I used to collect old vending machines (at one time I had close to 40) and used to find many old coins in them. This is mainly because keys get lost and instead of destroying the machine they would just sell it without removing the coins. Fortunatly, I knew the trick of getting the locks off with out damage. Check out antique stores for these machines.
Thanks for the tip! I bought an old homemade bank for $3 and change once and it had a $2 bill in it and some change. It was the tinder to my collecting addiction. BTW do you have any advice for finding these?
I like antique malls the best for finding machines. You can usually find several there. Just make sure the machines are old. I personally looked for the distressed ones and restored them back to god condition.
I honestly am a bit confused on your suggestion. Are you saying to go into antique malls (or wherever) and remove the locks and look for old coins? Or are you suggesting to buy the old machines in the hopes of finding a couple of "old" coins. That seems kind of like the lottery and then what is old? Heck, even if the machine is 50 years old, that would only net you coins from the 1960's and 1950's - hardly rare. I'm sorry - don't mean to belittle the idea - if I regularly bought such things, that is a good thing to look for. But the same thing could be said for old houses and old cars, I suppose.
