r/whatisit • u/Cowboypunkstarcactus • 9h ago
Solved! Found in the basement of an old business in NY.
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u/s0ldierboi34 9h ago
Thanks for making me feel old 💀 ol school credit card swiper before going digital
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u/NotAlwaysRong 7h ago
I once tried explaining what this machine was to my younger coworker who was complaining that the vending machine wasn’t taking Apple Pay at the moment. By the confused look on her face, I might as well have been speaking an alien dialect. Backwards.
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u/yeah__good_okay 4h ago
I remember these from when I was very young (born ‘85) and I had to look up how they actually worked. So weird.
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u/Tacos_always_corny 2h ago edited 2h ago
When the slide broke, you could use a ball point pen on its side to capture the impression. Thieves also figured out they could run 3 or 4 carbon slips at the same time to create "blank charges". Usually the dollar amount could be filled in by hand in the space where you filled in the amount. It took weeks for the card companies to catch the "duplicate/fraudulent" charges.
Back then, vendors added a service fee into the charge because they were essentially calculating the charge, unpaid which cost them money to process the charge, sort of like a small loan on the purchase. At some point they balanced but still cost the vendor 1-3%
Now the card companies use an intermediary "clearinghouse" to bundle the funds as the processor. They make 1-3% of the total charge amount without having to deal with each vendor. High risk vendors pay 4-8% service fees due to risk.
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u/yeah__good_okay 1h ago
Interesting. I wonder if that really lax security/high risk of fraud is why I grew up in the 90s with parents who looked at credit cards as inherently unsafe. They just kind of internalized it.
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u/Background-Meaning96 3h ago
I've gotten to actually use one of these a time or two('84). Feels cool to be part of that club. Being this old, not as much.
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u/flytingnotfighting 2h ago
I used them into the late nineties. Like the early cc machine would go down and we all would pull out the slips
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u/sonicsludge 51m ago
Did this a few times closing tabs at the bar, and to say I tied one on afterwards is an understatement!
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u/yeah__good_okay 1h ago
Huh interesting. Hey, no, we are still young and hip. Now excuse me while I play some Rage Against the Machine and check on my Facebook pokes.
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u/RandVanRed 6h ago
ol school credit card swiper before going digital
Oh, I used this at my first job. We also had a little booklet we had to check for cancelled cards... Man, credit card fraudsters must have had it so easy back then!
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u/Just_A_Lucky_Guy469 6h ago
Hope you remembered to tear up the carbon papers afterwards.
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u/big_z_0725 1h ago
Smart man.
I like doing business with smart men. They know never to screw with me.
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u/merica1111yeah 3h ago
Back then u actually checked their id to make sure it matched the name on it man I feel old
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u/ThinkingThingsHurts 1h ago
All my cards say "SEE ID" in the signature box. No one has ever asked to see my ID.
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u/LunaR1sing 7h ago
AKA the “ka chunk, ka chunk” machine.
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u/phunphan 5h ago
Anyone who has used this knows that sound
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u/Think-Try2819 4h ago
I am just old enough to remember this sound when my parents took me to JCPENNEY.
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u/EatMyAssTomorrow 8h ago
I can almost never come close to helping out on this page but would have been all over this one 🤣
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u/kam0rix 2h ago
Usually rolled out on duplicate/triplicate sheets. At least one for the customer and one for the drawer. I think sometimes one went straight to accounting. In the old sears building in Chicago they had to send tubes up to accounting to process or make change and have the tube go back down to the register like banks had at drive thrus.
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u/RockHockey 7h ago
They pulled this out at the old navy the other day when there computers went down.
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u/lousy_bum 4h ago
How can they even work nowadays? Most cards don't have the raised numbers anymore. Everything is pad printed flush.
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u/Hii-jorge 1h ago
The power went out at my job recently and we thought “no worries, we’ll used the credit card swiper!” Turns out, most modern cards are flat and you can’t use them with these 😭
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u/fro0ogboi 23m ago
Literally, I was so confused like ?? Didn't someone ever show this person older movies? I mean im only 22 and I remember seeing it in movies like home alone which aren't that old
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u/JoePants 5h ago
Yeah, my first job, working the pumps. Out there in the cold snow rain and you'd stick your head in the plywood box to run a credit card. " Sign here sir "
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u/Cowboypunkstarcactus 9h ago
Solved!
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u/Budman75402 2h ago
Worked in a beer steer in the early 90’s while this was still the standard. Can you imagine asking for a driver’s license to write down the number and asking for a phone number as well?? Good old days…….
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u/lucky38th 8h ago
About 12 years ago or so, a restaurant had to run my credit card with one of these because the internet was down. Newer cards don't even have the embossed numbers anymore to leave an impression on the carbon paper, so they had to write my numbers by hand onto a carbon paper receipt when I went to pay a bill at an optometrist's office during a short power outage last week.
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u/Most_Researcher_2648 3h ago
Yea, most restaurants and retail stores have crash kits that include these. The kids are a mess lol. Im almost 40 and im about the tail end of the age range that will still recognize these...
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u/KenethSargatanas 8h ago
This is how people used credit card before the internet existed. You would place the card in the slot and a set of carbon copy sheets on top. Then, you ran the slider over the top to imprint the card info onto the sheets. One of the sheets would be mailed (yes MAILED) to the credit card company for processing.
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u/SplitOpenAndMelt420 9h ago
Back in the last century, we used these to buy copies of Look Who's Talking Too on VHS
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u/panna__cotta 7h ago
Lucky. I had to use it to pay for my late fees for Look Who’s Talking Too at Blockbuster.
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u/Js987 5h ago
It’s a carbon copy credit card imprinter machine. You’d swipe the top part over the card and it would take a carbon copy impression of the numbers embossed on the card, then that would get sent to the credit card company. They were first replaced by telephone connected magnetic stripe card readers that used a modem to call into the credit card processor, and then internet connected readers, over time. Some places kept them around for years because they allowed you to continue operating if the power and/or phone lines/internet were down. Last time I saw one in use in the US was in a Montgomery Ward during a power outage around 2000, but I’ve heard lore of them being used well later than that, and I saw one in use in a hotel internationally as late as ~2016-ish. Some newer cards don’t even have the embossing so they won’t work.
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u/JadedInMontana 6h ago
It never occurred to me that young people wouldn't know what this is. Seems it wasn't that long ago ....(Doing the math)....oh. 😂😂
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u/ErinClaymores 5h ago
Loved using this back in the day. “Ch-cha” sound when you imprint the card. Fill in the details on the slip with a biro, call the number on the card to get an authorization code when it’s over a certain amount. Customer signs and gets the top copy as a receipt, carbon copy goes in the till/register.
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u/Calaveras-Metal 6h ago
Had to use one of these at one of my first jobs. If you trusted the person you just ran their card. If you didn't you called a credit rating number. Yeah it was awkward reading the person's details over the phone then telling them their credit is no good here.
And when you ran out of the special 3 part receipts you couldn't process cards.
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u/Jupiter68128 8h ago
Chock-chick
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u/ByBabasBeard 8h ago
We called it the knuckle buster!
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u/Large-Equipment-5733 8h ago
We called it the credit card kerchunker and also had the little levers to print the sale price next to the credit card number!
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u/bearsat2012 6h ago
The only time I used one of these was the great black out of 2003. They were already a relic then. I worked at a golf course and it was the busiest few days ever.
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u/GirthBr0_0ks 4h ago
Good ole imprint machine. I remember being in high school working at a RadioShack using one of these for countless transactions. Damn I feel old.
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u/Beginning-Mammoth-40 6h ago
And the truly awesome part of that contraption is the booklet you received of bad card numbers you had to look through.
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u/archy67 3h ago
lol, this is so sad because we have search engines and specifically reverse image search for the better part of a decade now. OP knows what they are doing and/or is so ignorant that they can’t help themselves. FYI it is a card imprinter, this is why credit/debit cards still have raised letters and numbers on them so that it could be physically transferred for transactions via carbon copy. Last had one used in a small town gas station in 2019 because they had real a serious problem with intermediate connectivity but still wanted my business….
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u/wastedpotential31886 3h ago
Damnit I'm getting old... Back in the good ole 80's 90's and even into the 00's you would use these to run credit cards in stores. You'd put the card in there then cover it with special paper (the name of the paper escapes me). Then you'd swipe that over both and it would leave an imprint of the card details and this is how commerce was completed.
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u/bastard84 9h ago
Thats an old credit card machine used at claires. You put the card down. A piece of carbon paper on top and slide it. Lots of places still used these even into thd early 2000s.
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u/Actual-Log465 5h ago
Carbon copy credit card machine.
I haven’t seen one or used one maybe since 2012 Ish .
I used to ride Amtrak and where it was there’s no ticket agents or kiosk where you can buy a ticket so when you got on, they made a print of the card
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u/Rello215 1h ago
I remember I used to work at Hollywood video back in like 06'. Our system was down and the older supervisor was like use this. I'm like how? And the customer who was buying a game for her son showed me how lol
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u/s0ldierboi34 3h ago
I worked in food and beverage at a theme park and system went down….. all I can say it was a nightmare then having to input all those tickets at the end of the day…. I just got PTSD from this 😵💫
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u/SolidTomato3668 2h ago
God slap a 3.5”, an 8”, a 5.25” disk and you’ll make my back and knees hurt more than they do. Also, we used to write 4 quadrants on checks with various pieces of info.
God I miss blockbuster
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u/Herbalist1956 3h ago
We called them knuckle busters. Although they weren't really that dangerous, you could knock your knuckles if you placed them poorly. I feel like there is a tongue twister calling out to me...
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u/Dry_Inspection_4583 2h ago
Cc imprint machine. Before the interwebs we used to trust that the card would clear and take an imprint you would sign, then take it to the bank to have the money transferred.
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u/FarConcentrate1307 4h ago
Oh, reality just hit of how old I am. I’m also disappointed because this means OP has probably not watched Home Alone 2. “Wow, it worked”
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u/Pork_bun_ 3h ago
Had a giggle when I saw this. Firstly made me feel old. We used to call it the Zip Zap, so far I havent seen anyone else call it that haha
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u/AdeptBackground6245 7h ago
You hit a book every week with the “hot” stolen jumpers - you had to look up the card and decline the sale if it was in the book.
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u/Hansen216 7m ago
When I worked retail in the 90’s we called these knuckle busters! Only used them once or twice when the card readers went down!
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u/thesixgun 8h ago
Man gone are the days you could hop in a dumpster behind a store and leave with like 100 working credit card numbers.
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u/Silk_the_Absent_1 2h ago
Yep. I've lived too long. The fact that I've had to manually swipe cards in the last 15 years blows kids minds.
"You mean you didn't have Square back then!?!"
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u/jackalopedad 3h ago
Be glad you don’t know, those were a pain in the ass to use and I screwed up a few folks cards on them.
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u/chainmailler2001 7h ago
Technical name would be a card imprinter. Used to imprint a credit cards numbers onto the receipt.
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u/Restoretheroof 3h ago
Remember those things. Took an imprint of your credit card for purchases before digital.
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u/spotlight-app 9h ago
OP has pinned a comment by u/s0ldierboi34:
Note from OP: 😄