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Comment by logfromblammo | Hacker News Reader

I wonder why Coca-Cola went with that ~supergenius~ idea instead of just minting their own "redeem for one Coca-Cola" vending machine tokens and selling rolls of 20 tokens for $1.50.

Then, if you need to raise prices to $0.08 each, you can raise the price of a roll to $1.60, or keep it at $1.50 and replace one of the regular tokens with a non-redeemable collectors' token. And you definitely wouldn't have to follow up with a request for an $0.0833333 coin, or a $0.0925 coin, or any other completely useless fractional denomination.

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Because it's not about "tokens", it's about "I want a Coke and I have a nickel right now and want to give you that for a Coke". Impulse buyers don't buy rolls of tokens, especially not when $1.50 in 1935 is actually worth about $26 in today's dollars.

Think about how many people use real, actually-issued, legal-tender $2 bills, then think about whether a $0.075 coin would have promoted impulse purchases.

Now think about freemium mobile games. The games that price their in-game purchases in a separate currency make more money than those that price their micropurchases in the user's native currency. People are less apt to make impulse purchases with real money. But if the only thing this stupid token is good for is one bottle of Coke, why not redeem it now?

What if you sold the tokens for $0.08 each, and you sold the rolls at a discount of 6% off, at $1.50 for 20. Maybe you sold a box of 20 rolls for $24. You just made distributing Coke tokens into a profitable business, and broke the tie to the nickel.

Does that sound familiar in any way?

I am not sure if you are serious in your desire to elide how very different having to go to a store and buy tokens to get a drink when you're thirsty is to pressing a button on a phone.

My first point was that even if the Mint actually stamped out some $0.075 coins, there's no way in hell they would have ever survived in general circulation. They would have been useless, except to buy vending machine Coke bottles. Everyone making change would still be using nickels and pennies, and not pricing things with half cents at all, because there was no half cent coin. So no one would actually have one of those coins in any of their pockets, at any time.

I can't even imagine the thought process that might have led to believing that would ever work, at any step in the process.

I am merely describing one thing of the many, many possible things that would have been less colossally stupid, even though it still may be inferior to just dropping the outdated requirement that one coke equals one coin, and it can't be a dime (because that's too much) or a penny (because that's not enough).

If you knew you liked Cokes, you might buy tokens in advance, instead of on impulse, and pass them around as near-cash equivalents. Though I must admit that if I only bought one thing with real cash from a vending machine, it would still be a more frequent occurrence than buying virtual nothings in a freemium game, so it was just a bit insincere. If I had to use tokens, I'd probably never get any Cokes.

The tokens you're suggesting sound like sort of a precursor to today's gift cards. Coke would certainly have been making money on tokens purchased but not spent.

It's very possible that many people used the vending machines as impulse purchase vs planned purchase. My understanding is lots of effort goes into having people make impulse purchases (example: grocery store layout). They would not make as much money from a pre purchase system.

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