Some casinos do not issue coins at the change machines. If your ticket is $16.23, you will get the $16 in bills, and a voucher for the 23¢. Some casinos will give you the “opportunity” to donate that change to charity, and if you agree, the voucher isn’t even printed. Different states have different rules as to what the casinos can do with this un-collected money.
You can redeem these vouchers at the cage. But that takes time, and many people will often conclude that their time is worth more than the time it takes to collect a few pennies. So, they leave these tickets behind. Anyone walking by is welcome to take these tickets and cash them in. And I do pick them up, but I don’t immediately cash them in.
When I was strictly a video poker player, this rarely happened to me. After all, I usually play big enough machines so that there are no pennies in any cashout ticket I receive. This isn’t always the case today because sometimes I play quarter five play Multi-Strike 9/6 Jacks or Better at the South Point. While this is a $25-per-play game, the cashout ticket can print with an ending of 25¢, 50¢, or 75¢. When this happens to me, I generally keep playing. With the slot club paying 0.30% and the game I’m playing returning 99.79%, it is very slightly positive to keep playing and I do until the pennies disappear. On average, one in four of these tickets will end with zero cents, and I’ll quit then. On occasion I have lost more than $100 getting rid of the cents, but I have also won more than that. I’m playing a long game and those swings don’t affect me much.
South Point is one of the many places I play penny slots in addition to video poker. Almost always, when I cash out a ticket from such machines, the ticket includes some non-zero number of pennies at the end.
I will have a “master ticket” for the day, and any of the small tickets I accumulate get added in. When I cash in at the end of the day, I’ll collect some number of dollars and one ticket for change. If I have change in my pocket, I’ll frequently go to the cage and add enough change to my ticket to make it into an even number of dollars.
No ticket is too small for me to pick up. It’s all going to go into the machines. I once picked up a ticket for $3.16. I figured it was left behind intentionally, and kept it. Another time I found a ticket in excess of $700. I turned it in. There was no way somebody left that on purpose. Although tempting to keep it, the person who left it likely needs it more than I do. Plus, if it’s reported and they remember where they left it, the slot shift manager might search for it using surveillance cameras. I’m fairly well known in all casinos I frequent (because I’ve received W-2Gs plus I usually go back to the same casinos over and over again), so if I’m spotted on camera pocketing such a ticket, it’s almost certain I won’t like what happens next.
One year ago, more casinos paid off pennies in vouchers than do today. The vouchers are unpopular with customers, plus it encourages vagrants to hang around looking for and collecting these tickets.
I end up with one voucher of less than one dollar per casino. When I visit the casino next time, I’ll put the old voucher in at the start as a part of my “ammunition.” Sometimes I do not return to a particular casino before a voucher expires. No big deal. It’s a small amount, and overall, the practice of picking up and holding onto these vouchers pays off.
I thought it was illegal in Nevada to take one of these tickets which was not yours to begin with as it is an abandoned ticket. Kindly tell me I am wrong.
I get a bit annoyed every time.
For anyone who doesn’t know, when you cash an uneven TITO, e.g. $100.21, you are ‘given’ the choice of donating the .21 to one of several ’causes’ displayed on the screen, often one being a fund for employees, for example. If you don’t select one of those displayed you then have to ‘select’ ‘collect all $100.21.’ But you don’t get it! Your $100 TITO is printed, then the ‘little’ slot above it ‘signals’ with a flickering light (not even a beep!) that you have this extra cash coming…in something like 10-15 seconds, when that ticket for the .21 finally prints out in the ‘little slot’. There is no way around it! And those 10-15 seconds seem like half an hour. No big deal, just annoying.
I do usually wait for that ticket. Sometimes I keep it, add it when I’m playing, or if I’m leaving to go eat or something, I’ll hand it to another player and say “good luck” or “here’s the big winner”, etc. Every one thanks me and appreciates the humor and casino karma.
As for breaking any laws, that .21 ticket is mine to begin with, so I can do whatever I want with it, including leaving it behind for someone else to take it.
I doubt the casino would kick up a fuss over someone walking off with a .21 ticket that was left behind.
I wonder how much they ‘raise’ by folks selecting the donation option?
On a recent trip to LV, I decided I was going to cash in my small tickets this trip, regardless of the inconvenience of standing in line. We were at one casino where I noticed their redemption machines did return coins (not 100% sure, but think it was the Palms), so I popped in my 15 cent voucher and it returned 15 pennies. I got a good laugh out of that–Karma telling me I should have just donated to charity.