Anyone ever heard of "Pocket Change" arcade?

descrentl

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Anyone ever heard of "Pocket Change" arcade?

So, I like the history of our cabs and where they originally were on location. I think its cool to know the travels of my games and on a few of them, there are tags that say where they were at one point in time. My Paperboy has a "Pocket Change" tag on the top. Does anyone know if this was a chain, or a single location, and where abouts was it? I recently picked up a crane that was on location at a mall near me when I was younger, So there is a good chance I sunk some coins into it. Thought that was pretty dam cool.
 
Pocket Change was all over Maryland back in the 90s. Maybe earlier, but im 26 so my arcade memories were from then....I believe they ended up being bought by namco? There was one open still a few years ago in hagerstown, I used to play DDR there haha...pretty sure it closed a few years ago.
 
Pocket Change was all over Maryland back in the 90s. Maybe earlier, but im 26 so my arcade memories were from then....I believe they ended up being bought by namco? There was one open still a few years ago in hagerstown, I used to play DDR there haha...pretty sure it closed a few years ago.

Awesome! I wonder if the game came from one of those locations, or if they were in other states. Thanks for the post.
 
Pocket Change was at one point the second largest arcade chain, next to What Edison Bros owned (space port, time out, etc). Pc was ultimately bought out by namco. I still know one of the owners of the chain, and he is still in this business.

Mike
 
Pocket Change was one of the largest chains, as Mike said. In the early 90's I think they were actually larger than Edison Bros of St. Louis (Time Out) though smaller than Nickles & Dimes of Dallas (Tilt & Gold Mine, if you have games with a small metal tag painted white with a brown "ND" logo and a serial # this is where it came from).

They were based in Newark, DE and also operated the Jolly Time and Kahunaville (D&B copy) chains, though most locations were Pocket Change. They probably covered half of the country or more and started downsizing in the late 90's by shedding their locations furthest from the northeast; all the FL locations were sold off to one company, and most of the upper midwest locations were sold to local operators individually or closed when they became unprofitable or released from leases. They completely sold out to Namco in 2000 after they were closing dozens of locations -- some were literally "midnight operations" where they loaded out everything overnight and skipped town.

They also operated Interstate Amusement, their local street location business which was basically just jukes & touchscreens. If there is anything left of them, this would be it; no idea if Namco also bought it as well.

In the late 90's they were one of my favorite ops to buy from as their games were rarely moved and spent most of their lives in supervised arcades, so they were usually in great shape. They also bought pretty much everything and always had hundreds of games for $50-100 kicking around the warehouse.
 
They had one in the Cordova mall in Pensacola, FL. It was first a Jolly Time then they moved across the food court into a bigger location and became Pocket Change. I still have some redemption tokens from the place. That is where I played UB-QB, Road Riot 2 player sitdown, and Klondike quarter pusher. I heard Namco bought all the locations except the ones in FL.. I just looked on yahoo local and could not see it listed in Pensacola so it must have closed.
 
I was a District Manager for Namco when they bought out Pocket Change and it was a nightmare!!!! Our first mission was to convert all of the locations from quarters to tokens..All mechs had to be changed in the games. All the stores had cheesy redemption prizes. There was tons of neon in the locations which was cool and some of the locations looked like an enormous polished airstream trailer on the inside.... Kinda ghetto yet cool at the same time.
I picked up an Apb and Rolling thunder on the cheap in one location( Chattanooga TN)

If my memory is correct I think they paid 10 million dollars for 100 or so locations and the coolest was in the Westown mall in Knoxville TN..First time I had ever seen coinboxes filled to the rim in a week...
I had some really fun times in that business...Sadly I made more money today in 2 hours selling one car than I made in two wks as a DM for them.....Feels like 12 wasted years other than it got me back into classic games and collecting them.
 
They had one for a while in the 90s at Northpark Mall in Davenport, IA.

DogP
 
Pocket Change was all over Maryland back in the 90s. Maybe earlier, but im 26 so my arcade memories were from then....I believe they ended up being bought by namco? There was one open still a few years ago in hagerstown, I used to play DDR there haha...pretty sure it closed a few years ago.

Correct,the hagerstown one closed back in 2008. There was a pocket change in frederick from the early 90's until about 2005-06
 
I worked for pocket change in Denver that was associated with Jolly Time in Fort Collins thru Colorado Springs.

None of my location's games were labeled with jolly time or pocket change only an asset tag to report earnings back to Newark NJ/ headquarters.
 
Wow, they seemed to be all over. I dont recall ever seeing one in Michigan though. So I guess my Paperboy made quite the trip. Thanks guys.
 
There was a Pocket Change up in TC in the Grand Traverse Mall before they were bought out by Namco. About 6 months after that it closed up.
 
There were two in Appleton, WI. One in the Fox River Mall, and one in Valley Fair Mall. The Valley Fair location actually outlived the chain, pretty sure that one went solo many years before as the games didn't get updated as much. Someone here has the signage from that location and some games in his gameroom.
 
Wow, they seemed to be all over. I dont recall ever seeing one in Michigan though. So I guess my Paperboy made quite the trip. Thanks guys.

There was a Pocket Change in Southland mall down off of Telegraph and Goddard Rd. in Taylor and I believe there use to be one over in Wonderland Mall on Plymouth Rd. when it was an enclosed mall way back. My brother and I went there with our two cousins and played 4-player Cyberball there all the time. Also in Livonia at Livonia Mall there was a movie theater there where we'd frequent and play Burgertime and Tron-- great times!
 
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