$17,000 Found Under Slot Machines at Sands Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City

How would you like to reach under your sofa cushions and find $17,000 in loose change? That would be pretty sweet. Now imagine how excited workers were when they started clearing out the 2,350 slot machines in the old Sands Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City and found exactly $17,193.34 in casino tokens, coins, and bills.

This was the amount of loot which had found its way under and in-between the slot in the 26 years of the casino’s operation. Older machines often had buckets to catch coins when they dropped out, but an overflow of coins would often result in loose change hitting the floor and rolling underneath.

“It was shocking,” said Carmen Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for Pinnacle Entertainment, the parent company which owned the Sands. “We never expected this much. Some of the coins we had to pry up. They were stuck to the floor, they had been there so long.” According to Ms. Gonzalez, some of the coins even had to be pried up from the floor with a knife.

The Sands closed in November, and it will be torn down later in the year to pave the way for a $1.5 billion gambling hall. The slots were being removed for use at other casinos owned and operated by Pinnacle Entertainment.

As the removal began, workers even made guesses as to the amount of money which would be recovered. “A lot were less than $8,000,” said Ms. Gonzalez. “Mine was $4,900.”

But it’s hardly finders-keepers. The money belongs to Pinnacle, a Vegas-based company which bought the Sands last year for $250 million. The state of New Jersey will also get its cut - 8 percent to be exact.

The slot machines have since been moved to locations in Louisiana, Nevada, Missouri, Argentina, and Indiana. They were moved out in late February and early March, but it has taken this long to get a final tally of all the loose change.

The rest of the contents of the Sands will be sold off in May, then the building will most likely be demolished by a controlled implosion in the fall. Until that happens, it’s never too late to go root through their trash and see if any coins got overlooked.

But I wouldn’t count on it.

$17,000 Found Under Slot Machines at Sands Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City