Coin Slot Magazine - #019 - 1976 - August [International Arcade Museum]
CURRENT SCENE
By Bob Rosenberger
Harrah's Automobile Collection held its second Pony Express Auction
in Reno, Nevada on June 10-12, 1976. The items up for auction were
largely from the original W. Parker Lyon Pony Express Museum now lo
cated at the Automobile Collection. Among the items auctioned were
several upright and 3-reel slot machines, along with a number of other
gambling-related items.
Harrah's first auction had been held on June 5-7,1975, almost exactly
one year before. This first one had had the distinction of being the first
auction or sale where coin-operated gambling machines were prominently
displayed and sold. As such, it attracted collectors from across the coun
try. Its success led collector Roy Arrington of Las Vegas to establish peri
odic auctions of his own which have also been huge successes. Con
sequently, fifteen-to-twenty machine collectors, mostly from the West
Coast, gathered for Harrah's second auction with great expectations. By
and large, however, they were to be disappointed.
Like the first one, the auction extended over a three-day period. Items
to be auctioned were available for viewing the day before the auction
started as well as before the auction began each day. The viewing area was
closed off once the auction began. As a result, the auction moved rather
quickly as the bidders used their well-illustrated catalogues for reference.
In fact, the auction ended each day by 1:00 P.M. Most people felt that
the auction could easily have been condensed into a two-day session.
Before the auction began, Nevada officials went through all the articles
up for auction and identified those that they considered to be gambling
items. By law, bidding on these was restricted to legal residents of Nevada,
21 years of age and older. It was fairly obvious that no consistent rule-of-
thumb was used for classifying the items: ornamental castings, coin heads
and lithographed tin discs for uprights were classified as gambling devices
while non-payout trade stimulator machines were not. A blackjack table
was not considered a gambling device while a very similar-appearing
Chuck-a-Luck table was. As a result, those items that were considered
gambling devices were sold for surprisingly reasonable prices while items
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like the trade stimulators sold for higher-than-expected prices.
The first item up for bid was lot #43, three gooseneck mechanisms.
Classified as gambling, the three pieces sold for a total of $400. Lot #44,
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