In another thread @Inspector43 made reference to an establishment painting a red spot on coins going into a jukebox or pool table as "seed" money to get the patron interested. When the jukebox was emptied by the vendor, he would return the red painted coins to the establishment..... I thought this was a very cool little piece of trivia and thought a thread to recount similar sorts of trivia & tidbits may be fun.... Here's mine: I cannot recall where this came from, though I have to be honest and say that I have done the obligatory "Google" research and have not been able to pin down a source..... Red painted cents.... The story goes that in the days before mass media, a traveling circus would send people ahead to the next stop on their route with bags of red painted cents to inject into the local economy. If you received a red painted cent in change then you knew that the circus would be coming to town soon..... Now again, I cannot pinpoint the source of that story but it always intrigued me. Please add some interesting coin tidbit.
Nice Story! I couldn't find any information about painted red cents either. Interesting to say the least. The only time that I've seen red cents is during a "planted" Metal Detecting hunt. I did find some information on Quarters in the 1970's being painted to protest the war.
I’m old enough that I’ve heard both of those stories. The one in my area was people thought if a coin contained silver it was painted so they wouldn’t spend it.
For many decades dimes were the mainstay of the battle against Infantile Paralysis. It seems that there was always a "March of Dimes" taking place and school kids were asked to bring a dime to school. Everyone got involved, and probably still do. Here is an example of the drive by President Roosevelt during WW2:
Painted because they thought it contained silver but put back in circulation when they found out it was a clad coin.
Quite a few years ago the owner of a local car wash told me to get a roll of quarters and put some red paint on them. Then use those to wash the ambulance at his place. When he emptied the coin box, he would give the painted coins back to me; in a nutshell he was letting us wash our truck for free.
Randy, as so often happens a member will make a post that brings back many, many memories. And this time, you are the one who struck that chord Many years ago, in the early days of this forum I would often post interesting bits of coin trivia. Kinda like this one - https://www.cointalk.com/threads/trivia-not-so-easy.1776/ I even held quite a few coin trivia contests where the prize was a gold coin. But the true CT King of Trivia was a member who is no longer with us, and he passed several years before you became a member so maybe you haven't heard of him. But then again maybe you have. I say that because I created a special section here on CT dedicated to him - his name was Clinker. You can find that section here on the index page, (it's called the Forum page in the blue bar at the top of every screen) - The special section's name is Clinker - In Memoriam Here's a link to it. https://www.cointalk.com/forums/clinker-in-memoriam.64/ So I commend you and thank you for starting a thread on this topic. You're far from the first, and you will hopefully be far from the last. But every time I see a post like this, well, like I said - the memories ....
