Pennies in Coin Box?

[JimW]

When I picked up money this morning, I found two washers (relatively old Maytag MAT10PDA's) that had pennies in their coin boxes. One had only 4 pennies, but the other had 17 of the darn things.

Now, theoretically, pennies should not register in these machines like they were quarters. The diameter is wrong and pennies shouldn't break the coin sensor beam for a long enough time for the computer to accept them as quarters; a nickel would have a better chance, assuming you forced one through the slot.

But, also theoretically, a penny shouldn't even get all the way through to the coin box, should it? I tried about a dozen times in one of these same machines and I couldn't get a penny past the coin drop. These machines have the old W. Hanke coin drops (which I don't particularly like, but that's another story) and I've never run into this before.

Anybody got any ideas as to how pennies are getting past the coin drop and into the coin box?

[Monarch]

You may find pennies in the box. Or dimes, or nickles or small tokens. That does not necessarily mean that they made the machine work. Kids playing around can shove them in, and they just fall through.

Or some one tried to cheat and failed.

If you have cycle counters on the machines, they would confirm this. The fact that you didn't get it to work, seems to indicate the pennies did NOT work.

The mechanisms used in such machines do not have a coin return. So bogus coins that are too large will not go in, smaller ones should fall through but with no effect. So I would not be too alarmed unless this continues over a period of time. If it does, then you may have a problem that will need to be addressed.

Norman