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Here’s a quick trick to make a few extra dollars by harvesting money from pay phones.  

Find a traditional pay phone like the one pictured above, try to gain access to the phone wiring either through the plastic shroud running down the wall, the junction box, or through the telephone enclosure.   There are two sets of wires coming out the back of the pay phone enclosed in a black insulated casing. 

If you strip the black insulation away from these wires.  You will see four colored wires.  The regular telephone operations are handled by the green wire, “tip”, (electrically positive) and red wire, “ring”, (electrically negative).   The coin mechanism relays and solenoids are powered by the yellow and black wires.

Find a section of the wire where a cut will not be easily seen from outside the telephone box.  Strip off the black insulation off the cord, exposing all four wires. Now cut the black and yellow wires but leave the other two wires intact.  This will disable the coin mechanism, but the phone itself will still be completely functional.

Now conceal the wiring that you cut either by tucking it back into the telephone enclosure and concealing them or by closing the actual telephone box.

Now leave the phone and people will come by and use the phone.  What will happen?  Well, when they put money into the pay phone, it will stay in the coin mechanism until 1 of 2 things happen.

1. They connect their call, talk, and then hangup.  After they hangup, their money goes from the coin mechanism into the collection box.
2. They call a number that doesn’t answer, or get busy signal, or terminate the call before anyone answers, and then hangup. When they hangup, the money goes from the coin mechanism to the coin return.

However, since the black and yellow wires have been cut the coin mechanism is disabled so the money does not go to the coin collection box or the coin return, it just remains in the coin mechanism area.

All you do now is come back a few hours or days later and re-connect the black and yellow wires, pick up the handset and then hang it up.  All the money that was put into the phone that day comes shooting out the coin return.  It’s not unusual to collect between $10-15 per busy pay phone using this method.

I would suggest doing this during the weekend especially on Sunday because some people will call the operator and tell them that the phone took their money and they will dispatch repair people.  I would guess that these repair people work less on the weekends so the phone would most likely not be fixed until Monday.

This trick can only be used to make some extra change, it won’t make you rich or provide any sort of reoccurring income like some of my other scams that I have talked about previously, but it’s a neat little trick.