Can someone pleas help me. I found this 1966 quarter and it was painted red. Bolth sides are painted but the rim is not. The paint is chipping off the front and it look like it is plated because a bit of the silver-ie color is coming off. I have no idea if this is anything or if it is just a quarter that someone painted red. Pleas help. Thank you.
FYI, coins 1964 and older had silver content. Yours is the modern "cupro-nickel," or copper-nickel alloy.
This was probably painted for use as a 'house quarter' to feed the jukebox with in a bar. Not a common practice anymore, but it once was.
@Xpnerd To expand on this comment, quarters were often painted by the proprietor so they could be easily retrieved from any of the machines such as a juke box, pool table, video games, etc. As a rule, the bars that offered such machines leased them from an arcade company on a 50/50 basis. The owner of the establishment did not have keys for any of them. So, when a customer "lost" their money in a machine, the owner would replace the loss with one of the painted quarters, and when the owner of the arcade business made his weekly collection rounds, he would return the painted quarters to the owner before dividing the receipts. There are still tens of thousands of pool tables and video games that accept quarters to play, so this practice is still used today. Chris
When I was a child growing up above my parents bar/restaurant. The "music man" would allow me to paint some nickels for the pinball machine and some quarters for the jukebox. He would return those every week when changing the 45's and empting the coin boxes. They were to be used to refund people's money when the record skipped, when things were quiet and the bartender wanted to encourage patrons to put money in the jukebox and to allow Lil David some entertainment. He also gave me all the 45s he was replacing with current hits and I still have several thousand of them.
I once lived in an apartment complex. They gave out quarters like this to folks that had problems with the laundry machines. The guys that took care of the machines would hand them back to the office. I remember the bad guys were always prying open the cash boxes. The laundry room was out of order half the time.
I worked cleaning a family bar before classes in high school , bar kept jar of painted quarters for free use of pool tables, pinball ,and jukebox
Good to know the true story behind these colored quarters. I was told at a young age that they were quarters stolen in a bank robbery and were covered from the paint from the dye pack when it exploded. I always thought growing up I had a piece of stolen goods.
