As a broke kid in the late 70's, I had a few ways of fueling the arcade habit. The obvious was to check every coin return. It's amazing how often this would yield free quarters, and there was nothing quite as satisfying as sticking your finger in there and finding that it
wasn't empty. Then there was looking for (or actually witnessing) coin jams. When a coin mech was jammed up, people didn't know it and kept stuffing quarters in until they piled up far enough to become visible at the slot. If the guy wasn't standing right there when it happened, they often took the loss and moved on. Alerting the change guy to this usually resulted in free games and a couple of the recovered quarters. And then there was the old stand by; being a little kid and looking as pathetic as possible while watching an adult play the game. This one usually worked best on pinball machines where free games are the result of a good run. If they just spent a half hour rocking a machine, they didn't care about those free games. All in all, though, getting a job was easier.
