F for Fake

July 26, 2009 11:23 AM

What's the deal with these fake quarters?

(In the photo, I put some real quarters to the left of the fake ones, just for comparison.)

We have pay washers and dryers in my apartment building -- $1.50 each for both washing and drying. I went to do my laundry and found a bunch of fake quarters in one of the dryers's coin slots. Whoever left them there didn't push the coins into the machine -- or he did and the machine didn't take them.

The fakes are completely blank on both sides, though a couple have paint on them. They are crudely made out of some sort of light, dull metal.

What's the deal with these "slugs"? Do they really work? Are the mass-produced by some sort of petty criminal underground? Or do people just make them at home? How do people make them?

I'm not thinking of defrauding the washer/dryer company. But I'm sort of fascinated with these things and would like to know more about them. In case it's important, I like in Brooklyn, NY.

posted by grumblebee to work & money (14 comments total)

Do they weigh the same as normal quarter?
posted by Pants! at 11:28 AM on July 26

I'd bet they are knockouts from an electrical box.
posted by sanka at 11:31 AM on July 26 [4 favorites]

No, they are significantly lighter.
posted by grumblebee at 11:31 AM on July 26

Some of the better slugs work. We have a vending machine outside our business for customers to use. The company that put it there came in pissing and moaning one day because someone had filled it with slugs.

They (vending company) said that some of the older machines still out there will accept slugs and they run into them about once or twice a month.
posted by Gravitus at 11:38 AM on July 26

If they are the exact same size as a quarter I bet you could use them on those candy/bubble gum machines: you know, the kind that have a glass globe on top, you just put a coin in and turn a handle.
posted by doublesix at 12:07 PM on July 26

I don't think they are knock outs as they don't seem to have the little attachment deformity.

The reason they were in the slide of the machine is they didn't work. Slides are actually fairly precise coin mechanisms. Slight deviations in thickness or width and the mechanism will reject them. We used to have a problem with people pouring coke into the mech. This not only gums up the mech making it hard to slide but also throws off the fingers of the security mechanism making them reject quarters for being too large.

Tokens are commonly used to limit access to all sorts of equipment and while most of them are marked some are plain metal disks. Token are used rather than regular money because it reduces the incentive to break into coin boxes or to control who can access the equipment IE: tokens are only available to or from specific people. EG: a gym might use a special token to limit certain lockers to a swim club or VIP members.
posted by Mitheral at 12:14 PM on July 26

Yep, they're cutouts from electrical boxes. (The round bits in these examples.) No idea if they would work in a washer, but seeing as they were still in the coin-slide thingy, they probably didn't. However, some - uh - people I knew in college (ahem) would sometimes trace and cut out quarter-sized circles from stiff thin cardboard or plastic like from margarine lids, and those worked just fine. But that would be illegal so don't do that. I'm guessing the slugs you found were too thick to go through the machine's mechanism.
posted by cuddles.mcsnuggy at 2:15 PM on July 26

So where are people getting all the electrical boxes?
posted by grumblebee at 2:44 PM on July 26

I'm pretty sure electrical box cutouts are more nickel sized.

I've heard tell that operators of coin-op businesses would paint a supply of quarters (or slugs, I guess) to use when they were doing "overhead" types of activities. Using the carwash sprayer to clean the carwash booth, or running an empty load of laundry to bleach out the stink left by a previous user. This way they could account for it when they were counting their coin.

(Having repaired coin slides, I can say that they are fairly precise. They won't take a canadian quarter, for example, or even a US quarter that has been worn down. But there is very little stopping them from happily accepting quarter sized anything. Except that it's probably pretty hard for someone to make a slug for less than the cost of a quarter.)
posted by gjc at 3:06 PM on July 26

Sorry GB, commented directly in the pic comments instead of here. I nth the electrical junction-box knockouts.
posted by mwhybark at 4:05 PM on July 26

Here is a picture of knockouts along with a quarter. The one on top and the one on the right are the same size. The one on the left is the next standard size up. The knockout on the right is sitting on top of an American quarter. It is substantially smaller than the quarter as the thick rim is visible all the way around. The sizes are standardized to fit cast fittings so there isn't much variation. I didn't show it here however nickels are approximately as much smaller than the knockout as the knockout is smaller than the quarter. The grid underneath is my cutting mat and has ~1" spacing. Electrical knockouts post date standard coins; It wouldn't surprise me if the knock out size was chosen specifically so the waste couldn't be used as a slug.

All three knockouts have the distinctive deformation where they used to be attached to the box. On the grey knockouts the deformities are facing each other in the centre. The shiny one was attached at two points orthogonal to the direction of the slot in the centre. The deformations are pretty noticeable in most cases because the attachment has to hold the knockout in the box in the 80% of cases when you don't want a hole in the box. I don't see those in your picture but the picture is fairly low rez.

grumblebee writes "So where are people getting all the electrical boxes?"

Knock outs are available on any construction site. I've got a coffee can half full just from doing the electrical in my shop.
posted by Mitheral at 4:45 PM on July 26

I once worked at a small town newspaper and they would give slugs to the delivery drivers rather than give them the keys to the newspaper boxes so they could open the boxes to put the new papers in. When you went to count the coins collected from the all the machines, you separated out the slugs by looking for the paint (like the red on one of yours) and by using a magnet. That doesn't really explain where your slugs came from and I don't know where the newspaper got theirs, but it seemed to be a legitimate use for them.
posted by rjd at 5:59 PM on July 26

I'll put in one more vote for those slugs of yours being the knockouts from junction boxes. I used to deliver them by the gross to construction sites, and you could find a fist-full on the ground around the electrician's work-area in under five minutes.
posted by lekvar at 8:39 AM on July 27

Like rjd's comment, I used to work at a laundromat that rented space for arcade machines. We were allowed to spray-paint real quarters bright red, and then use them to play the arcade games. When the machine owner came to collect the money, we were given back all the red quarters.

Ask your apartment's super. It might just be his idea to save himself some coin.
posted by jayne at 5:36 PM on July 27