I was reading that vending machines were the primary reason for coming up with the clad coinage that we have today. It says that the Clad has the exact same electrical properties as Silver. So, my question is, what is in the vending machine that has to have these electrical properties of silver or clad?
I don't know how advanced the technology was in the 1960's. Alot of vending machines during that time were totally mechanical. Cigarette machines were not electric. Alot of machines detected the value of the coin by the size. I have heard that some modern machines and coin counters reject silver coins. I met a guy at my credit union a few weeks ago dumping change in the counter and I asked him about silver coins and he said that the machine rejects them. He runs a vending machine business. Apparently his machines take them. The only silver coins that are close in weight to their clad counter parts are the the 40% halves. I believe they are 0.16 of a gram heavier than a clad. I don't think there are alot of machines then or now that take halves. I'd like to see a copy of the article you are reffering to.
The other day I was at a Borders book store and they had tons of books priced to sell. Well, I picked up a 2010 Red Book for $4 and a Question & Answers Coin book by Whitman for $2. It came from the Q&A book. Says if the coins were changed to pure nickel, all the vending machines would have to be changed.$$$ This would of been extremely expensive, so they came up with Clad...
So what happened to that electrical technology when the mint stopped using silver in general circulating coins in 1970?
Yes, they all contain copper, an conductor of electricity. However, vendning machines did not operate that way. It was the weight of the coin that triggered the machine.
It's not that silver and clad have the exact same electrical signatures just that they are very similar. Even the coin discriminators used in vending machines of the 1960's could have been set to exclude clad but in doingf so they would have excluded lots of the silver coins as well. This made the composite metals very dangeroues to the vending industry. In the hearings to determine a substitute for silver the heads of the American Automatic Vending Association said that anything other than a clad sort of composition would be acceptable. Ironically this might have been the stimulus that resulted in the copper nickel clad copper coinage. Up until the early-'70's both silver and clad worked in most vending machines but when silver became so scarce the discriminators were adjusted to reject anything but clad of the proper size and weight. Very few machines now days accept silver.
Discriminators, I guess thats the answer I was looking for. I was thinking like the others that it was determained by weight or size. I guess these discriminators wouldn't adjust to accept pure nickel. Very interesting, thanks everyone...
Abe, That was a really goood question. It caused me to immediately think of how slot machines work at the casinos, they are supposed to be the ultimate in coin and slug detection. Anyone know how they work? Or I guess maybe if someone did they wouldnt be sitting in front of a computer. LOL Steve
I don't know exactly when the casinos finally perfected the technology, but I spotted this Circus Circus gaming token laying inside a slot machine at the Riv about 10 years ago. The hopper on the machine I was playing was almost empty, and when they opened the machine to refill it, I saw it and asked if I could swap for it. Judging from its condition and the date on it, it must have been lying in there for the better part of a decade. The neat thing of it is that it was produced in "coin turn". Chris
A lot of countries use pure nickel coins and have vending machines that can identify them. Pure nickel is magnetic though and I'm sure these would be rejected by the old US machines. Nickel is costly to manufacture because it is expensive and its hardness wears the dies rapidly. Many US coin handlers complain about magnetic coinage. The old steel cent generated thousands of letters of complaint to the mint. The FED even went so far as to begin the systematic removal of these from circulation in the late 50's. It was easy enough to do. They just passed magnets over them.
Cladking, This is all very interesting, I didnt know nickel was magnetic, Chris you kind of answered my question on the slots, I forgot the casinos make there own money sometimes. Steve
