Even if you lose $10 and cash out $10, that’s a 1,000-coin cashout. If you slide $20 into a bill validator, that’s the equivalent of 2,000 pennies. That means delays for players, and time that the machine is out of service and not making money for the casino.īesides that, buy-ins and payouts on penny machines often are in thousands of coins. One important reason is that small coins cause more frequent hopper jams than large ones. I can sympathize with that feeling, but I don’t miss delays for hopper jams and fills, nor do I miss looking at my hands and seeing just how dirty they were after a session of scooping coins from the tray into plastic buckets.īesides, if it weren’t for ticket pays, we wouldn’t have today’s penny slot machines, the most popular games in the casinos. It was so exciting when the coins would pour into the tray, and everybody knew you had a nice win.”
Andy and I – he was my husband – Andy and I used to share buckets and play quarters in the three-reel games. On a September day when I cashed out by printing a ticket, the machine’s speakers resounded with an imitation of that sound, and a neighboring player told me she missed the real thing. Among those who have been playing in casinos as long as I have, there’s a sizable number who miss being paid in coins clattering into the tray of slot machines.
