Red cent received in change (1934-D)

WillieBoyd2

I received this cent from a grocery store change machine last month (December 2015):



United States Cent 1934-D

It had been painted red at one time.

I had heard a long time ago that travelling circuses and carnivals would paint pennies

and put them into circulation as a form of advertising.

Has anyone else heard this story?

CaptHenway

Around 1976 a Midwestern supermarket chain painted a bunch of current cents red and gave them out in change as part of a "Red Cent Sale" promotion. However, your coin just looks oxidized.

TopographicOceans

Red painted quarters are/were used at restaurants in their juke box machines to mark the ones that the business would put in to play music when the jukebox business was dead

They got those quarters back

ricko

Interesting.... I have seen red painted coins (quarters, cents and nickels)... never knew

why.... just thought some kid was screwing around with a coin... Cheers, RickO

TwoSides2aCoin

Originally posted by: ricko
Interesting.... I have seen red painted coins (quarters, cents and nickels)... never knew
why.... just thought some kid was screwing around with a coin... Cheers, RickO

I've been told that vendors (mainly car washes, and laundromats) painted their change with fingernail polish to put in the "change" machines, as a way of "tracking" how much was going back to the business at hand.

Sounds plausible to me.

CaptHenway

In many major cities the juke boxes in restaurants and bars were operated by the local Mafia. It was a business to them, and to encourage play during slow times the guys that came by and picked up the coins from the machines would give the proprietor a small jar of (typically) quarters with red paint or nail polish on both sides, with the instructions to drop one in the machine and play a song now and then to remind the patrons that the machine was there. The guys collecting the coins would just pull out the ones with the paint on them and put them back in the jar.



If the take was small and there were few or no marked quarters in the machine the guy emptying the machine would remind the proprietor that he was supposed to be promoting the juke box.

TwoSides2aCoin

On another note, the red comes off rather simply with acetone.

panexpoguy

Painting coins red was also done in casinos. When repairing machines technicians had to run coins through the machine to verify it was repaired but were not allowed access to the coin bucket. They used red painted coins for this and these were taken out in the count room so that they were not counted as profit.

oih82w8

"Here are a few of the more plausible answers:



They’re old test coins. In the past, repairmen used them to check out the coin-operated pay phones, vending machines, and laundromat washers they were fixing in order to avoid being accused of stealing. That sounds plausible to me.



They were “house” money. Red quarters are sometimes used by business owners as perks; they give them to their preferred customers for free plays on the coin-operated pool tables, pinball machines and video games. Red quarters were also used by waitresses to “prime” otherwise quiet jukeboxes in order to encourage other patrons to add their own quarters and keep the music coming.



Somebody painted it as a sign of defiance. According to Answers.com, the red coins were part of a campaign in the 1970s to protest New Jersey officials’ decision to increase the toll on the Garden State Parkway from 15 cents to a quarter.



They were once used for free laundry.For some apartment managers, free laundry is apparently a fringe benefit. Landlords will often give their building supervisors red quarters for use in the apartment laundromats. The managers would get their quarters back when the owner or laundromat vendor removed the cash from the machines."



http://lenpenzo.com/blog/id192...s-are-painted-red.html







It might be time to revive this "fad" when we are slow at the...perhaps I have said too much already.

johnny9434

its different.