piece and he said 1500 dollars. Well in those days you
could buy a World Series baseball for six or seven hun-
dred dollars, and exhibit diggers for 500 each, and iron
Mutoscope for three or four hundred with great reels in
them and working. So we filled our station wagon with
as many smaller pieces that we could afford, with the
4 or 5 hundred dollars we had brought along. We told
Joe, that Wes would let him know about the Cleveland
Grandma in a week or so.
I remember being back home about a week, when I
heard of another Cleveland Grandma, this machine had
come out of the Indianapolis antique advertising show
and had been purchased by a bar owner in Jackson
Michigan. I called him to see if he was going to keep it
or if it was for sale. I was told that 2500 would take it.
When I told my friend about that machine he said "let's
take a ride and look at it". What we found was almost
a perfect example of a brand new Cleveland Grandma
fortune teller. So, Wes bought it and we brought it
home. I must say, of all the Cleveland Grandma ma-
chines that I have seen, it probably was the best. Wes
had that machine for a number of years and then sold
it to a friend of ours and he had
it for another 20 years .... A few
years ago, I was asked to sell
that machine for him, and David
Copperfield bought it. So with
Wes buying that piece, I moved
in on the Munves machine.
Now it has been 37 years
since Wes and I drove back to
New York City to pick up my
machine. It was one of those
fantastic trips when everything
went together perfectly. It had
taken me almost a month to put
the $1500 together, and up until
then it was the most expensive
machine I had ever bought. I
had to borrow money from fam-
ily and friends. I was surprised
to find Munves waiting for me;
they had moved the machine out
to the street. It was just after rush hour when we came
around the corner, there was my machine waiting to be
picked up. It was about 9:30 in the morning and people
on their way to work were stopping, looking and even
dropping coins into it. Was it worth it? Today I con-
sider the Cleveland Grandma as one of the most inter-
esting and historic arcade machines ever made.
During the 70's I restored seven or eight of these
machines, for other coin-op collectors. Many of them
were in terrible condition, some needing to have the
cabinets all rebuilt and parts and pieces of the mecha-
nisms remade. I remember having four cabinets in my
garage at one time, all in different stages of restoration.
Many times the marquees were missing and glass with
the correct painting was missing. However, it turned
out to be a good project and money making scheme for
me. My wife made 15 or 20 dresses that resembled the
original as close as possible. I remember selling those
dresses for $500 each and thinking, what a gold mine
we had found, doing grandma restorations. How long
will this last and how many are out there? I am sure that
Mary only had 15 or 20 hours in making each dress,
but we thought we had a very good thing going. And it
helped us put more machines in our collection. Today,
my Cleveland Grandma is still one of our prized pos-
sessions.
Assuming that you have seen or even owned a Cleve-
land Grandma, I will highlight some of the special fea-
tures of this machine. Starting at the top, a highly visible
four sided marquee, stating
GRANDMOTHERS PRE-
DICTIONS and in smaller
print DROP COIN HERE. A
well-made cabinet with glass
on three sides and the front
glass reading "what does
grandma say?" your answer is
here. This machine was made
to operate on nickels and dur-
ing the 20's it sold for fifteen
hundred dollars. You can do
the math, 30,000 plays to pay
her off, and you would need
to supply the fortune cards.
Her hands and head were
made from wax in Dresden
Germany. With glass eyes that
move and a chest that would
heave as if she was breath-
ing. The mechanism itself is
almost unbreakable with a strong motor and brass and
bronze cams, steel gears and a perfect operating coin
mechanism. It even came with an assortment of spare
springs and other parts all labeled and numbered for re-
placement. There is even a work light installed over the
mechanism and a note to say not to leave the work light
on, so as to melt the waxwork. A coin box that looks
34