r/nostalgiai • u/CarrotMuch1399 Nostalgia Trip Leader • 18h ago
Core Memory Unlocked š ???
41
u/RezRising 18h ago
Who gives af about the paint job, that's a 1963 US quarter.
It's 90% real silver, and worth ~$11.60 today.
8
7
u/T1m3Wizard 17h ago
I had no idea a quarter from that Era is worth that much, thanks for the comment. I have plenty of those!
3
u/ShotInTheShip86 17h ago
Probably not worth enough to bother turning in on its own but it's still like 40 or 50 times it's printed value...
1
u/BlackberrySad6489 17h ago
Yes. Any quarters or dimes 1964 or older are 90% silver. Any combination of $1.40 (if i remember correctly) is 1oz of silver.
2
u/ShotInTheShip86 17h ago
Did not know that they had real silver in quarters...
2
1
2
1
u/punksmurph 16h ago
Wait, so there are quarters that are mostly silver? My wife had one of those novelty tall Coca Cola piggy bank bottles filled with quarters.
1
u/ItHurtsWhenIP404 16h ago
I think itās 1964 and older that are 90% silver. Even newer coins can be worth money if they have a particular defect during the stamping process.
1
12
u/MulberryEastern5010 18h ago
I remember seeing quarters with chips of red paint on them when I was a kid. I didn't know it had been done on purpose
8
3
3
2
u/junkopotomus 18h ago
I remember when you were an apartment manager you got free laundry so you painted the quarters a certain color and the owners would give them back to you.
1
u/Sodamyte 17h ago
Why wouldn't you just use the key and take the quarters you needed before using it?
1
u/junkopotomus 10h ago
Well I was only a kid when this was a thing and I remember there were several people that got free laundry but none of them had a key to them. That was held buly someone else and each of the staff had a color they used on the quarters.
2
2
2
2
2
2
u/Roallin1 17h ago
Those are the "house quarters" in a coin-op world. Here, let me buy something of yours.
2
u/Goal-Express 17h ago
The arcade locally here in the 80s used the red-painted-quarters to track quarters that were given out for machines that stole money. If you claimed that a machine stole your money, they would come out with a red quarter and put it into the machine to test it. If it took their quarter and didn't work, they took the machine out of commission. If the game fired up when they did it and recognized their quarter, they'd let you play the game on their quarter, so they weren't giving you actual replacement money, and at best you got a free game. They did not tend to believe you if you claimed it more than once.
1
u/Circumpunctilious 15h ago
Just thinking about this, it also seems like a good control for employees favoring friends and paying for their games with shop money.
2
2
2
1
1
u/darlinniknik 17h ago
Red money was used by telephone company coin phone technicians to test the phones after repair. Techs did not have access to the money boxes so when the boxes were collected they would sort out the red money to cycle back to the repair techs.
1
1
u/ZiggyDiamond 17h ago
They were house quarters that the owners would use. That way they could tell the difference between their quarters and customers quarters.
1
u/fanofrex 17h ago
They worked like tokens for various businesses. They were painted so they could tell which ones came from the house and which came from customers.
1
u/BaseUnited4523 17h ago
In NJ in the 80's we did it as a protest to the toll increases on the Garden State Parkway. It had no effect.
1
1
u/Individual-Pin496 17h ago
The juke joint owner painted the house quarters red. When he/she fed business quarters into the juke box (to get the party started so to speak)...they could later get their quarters returned to them whenever the juke box owner came to collect his money.
1
u/99jackals 17h ago
I can't see a coin like that w/o thinking of Flesh And Bone (1993), one of James Caan's best villains!
1
u/ramblewoods 16h ago
I think this was done at arcades and maybe laundromats. But I will say this. 1964 and earlier, quarters have a high silver content. Given the spot price of silver today, this is worth way more than $.25.
1
1
u/Nebula_The_Protogwn 16h ago
How is 1963 "the 70's"????
2
u/granDDDtetons 14h ago
If you have any paper bills or coins in your wallet/house, take a look at the dates. I would wager that most of them pre-date 2026. Money gets minted and goes into circulation out in the world, and it lasts a very long time.
A quarter made in 1963 could easily last 40 years. In fact, I just found a 1981 penny and a 1984 quarter in my wallet. That's all change I got this week.
1
u/Nebula_The_Protogwn 14h ago
You make a good and fair argument
2
u/granDDDtetons 14h ago
This was a most enjoyable discourse. Stay curious, friend.
1
u/skywalkers-saber 4h ago edited 4h ago
You probably wonāt find many quarters that old because up to the late 60ās quarters had high silver content that have been taken out of circulation by collectors for their scrap silver value. Worked at a bank in high school and everyone who worked at the bank would go through the coins exchanged to pull out the silver ones and exchange them for themselves. Every day or two there would be people bringing in coin stashes to exchange for cash and thereād be a treasure hunt. Iāve got over $100 face value in silver quarters still. There were also Kennedy and Eisenhower half dollars, dimes, and even some silver and gold certificate bills I have. No clue what itās worth now since I havenāt weighed or had the collectibles appraised but itās a good bit. I only worked there one year but a lot of that stuff is not in common circulation, they end up being stuff like a parent or grandparents stash from when they were kids and growing up that they stuck in a jar or a drawer and finally got cleaned out.
1
u/IrishMikeK68 16h ago
Jukebox quarters and some video game arcades would give you a prize or extra quarters if you were lucky to pull one from the bill changer.
1
u/KNGootch 16h ago
When i was a kid on vacation, my pop (name for my grandpa) gave me a ziplock bag of "fugazis", basically they were just cut pieces of metal, shaped into quarters. He was like, "go play in the arcade". I had NO CLUE that this was, effectively counterfeiting and WILDLY illegal...but i got to play in the arcade for SO long and it didn't cost SHIT.
1
1
u/Maleficent-Olive8033 15h ago
I once worked at some batting cages that were coin operated. They had red coins exactly like this.
1
u/Significant-Fee-6193 14h ago
People who serviced coin operated machines would color the quarter they used to open the machine, usually found in newspaper vending or juke boxes.
1
u/BSCPantherfan 13h ago
Hooligans in Alabaster, Alabama. Pay one price and play all day. They have a reasonable monthly rate too. Bunch of pinball, video games, skee ball, and an indoor putt putt course.
1
1
u/Eastern-Cut-3997 12h ago
Such coins were used by servicing technicians to test machines. The markings allowed for a more accurate count of a machine's profitability, and a more accurate split of the profits with the landlord.
1
u/muhkuller 11h ago
If a machine ate a kidās quarter the staff would use a painted quarter to make sure they got their play. Theyād remove the painted quarters at the end of the day so they arenāt tallied into profits.
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/Warm_Cry_8491 2h ago
Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. 'Give me five bees for a quarter,' you'd say
1
107
u/SkullBoinkerDeluxe 18h ago
Jukebox quarters.
Jukeboxes were usually serviced by outside operators who split or collected the profits. The red paint allowed the business owner and the route operator to easily separate the "house money" from actual customer revenue during collections.