Todays Route Token is Shifty's; Shooters, Shots and Slots. Sounds like my kind of place.

Yesterday I said I was going to talk about route token mintages. I will probably get lots of E-mail on this subject.

As a general rule that I have been told by several people, most Route Companys have minted about 500 to 600 tokens per machine when the machines are first put in the bar. Of course as collectors take the tokens more must be ordered. If a bar puts in 10 slots the initial minting for the tokens would be around 6,000 which is not a whole lot when you stop to think about it. As most of us know, if a token is in play for week, it becomes pretty beat up and is non-collectable as a general rule.

In West Virginia where I live, all slots are serviced by Route Companys except in the big race track casinos. In West Virgina, the slots lock up at $1,100 and the Route Company comes out and pays you that or more. The lower amounts are paid by the bar owner and the bar owner and Route Company settle up once a week. I don't know, but I would think it is much the same way in Nevada.

So, as to mintages, 500 to 600 is the best guess per machine. So the mintages are quite small and really nice tokens are hard to obtain especailly on the early issues prior to 1990.

Please post if you have other ideas on this subject. I like hearing from fellow collectors. You won't hurt my feelings at all if you disagree with me. I sure don't know it all. LOL