Penny Toss (building a carnival game)

[Stormin Mormon]

In July the church is having an outdoor picnic. Our ward (congregation) has been asked to make a "penny toss" game which will be used for an entire two hours. Though, if it's a goodun, it will be probably folded up, and used for later fairs and such.

That's as much information as I have, a "penny toss". I volunteered to make such a doodad. Figured you'd done something like this for the cub scouts. Any ideas come to mind?

I'm thinking to make some kind of sort of like a kitchen counter. With a wall in back. The goal is to bounce a penny off the back wall, and make it go through a hole in the counter. When it falls through the hole, it should make a nice loud clank or clunk, which indicates a hit. Real early think stages. Anyone have any ideas?

[Philip Lewis]

Big sheet of cardboard with a design painted upon it. Have a few holes in it for "prizes".

In painting the design, perhaps you can think of biblical references. Good samatian, Judas's 30 pieces of silver (make it to the object is to *not* get it into the bag), Ceaser's taxes (Mark 12:17), Widow's taxes (mark 12:41-44).

How about a "balance" game with two teams. They each throw into their own cup/bowl/etc and the first to tip the scales past a point on their side gets to split the amount in the cups. (the "house" gets everything that didn't make it into a cup.)

Perhaps you could make a plinko like board with pegs. The bottom slot would have one or two holes marked "charity", "church". Those are the "winning holes". Mark the "losing" holes with "Sloth", "Greed", "Gluttony", etc.

For the signal mechanism, funnel the penny into a location with two wires that connect to a low voltage circuit controling a buzzer. (piezo, or perhaps a relay set to switch itself- parts should be cheap at radio shack)

Other things to consider:

Design the game so that loosing coinage is removed from the playing field quickly. For example, if you use your counter, make the surface sloped so that they slide into a collection bin.

Set up several boards, and only have one player per board.... That way, it's clear who won.

Have limits on how many times someone can win per day.

If appropriate, use different "throw" lines for kids/teens/adults.

Want to be more biblical? Call it a Denaria toss. ;)

good luck!

(I'm starting to think of what i could build for our community fair now. ;)

[Philip Lewis]

another source of ideas:

(see how much time you've made me waste! (no not all day, but several couples of minutes ;)

[Les and Gina]

How about a bucket, turned upside down. fasten/glue a china/glass plate to bottom (now facing up) of bucket. Have people toss pennies onto plate. If penny stays on plate, they win a prize. Make a challenging, but not impossible, distance to toss from. You could have multiple plate/bucket targets so more than one person can play at a time, or set at different distances.

Les

[G Henslee]

Waste of time. Put up a life size target of Brigham Young and Joe Smith and let the sheeple shoot paint balls at them for $1 a shot.

-- Learn The Truth About Mormonism

[Colbyt]

emailed and posted.

I did not build the table. I did operate the booth for a couple of years at our church social when I was a teenager. It was a 1/2 sheet of 3/4" plywood with about 12" legs. It sat in a booth with about a 3 foot backset to the tossing rails on 3 sides. No leaning past X amount was one of the rules.

Compared to what you mentioned our table was really simple. Think checkerboard with the squares a tad larger than the coin to be tossed. A coin inside any square wins. Selected squares, colored differently have a higher payout. I think we had one one dollar square in the center (this was

40 years ago).

I think the payout was something like: coin in any square earns 5 times. Red earns 10 times, I think this an X pattern blue earns 20 times, I think this was a big diamond around the center. single center square earns 100 times.

Now days I would think a nickel would be about the minimum I would go for. That would be for a friendly game.

I know I counted and rolled 6500 pennies that day. That was the net after the payout for about a 6 hour function.Everyone was amazed that such a simple thing brought in so much money. The win a 100 silver dollars only netted $200.

I can ramble so more if you have questions.

Colbyt