Abstract: A system for the sale of consumer goods, where the purchase of an article, from a board (1) containing symbols of merchandise, collects symbols of articles (2) in the form of optically, magnetically or electronically readable cards (2). The card is preprogrammed, but not capable of being reprogrammed. A control unit (3) converts the article number of the card to an article price paid by the customer of the article, and transmits at least one unique serial number of the card via a connection (9; 15) to a comparator and controller unit (10) in a merchandise dispensing machine (11) to be stored as a validation signal for the specific card in a memory (13). The stored validation signal is compared with data on the card which is input and read (16) in the dispensing machine (11), the specific article being dispensed at the correspondence of said data, simultaneously with the validation of the card being deleted.