Card Pusher Games – Introduction

Card and coin pushers are money making machines. They should be your top games. If they are not then you need to follow this series to maximize the profits of your card and coin pushers.  If you do not have one of these machines I really hope this series convinces you that you need one or more.  If you do have one or more I really hope you utilize this series to really explore the true potential of these awesome machines.

I guess we should start off with explaining what a card and coin pusher is.  A card and coin pusher simply pushes coins and cards off a shelf while a player shoots more coins onto the playfield.  There are normally silver coins to fill the “shooter” and plastic chips and cards that are sorted to the player as they are pushed over the ledge.  The most popular would be Wizard of Oz by Elaut.  This was the real innovator of the class.  Elaut went on to make others as well with clear winners being Blackbeard’s Bounty and Willy Wonka.  Other players have come into the mix as well.  Andamiro gave us SpongeBob’s Pineapple Arcade and Avengers (I hear rumors of SpongeBob Pirates of Bikini Bottom Bay coming out soon, I cannot wait!).  Both games are quite good but they do not have the quality (or higher price) of the Elaut pushers.  Namco came out with DC Super Heroes which has had a lot of accolades as well.  I do suspect it was manufactured by the same manufacturer as SpongeBob Pineapple Arcade though. 

There are other pushers that push coins, marbles and RFID chips as well.  I am not going to really get into these in this series.  While they may be good games they will never have the potential of a game that dispenses a card.  Some of these games are Ticket Circus, Flintstones Quarry and Diamonds and Pearls by Elaut.  LAI makes one called Pearl Fishery which utilizes marbles which I have heard good things about.

One thing you should always keep in mind when you have these game is never follow the manufacturer’s rule set.  They are designed so that you need to buy more cards from them than is really necessary.  They have “collections” that if you get the whole set you get a massive ticket pay off.  While this will indeed do well “out of the box” changing the rules a bit will save you a lot of time and money by not having to order cards so often.  I used to order Wizard of Oz cards every week! 

The next thing to think about is that the cards that come with the game do not need to be the only cards in the game.  I will dedicate a whole article about this.  This is where these games shine and can really work hard for you.  People love seeing variety and they also love the anticipation of the next card to fall on the playfield.  Having the right mix is very important.  Having full sets available is tantamount.  People will pay hundreds of dollars to push those “rare” cards off the shelf.  They will walk away from a shelf full of common cards.   When you load cards in the hopper be sure to mix them up well!  Nothing is more disappointing than seeing the same card twice in a row (unless it is three times or more!).  So be certain to mix them up!

I hope you liked this introduction to card and coin pushers.  In the next article I am going to show you how to break the rules to increase profit.

[email protected]