I got my first $7 silver stike from ebay today. I decided since I used to play quite a bit and have been getting back into it, I would get a $7 one before they are all gone.

The question is while researching the history of "silver strikes" I read that the $7 machine were the first machines that were made but the coins were not in capsules. This would make sense seeing as the $7 strike is almost exactly the same size as an Ike "silver" dollar and could be despenced from a standard dollar slot machine hopper with little or no modifications. The problem is, the strike I got and all of them I have seen online, etc are in capsules and I have never seen a "circulated" coin. Does anyone know if this info is accurate and later they changed the machines to dispence the $7 coins in the capsules?

I know the older $10 strike machines I started to play used a standard hopper design but bigger to be able to spit out the large $10 coins and capsules, but has anyone seen any of the other machines like the $2 or $3 or whatever and if they all used a strange hopper like this?

And how about the strike machine that dispenced the $200 strike that were around for a very short time. I would think that would have used some other type of dispancer then a standard hopper to dispence such a big coin. Has anyone ever seen or even played one of those?

Thanks for any info and the great forum.

Mitch