New Yorkers are obsessed with collecting Inciardi prints

Forget rooftop pools and drinking Frosé. 

The “it” summer activity in the city is collecting miniature art prints from old-fashioned coin-operated machines.

“It’s so fun,” said Kiana Ting, 25, who works in data analytics in the beauty industry and lives in Manhattan.

There are a growing number of venues to collect the 2.5-by-3.5 inch color images, known as Inciardi prints. The first machine dispensing them was installed at the Whitney Museum of Art at the end of 2023. Now there are 65 across the country, including 11 in New York City — in locations ranging from Warby Parker in SoHo to Brooklyn Brewery in Williamsburg to a new one at Barclays Center, where fans have waited over an hour for prints at recent Liberty games — and one in the Catskills.

Machines are coming soon to Rosemary’s, an Italian restaurant in the West Village, and Athena Keke’s, a new women’s sports bar opening in Clinton Hill

Fans insert four quarters into a machine to receive one one of eight prints at random. Venue owners get to choose which prints their machine offers from a library of 150, while some spots offer exclusive custom prints.

Ting recently tried to visit all six of the print machines in Brooklyn in one day.

“Foster Sundry in Bushwick has a machine with food-themed prints, and I love the pickle, sardine, and blue cheese prints I got there,” she said.

Laura Harrison, 60, a freelance children’s book reviewer who lives in White Plains, is obsessed with collecting the prints.

“I have maybe 500,” she told The Post. “Once you get into [them], you want to get as many as you can.” She believes she has the only full collection available in New York City.

She first learned about the prints at the end of last year on TikTok, where people post photos and videos of themselves at the machines. Since then, she has spent vast amounts of time —and a decent chunk of money — collecting the keepsakes.

In December there was a machine in Grand Central just for the holiday market. Harrison waited in line for over an hour and half to get the prints.

“There was a line to get into the line,” she recalled. “We were packed in like sardines.”

Grand Central only let people buy five prints at a time, so she went through the line two more times to collect them all. 

She was particularly thrilled by the prints she got at the NewYork Botanical Gardens, which were exclusive to the venue and featured orchis the exact same color as those in the orchid show.

“I practically lost my mind over [them].”

Just before Memorial Day, Cafe Mornings, a family-run Korean cafe and market in the tiny Catskills town of Arkville, became the first venue upstate to have a machine. The cafe’s owner, Christina Kim, said she’s had collectors driving hours from the city to get the prints.

“Even our local customers made a special stop to see us and get a print,” she told The Post.

Allison Ortiz, 35, an executive assistant, who lives in Hell’s Kitchen, encountered her first machine at the home opener for the York Liberty on May 17.

“I was instantly hooked,” she said.

It took her three games — and three to four pulls each time — to collect all of the Liberty-themed prints, which include doodles of the mascot and the team logo. It was worth it.

“I’ve been a Liberty fan since I was a little girl, so I was looking to commemorate our history making championship win in as many ways as possible, and this was just too fun and cute to pass up,” she said.

The prints and vending machines are the work of Anastasia Inciardi, 28, an artist from Brooklyn who now lives in Portland, Maine.

She originally invented the Inciardi Mini Print Vending Machine in 2023 with the goal of collecting quarters for laundry.

“My wife is a farmer, so her clothing is always covered in dirt, and I am covered in ink all the time, so we do laundry probably more than the average couple,” she said. “I thought it was a fun way to sell my artwork and also collect coins.”

After installing one at her local farmers market and having videos of it go viral on social media, venues started asking for their own.

Inciardi already has a partnership to do prints for events thrown by the Infatuation, and she’s working on a collaboration with the estate of a famous artist, the details of which she can’t yet reveal.

An accountant recently suggested that she up the price to $1.50, but she wants to keep it a single dollar. 

“That’s the novelty of it. You can’t get anything for a dollar, even at the dollar store, but you can get this little piece of artwork for a dollar,” she said. “That’s what makes it special.”