Coin Slot Magazine - #016 - 1976 - March [International Arcade Museum]
AN URGENT PLEA TO ALL WHO APPRECIATE ART AND ANTIQUES
If you are a collector, restorer, dealer, nostalgia buff, trader, serious researcher or fust an ordinary
person who enjoys looking at beautiful, artistic, ornate interesting pieces of American Memorabilia.
WE NEED YOUR HELP
Immediate action must be taken to rewrite an old law in California,
This law was written to protect you from persons who would cheat you out of your money by gambling.
All gambling in California is illegal.
This is the law.
To enforce the law, to prevent anyone from twisting its meaning, to cover any possible loophole, the
law was written in a manner to encompass every coin operated device with an element of chance.
They added the Catch 22 phase that all such devices could not be touched, kept, or moved — must be
seized on sight and destroyed, under the threat of fines, and jail. This is a simplified, short version
of the law as written.
Persons who disagreed with the law, or persons who may have seen these devices as something other
than a game of chance, hid them from sight.
Somehow many have managed to remain away*from destructive forces that would reduce them to ash
and scrap me fa I.
The years have passed, attitudes have changed, custom and style have changed but the law HAD NOT.
Suddenly we were in a different society. People were seeking out what to them were beautiful forms
of art, self expression, awareness of a feeling for the past, memories of days gone, but not forgotten.
Suddenly people were realizing that the world was turning drab and full of cheap shoddy plastic
imitations of what used to be.
People began to search, collect, restore, preserve and even duplicate the old. And this is what it's
all about. Those who had decided to preserve antique coin operated gaming devices, because they
believed they were artistic works of art, because they were of By Gone Era, or that they were part of
History, or simply as a form of entertainment or pleasure.
The original intent of the law was to prevent gambling.
devices in California is no more.
The law prevailed and gambling with these
If another legitimate use for these devices is a fact, then the law should be modified to permit the
lawful pursuit of their use.
Would this aid those who might seek to use a modified law to gamble on these devices?
the facts.
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us who wish to gamble.
Present laws have not
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coin matching, Numbers, Sport pools, Lotteries, Cock
can go on and on, and on.
If a person wants to gamble, they will find a method.
It is man's nature to chance things.
Old coin operated gaming devices, collected and stored in private homes pose no threat.
been there for years, and years.
© The International Arcade Museum
They are not kept for gambling purposes.
(Over)
They have
http://www.arcade-museum.com/