Price check: Rowe BC-25 change machine

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Hey all,

Well being out of space for games, one of the things I've been thinking of concentrating my efforts on is getting my games all set to accept tokens or quarters. I need to get locks and mechs for some, but of course now I'm thinking I'd like to get a change machine. Just wondering what might be a ballpark price I should expect to pay for a Rowe model BC-25 machine. That seems to be the machine that most remember. I did receive some money as a birthday present and thought now might be the time to buy one. :)
 
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BC25 should be pretty cheap as the only currency an original will work with is $1 bills. Price would be all over the place. Anywhere from $50-$250.. Now if its been upgraded to new currnecy, it would probably go for $500+. The upgrade is expensive (like $500-$800).

I have a 4 bc25's and I guess they have been sitting too long unused as the dollar bill transports seem to fail(they were working). Its like they try to take in the money too slow and it causes an error(you have to go in and hit the reset button). I think they need to be rebuilt, but I don't know for sure.. I could be another problem, but it seems odd all 4 are pretty much doing the same thing.

But even in their current state, if you access the internal buttons, they will work perfectly dumping a pre determined amount of coins. BC 25's have 3 storage spots and 3 dump buttons. they are labeled for .25, 1.00, or 5.00, but pretty sure you can tell it to put any number of coins into each spot. So if you were to run a wire to the internal button, you could make it dump coins and never access the dollar transport.

So if you don't actually need dollar bills to go into it, the rest of the BC25 is pretty much indestructible. BC25mc will dump from 1 hopper and move to the next when its empty. so you really only need 1 of the 3 hoppers to work.
 
I paid $150 for a pair of BC-25's (conversion from BC-20) in working condition and cosmetically pretty good. I think I got a nice deal, considering they hardly ever seem to show up. You gotta factor that in. If it's really hard to find one, then if you want one badly enough, be willing to pay for it regardless of what the price policemen say.

If you decide to use .984 tokens be aware that you either need to mod the hoppers because quarter hoppers won't handle them, or get "large coin" hoppers (IIRC, that's what they're called).

You'll probably want to wire one of the test vend switches mrbill mentioned to the coin reject switch. Then you just press coin reject and get your coins dumped. It's a trivial mod.

Good luck! A change machine is a GREAT addition to the game room!
 
Thanks for the replies guys. I'll keep this in mind as I go forward. I'm not in a huge hurry to find one so I'll keep my eyes peeled. I'm not interested in upgrading one for using the new $5 bill so hopefully I can find one for around what you guys paid.
 
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