Wow! Just saw this site and thread. Glad I'm not the only vending machine fan out there! Every time I go to town or any kind of store I check the vending machines. I have been collecting for a while and even started painting them. I have 80 pages of paintings and am working on putting them in a book.





About 1/2 of my collection so far:

↑ Very cool!

Thank you! I heard there were some Adventure Time/Regular Show figures coming out so that is my next quest!

Adventure time vends are relevant to my interests

This thread is really cool and should still be going on! Im really getting into these sort of things, Im just now starting to get the ninja men, there really freaking cool and Im going to start collecting them, I used to collect those sqwishland capsule toys and know alot about them, there's about a million different ones, but I felt so stupid putting tons of quarters in the machine.. as people started staring at me thinking "wtf is that grown man doing buying tons of vending toys" the machine also made loud talking prize winning noises at every insert of a quarter..REALLY annoying, but also sorry if this is a necro post, but honestly you can't find any threads like this around the net..or atleast that I could find.

At the bowling alley near my work, I snagged a 3DS XL and an iPad from this machine (made by sega, ironically), that you aim the arm through this plastic hole to push the item off the hanger. $3 worth of tokens later and I had both of them. Ended up giving the 3DS XL to my friends son and gave the iPad to my Grammy.

Hahah...used to beg my mom when I was a kid for quarters...usually I spent it on these sexy looking fairy chick stickers but I sometimes bought toys/jewelery...I stopped doing it now since most of the stuff these days is just junk. But I do collect something like this...theres a huge Asian market in downtown Seattle and I go there almost every birthday...I end up getting these small cardboard boxes that come with an anime character doll you put together along with a cheap candy. The character is random (at least I think it is...can't read Japanese so no idea). I have a whole shelf full of these figures from animes I've never watched/heard of...I just think they're really cute.

I also collect the small gashapon figures...Nintendo related ones though. I have DK and Link. I wanted to get a Zelda one too but didn't have enough money at the time. Plus it's random so I might have gotten another Link lol.

@dra600n DANG a 3DS? thats a hell of a win, I've seen those machines actually at arcades..but I thought they would be impossible to win, but now I believe its possible! Really nice of you to give them to you son/grammy

@Girlgamer55 that sounds like a fun little collection you have going there I would love to have the gashapon type figures here..but around where I live we dont have much stuff like that sadly

I got few more ninja's today, only have six so far..and the machine is 50 cents and it stole $1 from me..the machine is kinda old and makes loud rusty noises when you turn the handle. I have got to find another machine!

Ha, glad my thread brought in some new interest.
Haven't scored any cool vends lately myself.

Tell us your secret!

Also, how is raiding those machines not your full time job? I have no idea what either of those are worth but I'm guessing both are worth more than $10 together so you at least doubled your your bet.

There is no secret to those games, they are programmed to only pay out so often. So you need to be good at whatever game it is, and be lucky enough that no one has won anything from it recently.

Once again got a few more ninja's..then somthing different came out that I noticed wasnt a ninja..My heart immidiatly pumped, I thought "oh god I just got ripped off" then to my surprise, it's a WARBOT!! those things ARE pretty freaking cool, read here and saw them around the internet, and I liked them alot when I first saw them, but I honestly thought I would never have one! but now i do!

I haven't even seen any capsule toys around here in ages, but I do like to try for stuffed animals in the crane machine. I get some here and there. The ones in Japan are interesting. The cranes only have two fingers instead of three, so it's nearly impossible to just pick something up. The game is to use one of the fingers to either pull the stuffed animal forward into the hole or push part of it down so that it falls into the hole.

empire - I think my description of it wasn't that good for what the machine is. I stopped in there last night, and it's a Sega Key Master machine:




Basically, you just release the button about a second before it reaches the "sweet spot". I may have definitely gotten lucky with it, but that's what I did.

It's not my full time job because if the emptiness of the machine was any indication, they don't restock it often. There were a few plushies in it last night, a PS3 controller, and an XBONE controller, but that's it.


The iPad was the iPad Air 16 GB model, so about $500, and the 3DS XL is I think between $179 and $199. I already had both which is why I gave them away.

The pinball place by me has one of those. I should give it a whirl.

This reminds me of the UFO Catcher pros in Japan - people that make money by winning prizes in UFO Catchers (those crane games) and selling them. I saw a show about them on TV in Japan before. There are various techniques for winning, but ultimately the most important thing is scouting out which machine has items in the best position. They just have an eye for it.

By the way, nothing beats the gacha gacha in Japan:



Unfortunately they usually cost $3 or $4 these days.