Old spaceport quarters??

tec9

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Hey all-
In the last month I was given two of these at stores as change.....wonder if they are from Spaceport when they painted the quarters...Thought it was kinda cool.
 

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From what I've read, they used to paint quarters red which were to be used in jukeboxes at a bar or other establishment. Then they'd split the juke earnings with the owner of the bar / juke owner, etc. Something like that.

This was a fairly common practice, apparently. I've seen tons of these.
 
In our first video we showed that Spaceport used painted quarters to show "Free Games". If someone complained about a game not working, they put a painted quarter in the machine for them. What years are on the quarters?

-Al-
 
Or, when a machine "ate money" and didn't credit, the attendant could credit the machine by putting a red quarter in it - that way they knew not to count that towards the totals when doing collections.

A friend of mine used to work at an arcade, and the rule was never to give the customer the red quarter - you put it in the machine yourself. Also, he recalls occasionally having to paint quarters - laying a roll of quarters out on a piece of cardboard in the back and spray painting them.

-Ian
 
The years on these two quarters are 1981, 1991. I guess it's possible they are "Spaceport" quarters. I know they aren't rare or worth anything (except .25!). Just thought it was kinda cool to see these still floating around. I remember seeing them in our local Spaceport arcade.
-Mark
 
I have seen plenty of red quarters in my change over the years.
 
My father used to own a bar/restaurant and he painted (I think he used Mom's fingernail polish) the quarters and used them in the junk box to get it started and others would always continue the music. When to operator came to empty the machine, Dad would get his quarters back before the split with the operator. That practice has been going on for a long time, Dad had that place back in the late 60's. I barely remember it, but Mom has told me a lot about it.
 
Our local arcade had a few of those painted quarters, they were a real distinctive nail polish color and over the years I've found a few in change since I still live in the same town.

It's a nice connection to the past :)
 
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