The present invention relates to checkout systems and more particularly to a checkout counter having means mounted therein for repeating the reading of a coded label attached to a merchandise item during a checkout operation. In order to increase the speed of the checkout operation, optical scanning devices have been incorporated into checkout counters for reading data encoded indicia on labels affixed to the purchased merchandise items. Movement of the merchandise items across the scanning device results in the scanning device reading the encoded indicia labels. Where a number of the same merchandise items are being checked out, each merchandise item has to be moved across the scanning device in order to insert the merchandise item identification code into the processing system enabling the processing system to generate the price of the item. It has been found that this type of checkout procedure represents a significant portion of the total time it takes to check out the purchases of a customer.