In my collection sits a 1973 Washington quarter-dollar with red paint adhering to its surfaces. I collected that red-painted quarter because I have seen coins like it again and again through the years—the first time when I was a boy, at the local hamburger stand.
When the folks came by the restaurant to empty the coin boxes of the pinball machines or the pool table, or the juke box, they would return the red-painted quarters that were in the coin boxes to the owner of the restaurant. The reason for the red-painted quarters was so customers’ coins could be differentiated from the coins the proprietor had used to prime the jukebox, or used to get a recalcitrant pool table or pinball machine to work.
By the time I began pumping money into coin-operated machines, the usual subjects were copper-nickel-clad quarters, So the coin below, when I saw it last week, immediately interested me....
A “red-paint” Standing Liberty quarter with its date worn off (but obviously of the 1917-24 type) used for the vending machines of a somewhat earlier era. My guess is that it was put into service during the mid- to late-‘50s, but surely not after the late-‘60s.
The coins of other countries must surely have been used this way too. Anyone?
v.
