Dollar Coin [Archive] - Coinwash The key to a successful Laundromat Business.

CharlieS

11-19-2002, 02:13 AM

I have a Maytag store which has 32 washers, 29 of which will take the dollar coin.

When ordering Maytags, the trick is to order the Canadian version, which has the dual drop, and accepts both the american quarter and dollar. They are the same price as the standard american version, but are rarely in distributor stock. It is available across their entire line.

Set-o-matic also has a full line of dual coin drops, which can fit many machines. They run about $160 per unit as I recall, which gets pretty expensive unless you want to convert your machines to their drops anyway. I'm thinking about switching just my high dollar machines at my other store.

So far, I see very few dollar coins, however. I do have two change machines, and have purchased a dollar coin drop, which was about $200 from standard change. I haven't gotten around to it, but I'm thinking about setting up one machine to give a mix of quarters and dollars. I would also add a small coin changer, so that a customer could insert a dollar coin and get quarters, if that's what they want. I have a small coin changer in my other store, and usually get about $30 per week in small change, which shows that my customers like to use it.

The quick answer is, unless you provide the dollar coins, customers won't either.

A secondary consideration is the additional sort process to separate the dollars and quarters. You can take two passes with most sorters. However, the coolest way to do it is to use a Cummins 3000 or Cummins 6000. If you have never seen one of these, they are a fascinating piece of engineering. Using only a spinning turntable under a machined plate, and only a couple of moving parts, this thing will sort and count 3000 to 6000 coins per minute. These sell new for anywhere from $4,000 to $8,000, but occasionally pop up on Ebay for $1,000 or so, the same as a good sorter. There is nothing else like them on the market.

Charlie