Today a friend of mine called me to tell me about a quarter slot machine from the 1930's he was about to work on. A vintage, the machine can easily fetch a couple of thousand dollars as is, but restored the value could more than double, and can go higher if fully operational. That was exciting enough, but what added to the elation was determining that there were still several silver coins left in the three available slots. Wanting to share the fun moment of retrieving the coins, he waited until I arrived at his place before attempting to open the machine.
He did not have the key to open the back to access the slots holding the coins, so it took a while to pry it open since great care was needed to avoid causing any damage. Once the back was removed, we could now see the reeded edge of several silver coins peeking through one of the slots. We counted about a dozen.Unfortunately, the mechanism allowing the bottom of the slots to open and spill the coins was not easily accessible without taking the machine apart, an endeavor he did not want to get into at that point, so we devised another way to retrieve the coins from the tubes. We used sticky putty, applying it to the end of a paperclip and inserting it down each tube to retrieve the coins one at a time.
The first coin out of one of the slots was a worn Standing Liberty quarter ( there is something about that coin that gets the pulse going.). At that point we felt like a couple of kids raiding a jar full of candy. lol We continued doing the same with all three slots, and by the time we were finished we had pulled a total of 68 silver coins from them - 40 Standing Liberty quarters, 24 Washington quarters (none dated after 1937), and 4 Barber quarters, the oldest dated 1894.
Now, as to the Standing Liberty quarters - out of the 40, 24 were dateless, and out of the 16 that had dates, several were only slightly legible. The dates ranged from 1917 through 1930. Keeping in mind that the slot machine had evidently been in use only until about 1937, the condition of most of the Standing Liberty quarters indicate a rapid degree of wear of the date within a relatively short time, something that is already known, of course, but interesting to see firsthand. Knowing such makes it even more satisfying when we do dig up one having a full date during our individual hunts.
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WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Nice story. Once in a life time. 
Originally Posted by midas link=topic=7744.msg89851#msg89851 date=1321474257
