Interesting. A litte after that time, aged 13-14, I was interested in coin pusher machines[0], which (despite being gambling) were not age restricted where I lived. Obviously I wanted a way to do better than the system allowed and wanted to know if I could use magnets to pull the coins towards me[1]; some research showed that some "coppers"[2] were magnetic and others weren't, and that it seemed to depend on the date the coin was stamped.
Although I can't remember now if the older or the newer coins were the magnetic ones, I wonder if the composition was changed in part due to this case?
https://www.royalmint.com/stories/collect/why-are-some-uk-co... - the composition of 1p and 2p coins was changed from bronze to copper-plated steel in 1992 and the composition of 5p and 10p coins was changed from cupro-nickel to nickel-plated steel in 2011
I don't think the 1980's loonies were steel, they appear to have been mostly nickel.
I suspect though, that some detail of the various ways he did this just got lost over time. You could probably fish them out with superglue or sticky mastic on the antenna rather than a magnet, for example.
Or maybe the magnet was always used to hold some kind of trap door open rather than directly fishing the coins.
Article says loonie came out and implemented in their system in 1988. Before that it was mostly quarters. Both were nickel based which is ferromagnetic.
Loonies are coated in a different metal making them less magnetic, but stronger magnets will fix that.
The newer 'coppers' are magnetic, so I doubt it. The reason was because they were becoming more expensive to make than their face value. Anyway you couldn't steal a significant amount in coppers, the main debate is whether to get rid of them entirely.
The game in question --the penny pusher-- pits a player's skill against the (the design of the) game, and (probably) allows a skillful player to earn a greater return. The game is inherently designed to restrict winnings, and (so goes urban legend) the owners can restrict winnings further by, for example, gluing coins to the base in certain areas.
I'd therefore argue that exploiting gaps or flaws in the game's design are just an example of a especially skillful operator beating the game and its designers, and not cheating. The line between clever exploitation and outright theft is a probably difficult one to draw; although turning up with a giant electromagnet which just pulled the coins straight off the shelf, would probably be over that line :)
Although I can't remember now if the older or the newer coins were the magnetic ones, I wonder if the composition was changed in part due to this case?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coin_pusher
[1] No
[2] British slang for 1 and 2 penny coins due to colour