This $1 Vending Machine Is Bringing Holiday Joy to Grand Central Terminal — and It’s Selling the Perfect NYC Souvenir

Inside one of the world’s busiest train terminals, travelers and locals alike are standing in line for a piece of holiday joy only four quarters can bring.  

Ever since New York City’s Grand Central Terminal kicked off its Holiday Fair on Nov. 11, an old-school quarters-only machine has been doling out mini prints of NYC icons. The catch: you don’t know which one of the 10 art designs you’ll get, so it’s a game of chance whether you’ll score a print featuring Grand Central’s clock or ceiling, an oyster from Oyster Bar, a New York City MetroCard, or an iconic NYC food item, like a hot dog, croissant, or martini. 

The simplicity of the souvenir — and the game of chance involved — has turned the old-school machine into a social media sensation, with one TikTok post racking up 2.5 million views. The video starts by asking, “If money doesn’t buy happiness, then explain this.” 

Indeed every day, happiness chasers from all over the globe, including Spain, Hong Kong, Australia, Poland, France, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, are queuing up for the $1 artwork. Demand has been so high that the initial machine was being restocked four times a day, so a second machine was added last week. An average of 2,000 prints are sold daily, with a total of 50,000 to date. Security guards are even specifically assigned to monitor the line, which stretches from Grand Central Terminal’s Vanderbilt Hall down to its 42nd Street entrance. 

“The vending machine has exceeded our wildest expectations,” Kim Trevisan, Grand Central Terminal’s director of retail leasing and management, told Travel + Leisure. “The initial stock that we anticipated would last for the six weeks of our Holiday Fair, sold out within four days!”

Brooklyn artist Anastasia Inciardi, who is now based in Portland, Maine, is the brainchild behind the Mini Print Vending Machines through her own Inciardi Prints. She came up with the idea when she was collecting quarters for laundry in 2020 and was inspired by the vending machines that used to sell temporary tattoos. 

Her machines — she launched her first one in winter 2022 — can now be found across the country, from Los Angeles, Seattle, and Portland to Denver, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. The greatest concentration is in New York City, where they’re also available in Manhattan at the Whitney Museum of American Art and Warby Parker in Soho, as well as in Brooklyn at Books Are Magic and Brooklyn Brewery.

Inciardi started talking to the Grand Central Terminal team a year ago, and together, they decided that the Holiday Fair was the best fit. “We expected the machine to be popular, but the scale of the excitement blew us out of the water,” Inciardi told T+L. “The length of the queue caught us a bit off guard.”

The Grand Central Terminal-themed prints are among the most popular, though she says folks also love getting the MetroCard. “It isn’t as commonly used on the subway as it once was, and the print underlines the iconic nature of the card before it is phased out,” she explained.

Among those who scored the MetroCard print last Sunday afternoon was Shreya Maru, a recent New York City implant from Kathmandu, Nepal, who said the machine was “all over my Instagram.” After waiting about 12 minutes, she bought four. While she didn’t get the martini glass she wanted, she thought the subway pass was “really cute.” “I’m building a scrapbook about everything exciting that I see or feel, so I thought this could be a good addition to that,” she told T+L. “It’s a very New York-y thing to do!”

Similarly, Annie Groover and her 21-year-old daughter Bella were visiting from Spartan, South Carolina, and Bella saw the machine on TikTok. “Everybody has memories of Christmas and now we have this memory together of our trip to New York, something tangible that we can frame and be like, ‘Remember, we stood in line for 20 minutes with a handful of quarters?’” Groover said, adding that they ended up buying nine prints. “We went to the MoMA today and we can’t take home a Chagall, but we can take home these cute art pieces.”

It’s that simple pleasure that’s bringing folks together in the halls of Grand Central Terminal, enchanting them with the surprise and delight delivered through technology from yesteryear. 

“The nostalgia of the coin-operated machine has always delighted people,” Inciardi said. “In a time where everything is tap-to-pay and virtual, it is gratifying to experience the process of pushing four quarters into the mechanism and receiving a work of art.

The Mini Print Vending Machine is available at Grand Central Terminal’s Holiday Fair, open Mondays to Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. through December 23, plus Christmas Eve from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Note that the line for the machine may be cut off before closing, depending on crowd size.