Coinage changes has been one of the banes of our lives … decimalisation had already happened Feb 1971 bad enough but the 20p and pound coins only arrived later into early 80s …..
1992 then saw the shrinking of 10p & 5p coins and numerous mech reprogramming or mechanical adjustments…
We only just got past that in 1994 the 2p & 1p changed metal content to steel magnetic base from more costly copper based low value coins which weighed in scrap for sometimes more than their face value?
Then 1997 the 50p shrunk also …. It’s like the ever changing New Size chocolate bars ( I avoided saying Mars bar there to save confusion) and Mars /coin controls mechs needed yet another tweaking
Still not happy that coin handlers were having an easy time (not) also in 1997 a new £2 coin was added into the mix menu!!
So are we happy now ….. not a chance! 2012 ( having already changed the coin designs in 2008) we get a magnetic 10p & 5p again cheaper to manufacture and to maintain the banking bulk coin weight , the new post 2012 10p was made wider (same diameter) but now 1.9mm depth up from previous 1.7mm so stacking 10 alike coins gives a height difference of one full coin.
Now are we settled ,?,,,,, are we hell 2017 the pound coin was made to look like its euro similar bi metal coin … and it took them several attempts to get a Mars mech tolerance on these and lorry loads didn’t make circulation …. My colleague at Knightlys funfair Towyn was consulting with the royal mint as many early conversions for local arcades were returning poor acceptance due to metal density variations.
They sent us coins, blank design with just the penny basic pound design on and royal mint sample on one side and charged a mega deposit so they got returned after advanced programming? Not released to eBay ….
So the coin mechs have had all the expensive updates the government can apply ???? I know … all those fruit machines and change boxes that take paper notes …. “ let’s recall them all and introduce polymer notes it will help against forgery? No? Forged notes are still circulating .. but the coin handlers luckily don’t get frauds with them as the note accepter/recyclers don’t accept fakes.. just over counter passing in busy markets and superstores…..
So the moral here is …. If you feel badly treated with a poor quality mars mech or s10 validator then be thankful you only own one or two (few) machines …. 1992 we did thousands of upgrades for clients arcades and do still have some 82s126 ics but sadly our bbc computer with the programming data died long ago…. Some programming devices do survive …. But as I was not personally doing the work ( we employed a self employed computer guy just for that purpose) I tend to forget how we did some of the upgrades ,,, big job was making slots smaller on s10, with a plastic insert or pop rivit in the metal s1 slots and a accepts new 10p only red sticker still evident on some of my old cabs !
