Mine sort of happened by accident. As a kid, I'd always try to burn up all of my tokens. As I grew up, I didn't always have time, so it wasn't uncommon to have a buck or two's worth in my pocket, which would end up mixed into my guitar pick case. I can't remember if they came from the old Bally Midway arcade at Crossroads Mall (R.I.P.) or Tilt at Quail Springs, but that was basically the start, six tokens embossed with Pac-Man.
When we went to Indonesia, I visited an arcade called Stinger's in one of their giant malls. Smaller and silver, they have a bee mascot. I thought it was funny that I had to travel halfway across the globe to go to a real arcade that wasn't stuffed to the gills with Dance-Dance ADD Kid on Meth Revolution and had a good time, so I kept a handful of them.
A few years later, I ended up with a second job, slinging pizza at an all-in-one pizza buffet/gokart track/arcade/bowling/minigolf/seppuku place. A game tech position opened up after about a year and a half, so I jumped on it. Why not, you know? Coming here for years (don't let my current account age fool you, I used to have another), I had a pretty good idea of how things worked. I've learned a lot on the job, but some prior electronics experience and what I've absorbed from the BYOAC community kept me from looking absolutely clueless.
We don't use tokens for credits, but some of our redemption games use them. So, in emptying them or working on them, I come across a lot of tokens that aren't ours. I regularly see Chuck E. Cheese's tokens, since they're right up the street. Saw more of them after they were shut down for a couple months. I'm starting to think they've got employees taking tokens out and taking them where I work. The other night, I had a layer of 30-50 of their tokens on top of the pile in one machine. I've probably got a few hundred of them now.
I see plenty from similar places, not to mention tourist attractions and all kinds of other arcades. One day, I ended up with a handful of tokens from a couple different Asian establishments, I'm guessing Japanese.
It's sorta just kinda fallen in my lap, but I'm starting to think that I might just hang onto at least one token from every arcade I visit in the future. As far as the Chuck E. tokens, since they're stamped with a date, I might just keep one from each year that I can find and burn off the rest one day. It's either that, or turn them into jewlery for hipsters.
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Topic: Anyone else have a token collection? (Read 1523 times)
