Slots How did people play high limit slots before TITO?

Having somewhat of a thing for vintage fashion, I became inclined to Google this upon a re-read of this thread.

You're naturally talking about one of these...



Though after seeing one of these, I'm thinking there could be a new trend ready to emerge in Vegas soon

 

@notfromconcentrate Gawds, I hope not. The first pic is delightful. The second. Um. Not so much!

 

TITO ruined my slot play strategy. Every win, I would cash out, putting 1/2 the coins in a bucket, leaving half in the hopper to continue playing with. I turned $20.00 into $285.00 back in 1993 at Excalibur after playing for 4+ hours. "Lost" my machine when I waddled to the restroom carrying 3.5 buckets of quarters. Dang those things were heavy! Oh well it was bedtime anyway.

 

I remember our Tribal having coins & tokens. You were paid in coins unless it was $1200 or more. Consequently it was normally a minimum 45 minute wait for a hopper refill. I was ecstatic when they changed to TITO. Seemed like they were slightly behind. I would have said it was after 2003. But time blurs together. I know they did have $5 tokens in the high limit area.

 

So when you lugged a cart of coins over to the cage, what kind of $$ amount di you cash out for?

 

Coin Droppers:
I started playing video poker when all machines were coin in, coin out. The bartender was your best friend the good one's would have a fresh drink and roll of quarters ready for you immediately. They would also call for hopper fills when the machines stopped spitting coin or when they jammed both were frequent. I believe at that time anything over 600 coin required hand pay. The change girls, bartenders and slot techs really earned their tips. Oh do you remember the coin reject slots under the bar, you could always find a few quarters there.

If you had to use the restroom they would throw a towel over the machine and make sure no one tried to cash it out. The change girls and slot techs on the floor would sit in your seat and watch the machine if you needed to walk away.

I look back on it fondly but I have tried playing the coin droppers at El Cortez and California in the past few years and not had the patience for the slow play. On the older machines sometimes it takes four or five seconds to display the cards--------------IT SEEMS FOREVER now.

Just cannot go back.

 

I remember large denomination tokens. Fremont had dollar and larger tokens until a few years ago.

I've never been a really high dollar player, but playing dollar slots with tokens was pretty fun.

Best feeling in the world was when the machine locked up and you had to have a hopper fill before it could finish paying out. Having the staff pour a bag of tokens into the machine, then it continued going ping, ping, ping. So satisfying.