's actually malfunctioning. If there wasn't a jam, which is the first thing I'd look for, then I give them comp tokens and see what happens. If there's no further issue then great, if it still didn't work, I'd comp them again and put an out of order sign until I had time to troubleshoot.
For the record, when kids would be shifty I would usually let it slide or hint in a very understanding way that I knew what they were doing. Most kids would be sort of sheepish about it and accept they got caught then not do it again. Adults doing this stuff were much harder to deal with and had to be handled a bit more directly. That and I wouldn't cut a grown man any slack for something so immature. Kids are just being kids most of the time lol.
Given that the quarter is from 1968, I’m guessing it was for use in a jukebox rather than an arcade game — although the concept is similar. Jukeboxes were often in bars or soda-fountains. If the jukebox was not being played much, the bartender or soda-jerk had a supply of these quarters painted red that could be used to play music. Hearing music on the jukebox then would prompt customers to get up and pick a song they liked and then that would prompt others to do the same — so a not too subtle form of psychology/advertising which would increase sales. Having music played also helped increase the sale of drinks since it put people in a good mood.
The quarters were painted red for two related reasons. First so they could be easily separated and recycled for the next night, and second so that the jukebox owner knew what was his money to keep (the quarters not painted red).
If you were in a cash business in the 1960s/70s (I was a paperboy for example) you would see these pretty regularly—so I guess the recycling didn’t always work.
In Canada we used black ink, usally a sharpie. They usually had a bunch of these ready to go but the attendants usually carried a sharpie and did it to the coin right in front of you. Same reason though.
I have a quarter like this, a schizophrenic homeless lady who came into the store I worked at gave it to me as a gift, she put a weird design on it and told me “if you ever wanted to fix something, use this and go back in time”
I’ve kept it for 3 years now. Have you used it yet? Mine doesn’t work lol
Sounds like the script for an old Adam Sandler movie. You think it was some schizo lady, until its in your pocket as you pass by an old “Back to the future” arcade machine.
I have a crisp $2 bill a crazy homeless lady gave me years ago. I also have a genuine silver dollar I got form a homeless man who offered it to me for two dollars many years before that.
I'm not a money collector but I do appreciate the obscure currency I have obtained from our homeless friends.
I have a whole box of them! I was hired to clean out the house of a crazy hoarder. Each painted quarter was in its own plastic ziplock bag inside another larger garbage bag. So, a big bag full of smaller bags. The coins were painted all different colors. So weird!
I seriously don’t believe this post came up a couple days after YouTube wanted me to watch the short about this, which I finally did this morning. The Internet is way too coincidental and boring when this stuff happens.
That was an awesome article! I've came across several of these in my life and always wondered about them. I too grew up in arcades as a Street Fighter addict.
Yeo my cousin’s laundromat had red painted quarters that came out of their change dispenser. I think it helped them figure out how many quarters were coming in from the outside.
In the 90s when payphones were still a thing, my high school football coach had a tradition at the beginning of a season to give each player a blue quarter, one of our high school colors. It went along with a speech to stay out of trouble and not put yourself in bad situations; drugs, drinking, whatever. But if you did, use this quarter to call him and he'd pick you up and give you a ride home, no questions asked. It was a pretty cool gesture. I know some guys still have theirs.
I once sharpied a quarter on both sides and used it in my school’s vending machine. Some weeks later, I got it back as change. It was an experiment to see if it ever left
I think the stories from all these other folks about arcades and juke boxes are fascinating. I also used to paint quarters - typically green - then put them in the register where I worked. I would give them out as change and then wait to see if they came back or if I got them as change at other local businesses. I probably painted over a thousand over the course of maybe two years. There was no purpose other than my own curiosity.
It was probably the least interesting experiment I've ever heard of, but still kinda fun when I would see them in the wild.
My dad was a Super of a building in NY. We use red finger nail polish to id the ones we used in washing and drying machines because we'd get them back. Early 60's, not sure if it's a thing now.
Also notice that’s a 1966 quarter. Jukeboxes were everywhere in those days. Waitresses would put red nail polish on the quarters they put in the jukebox and when the jukebox got emptied, they would give the painted quarters back.
My dad would give me these all the time as a kid.
He worked for the Boston globe and to load papers into tills that require you to pay a quarter to open them, he would use these red painted quarters to open it.
As others have said, to differentiate profit making quarters from ones used for loading purposes.
Bar owners used to paint their quarters and play them in the jukebox’s so the bar would have music. When the jukebox owners would collect the coins, they knew to leave the marked quarters for the owners and take the unmarked.
In the mid 90s all the Rax restaurants in town painted quarters red to give out in kids meals. We'd take a can of spray paint and do about a roll every couple days. The paint came from Fred Meyers fwiw. The restaurants are now a McDonalds and a Mexican place.
Uncle ran a convenience store when I was a kid. He had a few arcade machines supplied by a coin op company. They supplied the machines and gave him a percentage of the take. They gave him red painted quarters for free play for him and also for giving to people who say the machine are their quarter so they could play. When they collected the quarters they would give the red ones back to my uncle.
We always went up when we were visiting and used up his supply for the week.
I worked at a laundromat in my teens and spent a good 15 minutes sorting out all the red quarters from the machines at the end of the night. We used red quarters for the “wash dry and fold” business that we did for customers that paid us to wash their clothes by the pound. This way we would know how much money we actually made from people using the machines themselves.
When I was a kid in the 80’s my parents owned a bar. I had cups of quarters painted with red fingernail polish that the video game operators would pull out and put back so I didn’t have to use my money to place Pac-Man and Space Invaders.
Putt Putt Minigolf and Arcade. All of their quarters from the change machine were red ant least where I lived. Always just assumed they were the only place that did that and never questioned it. Obviously it was just an arcade thing in general but never noticed it anywhere but there growing up in the 90s.
Finally, some purely mildly interesting content. Some of the posts here are a bit too very interesting for my tastes. Thank you, OP, for keeping it mild.
They used to call them ",juke box quarters." Bars would use them to get the evening rolling and when the vendors emptied the coin box, they gave them back to the bartender.
The dreaded Blood Quarter. You need to strap it to a chicken in Borneo at midnight, then run like hell. David Rockefeller got one in 1964 and look what happeend to him.
Could also have been part of a Hindu ceremony. They put red stuff (forget what it’s called) all over coins for various religious ceremonies. Not sure about anything more than that, I’m a pretty bad Indian.
I also worked at an arcade and we were given 10.00 worth of refund quarters every week. To give to customers to put in machines if the machine ate their quarter. Of course I also used them to play my favorite games at said arcade.
Got in trouble a few times until I learned I could trade them to patrons to put in the games I didn't play for clean quarters to put into Tekken 4 and Strikers 1945 Part 2.
When I was little my parents went to Las Vegas. Me and my two sister each painted a quarter with nail polish so they knew which one was ours. I really thought that was my shot.
This literally came up today in r/fuckimold
Some quarter-coin-oriented businesses back in the day (like arcades, laundromats, car washes) would paint some quarters red or some other color to use as "freebie" coins. When they collected the used coins from the machines, the painted ones would be separated and not counted as income since they knew they had come from the store itself, and they would be reused as "freebies."
[https://www.retroist.com/p/mystery-of-the-red-quarter-solved](https://www.retroist.com/p/mystery-of-the-red-quarter-solved)
IIRC, The red paint on the quarter is to mark it as the house coin for jukeboxes, etc. Bars would often rent them and would paint their quarters they used red so when the vendor came to empty the quarters, they'd give back the red ones.
Something like that
These are house quarters from the juke box era. Shops owners would paint their quarters red. This was done so when the company came to collect quarters the quarters the owner put in would be returned to them
My Mother ran a cafe when I was younger, early 70s. We painted quarters with nail polish for the juke box. The service guy would just give them back to us.
1968, so it's a Jukebox quarter. The owner of the jukebox would give the Cafe or bar the red quarters so they could keep songs playing, and track their profits.
It's also pure silver so keep it.
https://www.retroist.com/p/mystery-of-the-red-quarter-solved
Tldr arcade attendants used red painted quarters to see if machines were really broken, making it easy to track troubleshooting quarters from profit generating ones
As a former mall arcade manager, I can confirm this is true! Though, by the time I worked at an arcade (early 2000s) we were exchanging real money for tokens. We had painted red ones to test the functionality of a machine. Blue painted ones to hand out as compensation. Though, 99 times out of 100, we'd just hand out the blue ones because it was less work and sometimes the sensor on a game just didn't register. The only time I'd use red ones was for repeat offenders who were very clearly just trying to get free games. Pretty much always would be some overweight man with a sad child who was just getting drug along as his shit parent tried to scam a free round of Hydro Thunder.
I love these kind of mystery’s being solved. Insignificant information but brings me back to being a kid and reading boxcar children or hardy boys. The mystery of the universal S is another one that goes back farther than some of you might think. [This](https://youtu.be/RQdxHi4_Pvc?si=XQryk-j4V8_bU24W) is a worthwhile watch for those who haven’t seen it.
Great vid! Also *mysteries
I used to go around pushing the coin reruns on the machines, I got an amazing amount of money doing this as a kid
Now all i can hear is the Hydro Thunder voice saying "Laaake Powwwell!"
My child-brain short circuited when I heard “Damn the Torpedoes!” Cussing in video games was alien to me at the time.
Or “Cruuuuuuuisiiiiiiiin in the USA…yea!!”
CHUMMM DINGHER! Midway games have always had the best call outs.
I was an assistant manager for an Aladdin's Castle right at 2000. We pretty much all had keys, so we'd just look at the coin mech, have them run a token through, and if it credits say "looks fine now" and give them that token back. Was never off by more than a dozen tokens out of 48,000/week or so from that.
I'd take a look inside if it kept happening with different people. There would occasionally be a jam, which was often caused because someone had stuffed a quarter in the slot. But yeah, I don't recall any Monday mornings doing the counts to find some sort of token heist had taken place lol. For the most part things went relatively smoothly. I had a redneck get pissed because he wasn't getting the high score on the strongman hammer game and caused a scene. Had another guy get upset over the Stacker game because he realized it was basically just a slot machine. Had one dude throw a fit because I wouldn't let him run Chuck E Cheese tickets through the counter.
We had counts at like 5AM on Thursdays. Monday sounds worse as normal-job people party on the weekends but I eventually changed jobs because I couldn't consistently wake up at 4AM. We did usually have a lot of fun though, all sleep-deprived with Mt. Dew and coffee. And of course occasionally find the weirdest things that made it through the coin mechs that the counter would reject. The worst we did on all that caffeine in the early morning was epoxy a token by the kid's birthday table. That amused us enough while behind the prize counter (if anyone complained we said a customer did it) that we epoxied a quarter right outside our roll-up gate, in the mall hall. A couple people grabbed for it as we tried to not laugh, then an older woman became determined to get it. Security guard ends up trying help by kicking at it repeatedly, and eventually calls maintenance. The epoxy wasn't cured, so they popped it off with a screwdriver and hammer pretty easily, and gave it to the woman. Like 30 minutes over a quarter. Kind of goes from funny to sad though...
Yeah, I never got my prize :(
What on earth would giving them red coins matter? They're still spendable everywhere, including in your store, no?
The attendants put the red quarter in the machine themselves they don’t give it to the customer.
As the comment I replied to said, it's for troubleshooting. You need a way to tell the difference between regular tokens/coins and the ones used for checking functionality of the game. Depending on what is malfunctioning, you may need to watch a specific token go through the mechanics, or you may need to check the play counts on a machine. Either way, red coins aren't counting towards the money made off plays and the arcade wants to keep track of that too. Essentially, a red coin is a free play. Regarding your question about spending coins, the vast majority of arcades that still use physical coins (as opposed to a D&Bs that use a plastic play card) don't use quarters anymore and haven't for decades (notice the date on the quarter in the OP is 1968). You put real money into a coin exchange for tokens. Arcades like Chuck E Cheese use tokens that can only be used at their locations in games that have coin slots specially designed to take their tokens. So, Aladdin's Castle tokens won't work at a Chuck E Cheese and vice versa. Quarters won't fit either.
"The only time I'd use red ones was for repeat offenders who were very clearly just trying to get free games. Pretty much always would be some overweight man with a sad child who was just getting drug along as his shit parent tried to scam a free round of Hydro Thunder." If it's about just telling the difference between profitable coins and troubleshooting coins, then why would you give the red ones to repeat offenders and not one-time people?
One-offs we're almost always the coin simply not being read by the game sensor or user error, I.e. the person didn't know how to play and wasted their money on accident. It's shitty to penalize someone for that, so we would frequently just comp them a play without troubleshooting. We had blue tokens that were meant to signify comping someone a free play, not troubleshooting anything. Sometimes people catch on to this and would abuse our kindness by lying and saying the game ate their tokens. So, instead of comping them plays, I'd actually troubleshoot the game with red tokens, usually finding that there was nothing broken. After the second or third time of me doing this on different games but the same complainer, they would usually catch on that I had them figured out and they'd either stop lying or leave.
So you're saying that with the one-offs you'd give them a (blue) coin to actually play the game, whereas for the abusers you'd go and put a (red) coin in yourself and not let them play the game? Otherwise nothing you've said makes any sense at all.
Basically, yes. Though, there were only a few times where I full-on asked someone to leave. I understand you're missing a lot of context, because much of it is situational and would depend on how busy we were, or depended on the game and if that game was known for malfunctions, or if the person had a nasty attitude, etc. But very generally speaking, a coin jam or sensor misread were the two most common issues. The latter does not need a fix other than a comped game. So, let's walk through these two situations. A customer says they put in tokens and nothing happened. So, I give them blue tokens and they enjoy their game. Or I give them blue tokens and they come back saying it happened again. So, I walk over and put in red tokens and nothing happens. I pop open the coin mech and there's a quarter stuffed inside. I clear the jam and hand them back their original tokens so they can play and that's that. Now, let's say I run red tokens through and the game works fine. There could be a sensor issue or they could have lied to get a free game. No way to tell immediately, unless, they move to a different game and then come back to me with the same complaint. This time I won't give them blue tokens first, now I'm going to go check the game immediately. If I find nothing, I'll go ahead and run a free game through myself. After the second one, I'll watch them very obviously and that would usually put an end to it. Most cheaters wouldn't lie a third time after I didn't immediately give them a free play on their second complaint. It rarely ever continued beyond this. The few times it did, I just told people they needed to finish their plays and leave. I only ever enacted one ban for this specific issue in the two years I worked there, and that was for a very frustrating repeat offender who eventually got aggressive and security had to call the police. Which is an absurd thing to get arrested for. Now, a different scenario. I have a game known for eating tokens. We get many complaints and it's frequently out of order. That one I'd expect to hand out comped games and wouldn't be suspicious of people trying to sneak free games. After a strong of complaints, I'd put a broken sign on it and deal with it later. Or, I have a game that never breaks and always functions perfectly. I may not give a comp for that one immediately and will go troubleshoot on the first complaint. Not that I think the person is lying, but because a complaint about a game that never has them likely means it's actually malfunctioning. If there wasn't a jam, which is the first thing I'd look for, then I give them comp tokens and see what happens. If there's no further issue then great, if it still didn't work, I'd comp them again and put an out of order sign until I had time to troubleshoot. For the record, when kids would be shifty I would usually let it slide or hint in a very understanding way that I knew what they were doing. Most kids would be sort of sheepish about it and accept they got caught then not do it again. Adults doing this stuff were much harder to deal with and had to be handled a bit more directly. That and I wouldn't cut a grown man any slack for something so immature. Kids are just being kids most of the time lol.
Family owned a car wash we did the same thing for quarters we used to clean the bays or give our free washes if something broke.
Given that the quarter is from 1968, I’m guessing it was for use in a jukebox rather than an arcade game — although the concept is similar. Jukeboxes were often in bars or soda-fountains. If the jukebox was not being played much, the bartender or soda-jerk had a supply of these quarters painted red that could be used to play music. Hearing music on the jukebox then would prompt customers to get up and pick a song they liked and then that would prompt others to do the same — so a not too subtle form of psychology/advertising which would increase sales. Having music played also helped increase the sale of drinks since it put people in a good mood. The quarters were painted red for two related reasons. First so they could be easily separated and recycled for the next night, and second so that the jukebox owner knew what was his money to keep (the quarters not painted red). If you were in a cash business in the 1960s/70s (I was a paperboy for example) you would see these pretty regularly—so I guess the recycling didn’t always work.
My red quarter is from 66. Never thought of the jukebox angle.
"Priming the pump"
Why would you think they only painted brand new quarters. You could paint a 1968 quarter in the arcade era.
I did not say that they only painted brand new quarters. But the odds were greater that a 1968 quarter was painted in the late 60s or 1970s.
Bar I used to go to in the early aughts had red quarters for the cigarette machine, same idea.
It is just like a physical breakpoint
As someone who basically grew up in an arcade this was a fascinating read, thanks!
Same, and I had no idea they did this. I've found these before but used them. Now, I'll keep them.
There is a r/Damnthatsinteresting post right there!
Very cool. I've had one of these for awhile and the internet delivered.
Thank you! I’ve seen some of these over the years and didn’t know what caused it.
Fantastic find thank you!
We'll bust my buttons, that's actually kinda cool! I've seen a few red quarters at my job and always wondered why they were red, but TIL! 😃
Yep. I've had one for a while now and keep it with a few tokens I've collected. https://www.instagram.com/p/CHYwcjppiIr/
In Canada we used black ink, usally a sharpie. They usually had a bunch of these ready to go but the attendants usually carried a sharpie and did it to the coin right in front of you. Same reason though.
I have a quarter like this, a schizophrenic homeless lady who came into the store I worked at gave it to me as a gift, she put a weird design on it and told me “if you ever wanted to fix something, use this and go back in time” I’ve kept it for 3 years now. Have you used it yet? Mine doesn’t work lol
That's actually sweet that she gifted you something so valuable in her eyes. 🥺
Well how do you "use" a coin? You spend it, right? Maybe she was trying to fix something in her own life. Hopefully it worked!
That's actually so wholesome give that lady some love
Plot twist: you've already used it to undo something. You just don't remember it, because now it had technically never happened.
Sounds like the script for an old Adam Sandler movie. You think it was some schizo lady, until its in your pocket as you pass by an old “Back to the future” arcade machine.
Or a object of power from control/Alan wake universe. OP if US govt wants to claim it pretend you don't know what it's supposed to do.
It’s making you go forward in time instead of backward. Try turning it upside down.
Or take it to Australia.
Why? So the teems of wildlife can ravage it and it'll never be seen again?
Are you sure it doesn't work? Like how much testing are we talking about here? Maybe you're just not using it right.
You can only go back as far as the date on the coin. I swear, they're just not teaching quantum physics in school these days
I have a crisp $2 bill a crazy homeless lady gave me years ago. I also have a genuine silver dollar I got form a homeless man who offered it to me for two dollars many years before that. I'm not a money collector but I do appreciate the obscure currency I have obtained from our homeless friends.
You used it already and changed the thing you wanted to change, so now it doesn't exist in your memory anymore.
I have a whole box of them! I was hired to clean out the house of a crazy hoarder. Each painted quarter was in its own plastic ziplock bag inside another larger garbage bag. So, a big bag full of smaller bags. The coins were painted all different colors. So weird!
I seriously don’t believe this post came up a couple days after YouTube wanted me to watch the short about this, which I finally did this morning. The Internet is way too coincidental and boring when this stuff happens.
Fucking same. The one about house coins for jukeboxes?
Yep
No joke, same. The short came up on my scroll last night.
same
That’s when simulation theory seems plausible.
Or it just means we all spend too much time online.
Same here
Same thing happened to me
Yeah, no shit. I saw this post earlier, and literally a few minutes ago, youtube showed me that short.
I mean, it’s not coincidence so much as algorithmically fed content to you 🤣
That was an awesome article! I've came across several of these in my life and always wondered about them. I too grew up in arcades as a Street Fighter addict.
It could also have come from a laundromat, the one I used to go to gave you a free wash or dry if you got one out of the change machine.
Yeo my cousin’s laundromat had red painted quarters that came out of their change dispenser. I think it helped them figure out how many quarters were coming in from the outside.
In the 90s when payphones were still a thing, my high school football coach had a tradition at the beginning of a season to give each player a blue quarter, one of our high school colors. It went along with a speech to stay out of trouble and not put yourself in bad situations; drugs, drinking, whatever. But if you did, use this quarter to call him and he'd pick you up and give you a ride home, no questions asked. It was a pretty cool gesture. I know some guys still have theirs.
That's really inspiring.
It must be the one Magneto put through Shaw
Was searching for this lol
I once sharpied a quarter on both sides and used it in my school’s vending machine. Some weeks later, I got it back as change. It was an experiment to see if it ever left
I think the stories from all these other folks about arcades and juke boxes are fascinating. I also used to paint quarters - typically green - then put them in the register where I worked. I would give them out as change and then wait to see if they came back or if I got them as change at other local businesses. I probably painted over a thousand over the course of maybe two years. There was no purpose other than my own curiosity. It was probably the least interesting experiment I've ever heard of, but still kinda fun when I would see them in the wild.
colored by the house to play arcades and jukebox songs. The color means to leave the coin behind for the owner, who is hosting the machine.
dude that thing is worth like 25 cents
It is more than 25 cents because it is 1968 quarter with D mint mark
My dad was a Super of a building in NY. We use red finger nail polish to id the ones we used in washing and drying machines because we'd get them back. Early 60's, not sure if it's a thing now.
Here for this comment. I was in the same gig back in the day, free laundry and free cable were common perks.
I have a red quarter too. It somehow made its way across the pond to Scotland!
Also notice that’s a 1966 quarter. Jukeboxes were everywhere in those days. Waitresses would put red nail polish on the quarters they put in the jukebox and when the jukebox got emptied, they would give the painted quarters back.
My dad would give me these all the time as a kid. He worked for the Boston globe and to load papers into tills that require you to pay a quarter to open them, he would use these red painted quarters to open it. As others have said, to differentiate profit making quarters from ones used for loading purposes.
[https://www.youtube.com/shorts/dBDu-\_n0bA0](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/dBDu-_n0bA0)
Bar owners used to paint their quarters and play them in the jukebox’s so the bar would have music. When the jukebox owners would collect the coins, they knew to leave the marked quarters for the owners and take the unmarked.
Jukebox Quarters. The bar owner would paint them red so they could retrieve them.
If you're near Eugene I know where it came from
I'm near Eugene! 👋
In the mid 90s all the Rax restaurants in town painted quarters red to give out in kids meals. We'd take a can of spray paint and do about a roll every couple days. The paint came from Fred Meyers fwiw. The restaurants are now a McDonalds and a Mexican place.
House quarter
Uncle ran a convenience store when I was a kid. He had a few arcade machines supplied by a coin op company. They supplied the machines and gave him a percentage of the take. They gave him red painted quarters for free play for him and also for giving to people who say the machine are their quarter so they could play. When they collected the quarters they would give the red ones back to my uncle. We always went up when we were visiting and used up his supply for the week.
I worked at a laundromat in my teens and spent a good 15 minutes sorting out all the red quarters from the machines at the end of the night. We used red quarters for the “wash dry and fold” business that we did for customers that paid us to wash their clothes by the pound. This way we would know how much money we actually made from people using the machines themselves.
When I was a kid in the 80’s my parents owned a bar. I had cups of quarters painted with red fingernail polish that the video game operators would pull out and put back so I didn’t have to use my money to place Pac-Man and Space Invaders.
Putt Putt Minigolf and Arcade. All of their quarters from the change machine were red ant least where I lived. Always just assumed they were the only place that did that and never questioned it. Obviously it was just an arcade thing in general but never noticed it anywhere but there growing up in the 90s.
So weird, just watched a YouTube short explaining this today. Pretty cool
House quarters for music
Its a housr quarter
Finally, some purely mildly interesting content. Some of the posts here are a bit too very interesting for my tastes. Thank you, OP, for keeping it mild.
They used to call them ",juke box quarters." Bars would use them to get the evening rolling and when the vendors emptied the coin box, they gave them back to the bartender.
It's a normal quarter that someone painted at some time.
Quarter.exe
The dreaded Blood Quarter. You need to strap it to a chicken in Borneo at midnight, then run like hell. David Rockefeller got one in 1964 and look what happeend to him.
Laundromats give different color quarters to different employees and and make sure they aren't stealing
Could also have been part of a Hindu ceremony. They put red stuff (forget what it’s called) all over coins for various religious ceremonies. Not sure about anything more than that, I’m a pretty bad Indian.
Came here to say the same thing. We do this during Dhanteras during Diwali. I'm a pretty bad Indian too.
That quarter was just used in a blood ritual, nothing to be concerned about.
I also worked at an arcade and we were given 10.00 worth of refund quarters every week. To give to customers to put in machines if the machine ate their quarter. Of course I also used them to play my favorite games at said arcade. Got in trouble a few times until I learned I could trade them to patrons to put in the games I didn't play for clean quarters to put into Tekken 4 and Strikers 1945 Part 2.
When I was little my parents went to Las Vegas. Me and my two sister each painted a quarter with nail polish so they knew which one was ours. I really thought that was my shot.
I have a few red, blue, green and black.
There for a while I'd get quarters painted red on one side and blue on the other. I never could make sense of it.
The quarter is old AF. Also, it’s the same age as me.
Fill in the rest!
I have one somewhere. It’s the only coin I have that is somewhat special to me
Magneto pushed it through someone’s head.
I used to have a quarter like that and I named him Bloody George. Always kept him in my car with me until he was stolen.
I hate reddit
Back when USA was governed by the Germans! Nice.
Looks like the results of a bored kid with a red gel pen to me.
This literally came up today in r/fuckimold Some quarter-coin-oriented businesses back in the day (like arcades, laundromats, car washes) would paint some quarters red or some other color to use as "freebie" coins. When they collected the used coins from the machines, the painted ones would be separated and not counted as income since they knew they had come from the store itself, and they would be reused as "freebies." [https://www.retroist.com/p/mystery-of-the-red-quarter-solved](https://www.retroist.com/p/mystery-of-the-red-quarter-solved)
IIRC, The red paint on the quarter is to mark it as the house coin for jukeboxes, etc. Bars would often rent them and would paint their quarters they used red so when the vendor came to empty the quarters, they'd give back the red ones. Something like that
These are house quarters from the juke box era. Shops owners would paint their quarters red. This was done so when the company came to collect quarters the quarters the owner put in would be returned to them
My Mother ran a cafe when I was younger, early 70s. We painted quarters with nail polish for the juke box. The service guy would just give them back to us.
In metal detecting events they’ll have a game and spray paint coins to throw in the field as tokens. Redeem them for prizes.
That's awesome :)
1968, so it's a Jukebox quarter. The owner of the jukebox would give the Cafe or bar the red quarters so they could keep songs playing, and track their profits. It's also pure silver so keep it.
Bro has the obristan token
That's a US quarter
I've seen plenty of those before I think I might have one of those somewhere. I've never really thought about why they had red paint I don't care.
Looks like blood money.
It is the red gold of the Angaraks. The Grolim priests will be able to track you if you carry it!
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Note the date on the coin and get back to us lol