Many years ago when I worked at Blockbuster, I was waiting on a woman and her rather unruly son at the register. He kept fiddling with the gumball machine and was trying to put a nickel in the quarter slot, which freaked me out because I figured it would break it. The woman even bitched at me for raising my voice to her child to protect the store’s property.
She managed to dissuade him of the notion, but if he had put a different-size coin in the gumball machine’s slot, would it have broken? Would it have dispensed, or done nothing?
This reminds me of when Thailand came out with the 10-baht coin. It was roughly the same size and shape as a one-euro coin but worth maybe 25 cents or less American. Reports at the time were that people in Europe who had brought back some 10-baht coins were using them successfully in vending machines.
Nickels are a little thicker than quarters so it might not fit but possibly could jam it. It all depends on the particular mechanism. Gumball machines are pretty basic, I assume that it’s a more modern version if it takes quarters and probably is well designed to deal with all sorts coins and slugs someone might use. Probably worst case is jamming the mechanism.
1984 School trip to West Germany (there were 2 germanys in those days!). English 5p piece was the same size as a 1DM coin, which was worth about 25p. The coke machine at the youth hostel couldn’t tell the difference so we enjoyed cheap drinks for a few days. Then they restocked the machine and emptied the coins. We were told to either make up the difference or leave immediately!
Googling, in 1982, Connecticut sold highway tokens for $0.175 each (a roll of forty for seven bucks) that could be used in lieu of a $0.75 NYC subway token
I expect that coin-operated candy machines are well-tested and engineered to gracefully reject the normal coinage that they don’t accept because otherwise little kids are going to break them constantly and a broken vending machine is not a very useful object.
But of course coins from other countries or various unofficial tokens are potentially problematic.
I wonder if any country has seriously considered the seignorage benefit of making lower valued coins that are the same size as a US quarter…
Back in the day (circa 1985) my friends and I knew that the pull-rings from soda/beer cans could be forced into parking meters. When you then turned the knob, the pull-ring would grind in the gears and jam the meter. Like in Monopoly, we then had FREE PARKING for 4 hours.
When the meter was repaired, you moved your car to a different meter, rinse&repeat.
So just letting go of the nickel won’t do anything, It probably won’t seat properly, it may be too wide to rotate the mechanism, and it’s lack of diameter may not activate a cam that allows the mechanism to completely rotate. Worst case is probably a jam, and a kid may not have the strength to cause that with a nickel.
When I was a little kid you got to pieces of chicklets type gum for a penny at the hardware store. I don’t think they had a problem with people trying to use dimes instead of pennies.
This may be an unban legend because I can’t find any article about about it, but supposedly at a certain subway(s), Necco wafers could be used instead of the regular token.
I was never able to do it, but I’ve seen my friends spin* pennies in nickels in pay phones and candy machines and have it mistaken for a quarter.
*You put the coin on edge of the coin slot flick downward with the tip of your finger, causing it to spin. Sometimes the coin would register, then return in the reject box. Double win!
Similar story here in Chicago; the CTA used to use tokens for the buses and L trains. Somewhere along the line, it was discovered that West German 1-pfennig coins would be accepted by the fare machines, and became rather popular.
I was at Golden Gate Park with my grandmother, at some pavilion that had gendering machines. One of the machines would, upon receipt of a quarter, drop a slug of plastic into a heated mold, and blow it into a little plastic bear, then dispense it. I had only a nickel, which I dropped in the slot. The machine returned my nickel.
Just to see what would happen, I kept inserting the nickel. After five tries, it kept the nickel. But it didn’t make a toy for me.
For all of you non-Americans, a quarter is a twenty-five cent coin, and a nickel is a five-cent piece. Also, WHY AREN’T YOU AMERICAN???
ETA: it was probably closer to fifty-five years. I didn’t have my multiplication tables learned when I was four.
