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Big day for subway fans: MTA sells old MetroCard vending machines for more than $2K
By
Ramsey Khalifeh
Published Sep 1, 2026
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Ramsey Khalifeh / Gothamist
By
Ramsey Khalifeh
Published Sep 1, 2026
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The MTA may have retired the MetroCard, but many subway fanatics aren’t quite ready to say goodbye to the old fare system.
A select group of those transit aficionados gathered at a warehouse in Maspeth, Queens, on Tuesday after they were notified they’d won one of more than 60 MetroCard vending machines the MTA sold at an official auction.
The machines are no longer functional — the transit agency gutted all the internal computer parts.
Noah Mallin, a 54-year-old Manhattanite, said he’ll put the machine he bought for about $3,000 inside a memorabilia display in his living room for his teenage son, who is obsessed with the subway system. He described his newly purchased express machine — one of the models that only took credit or debit cards — as “beautiful” and “a great slice of history.”
“I’m a New Yorker and I love history,” said Mallin. “And I’ve been here in New York pretty much since the ‘77 blackout. I’ve been here for everything and to have a piece of the history of the city is kind of exciting to me.”
Brian Moore, a 39-year-old artist, paid $2,250 for his machine, but will have to pay even more to ship it across the country back to his studio in Los Angeles.
“[New York City] is the best city on the planet — don’t tell LA I said that — but it’s nice to be back here bringing a pretty sizable piece of it back with me,” said Moore, who loaded his machine into a box truck.
MTA officials said they received 380 bids for the MetroCard machines through the agency’s auction, and have so far finalized sales for 31 of them.
The transit agency also donated machines to the city’s public school system. Those bruisers will be installed at New York City Public Schools' central office in Tweed Courthouse, Stuyvesant High School and Transit Tech CTE High School.
It’s a noble end for the multicolored machines that spat out and reloaded vinyl MetroCards for millions of New Yorkers since debuting in 1999. The MTA scrapped hundreds of other retired machines.
The transit agency removed the last of its MetroCard vending machines from the subways last December as the swipe system was fully replaced with the OMNY tap-to-pay system.
The retro MetroCard machines are mostly made of metal with a layer of patina, and have red, green, yellow and red hardware that give them a flair the more modern and sterile-looking OMNY vending machines lack. According to the MTA, the old vending machines are 80 inches long, 42 inches wide and 36 inches deep, and weigh more than 1,000 pounds.
The MTA said the MetroCard “express” machines are 21 inches long, 14 inches wide, 42 inches high and weigh around 210 pounds.
MTA Deputy Chief Customer Officer Gene Ribeiro paid a visit to the warehouse to give the machines a proper send-off.
“This has been a part of New York City culture, so I knew that customers were going to come in here very excited,” he said. “The machine was put into the system back in 1999, so it's been in the system for almost 30 years.”
The MTA said it still has millions of unsold MetroCards, which it either plans on destroying or putting up for auction as well.
Tagged
new york city
queens
transportation
Ramsey Khalifeh
Ramsey Khalifeh is a transportation reporter on the NYC Accountability desk covering the largest transit system in the country. He was previously a general assignment reporter at Gothamist and worked on the Boston Globe's metro and copy desk. Got a tip? Email [email protected]
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