When I stumbled upon coin pusher videos on Youtube where vloggers were claiming to be paying millions in buy-ins to play for even more millions of dollars in prizes from coin pushers in casinos or private gaming rooms, I had a chuckle to myself. These videos are cute and it’s entertaining to watch those huge mountains of coins and prizes tumble as they play. I never considered the possibility that these were legit videos, however, and not fantasy content, but apparently there are people out there that believe them to be real. A quick search of Reddit for coin pusher threads reveals dozens of heated arguments between the believers and non-believers in these videos.
First, let me just point out that you won’t find coin pushers in casinos in Las Vegas or really any other mainland casinos. You may find them on cruise ships, as I played one myself in the casino on a Caribbean cruise I took a few years back. However, there’s no buy-in other than quarters, and there are no huge payouts to be won. There may be a $50 or $100 bill in the machine somewhere that you could spend $1,000 in quarters and probably still not win, but that’s the extent of it.
Now, when it comes to private gaming rooms, gas stations, carnivals, or what have you, yes, sometimes they’ll have semi-legal or illegal coin pusher games where you can play for actual money, just like on the cruise casinos. These are rigged just like arcade coin pushers and just have quarters and the aforementioned almost impossible to win bills. You’ll never see mountains of quarters and prizes stacked precariously and ready to fall once you put in a few quarters. Why? Because that’s not how money is made with coin pushers. Just like any other gambling game, the house has the edge, but the edge on these machines is even higher than a slot machine.
Coin pushers have a large opening on each side of the machine where most quarters fall off as you play. This is why the coins are only slightly pushed forward when you drop quarters onto the play surface. The only skill involved in the game is dropping the quarters so they fall when the coin pusher bar is towards you, so the quarters push the ones in front of them instead of falling on top of them. However, some coin pushers actually have a button that lets you stop the push mechanism so you can drop all the quarters you want and then start up the machine again once you release the button. Some might say that there’s some skill involved on where you drop the quarters as well, but I’d argue the real skill is just looking for items that can actually be pushed over the edge and won’t just get stuck there forever.
I played some coin pushers with my daughter at a local county fair just last week, and she wanted to try to win a $20 bill that was right on the edge of the machine. I explained the physics of how that bill was so light that it would take thousands of quarters to finally push it off the edge, if it was even possible. What’s more likely to happen is that the quarters holding the bill on the edge will fall off the edge and be replaced with new quarters that will continue to hold the bill up. Instead, I suggested we look for machines with prize chips on the edge. We played for those instead, won a few, and she was able to trade them in for a stuffed animal prize. Meanwhile, I watched grown adults spend $40 in quarters trying and failing to win $20 bills.
Getting back to the videos on Youtube, most of them will say somewhere that they are for entertainment only, although they don’t always mention this in the videos themselves. Sometimes you have to hunt this down. For example, one of the more popular Youtubers A&V Coin Pusher, has this disclaimer on his Youtube page: “𝗙𝘂𝗹𝗹 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗹𝗼𝘀𝘂𝗿𝗲: 𝗔𝗹𝗹 𝗢𝗳 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘀𝗲 𝗩𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗼𝘀 𝗔𝗿𝗲 𝗙𝗼𝗿 𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗧𝗔𝗜𝗡𝗠𝗘𝗡𝗧 𝗢𝗻𝗹𝘆! 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗜𝘀 𝗝𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗟𝗶𝗸𝗲 𝗔𝗻𝘆 𝗧𝗩 𝗦𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗪𝗮𝘁𝗰𝗵 𝗢𝗻 𝗧𝗩, 𝗜𝘁’𝘀 𝗔𝗹𝗹 𝗙𝗼𝗿 𝗦𝗵𝗼𝘄!” Even with that disclaimer, however, there are still people that insist that A&V’s videos are real and he’s actually gambling millions at a secret high roller coin pusher gaming room. Then there are threads on Reddit claiming to “expose” A&V as a fraudster. How you expose someone that already admits their videos are for entertainment only, I don’t know.
Personally, I don’t see the harm in this fantasy, except there have been reports of a few shady Youtubers asking people for donations to pay off their nonexistent gambling debts from coin pusher losses. Asking for tips or donations from people that enjoy your videos is one thing, but anyone asking for donations under false pretenses is just scamming the gullible. Please don’t fall for this. If you enjoy their videos, sure, leave a tip, but don’t fall for any sob stories. No one is gambling away their mortgage payment playing high stakes coin pushers. They may certainly be gambling away their money in other ways though.
That said, for those of us that know these videos are just a silly fantasy, they can be fun to watch. It’s relaxing and satisfying to see stacks of coins tumble down in these videos, and some of these vloggers come up with some really creative and artistic stacking arrangements. Just understand that these magical million dollar coin pushers don’t exist in real life and if you stumble upon a real coin pusher in the wild, such as on a cruise ship, be sure to play responsibly.
