Vending Acceptance And Despensing Of Halves And Dollar Coins

Here is what a vendor told me about vending machines accepting halves:

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Programming a coin mech to accept the half dollar could be done in most cases currently on location. If the coin mech is less than 5 years old and made by Coinco, MEI, and maybe Conlux and maybe Currenza you could program the mech to accept the coin by using the option that allows you to program for accepting "tokens" the programming the half dollar as a "token." Most people are not aware of this functionality and this that are do not want half dollars. The accepted token would fall to the cash box for collection with the overflow coins. However, coin counters that most people use do not accept half dollars and will jam if a half dollar is introduced.


The government does mandate acceptance of dollar coins in machines on federal property but payback is not mandated. Switching to dollar coin payback is too expensive for many operators. Just because the vending machine is new does not mean the bill acceptor and coin mech are new. Most machines for the street vendor leave the factory without money systems and are installed at the distributor or by the operator. Many operators have a lot of old and functioning coin mech and bill acceptors that they will install into their machines. A new coin mech bill acceptor combo would cost between $700 - $1000 or more. You would have to sell almost 500 candy bars to get your money back on just the coin mech and validator.


As far as I know the government has stopped the production of most dollar coins because there are billions of dollars worth just sitting in vaults. The public has not accepted the dollar coin. There will be no movement on the half dollar until the public has greater acceptance of the dollar coin.


I would not mind having a conversation about this if you like. You can call me on Monday after 8 AM if you like.
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So, it looks like in order to get the half and/or dollar coin to circulate, is for the dollar coin to gain more popularity, and even if that happens they might still ignore the half, even though that would be the perfect time to get halves into circulation.