Coin Slot Magazine - #030 - 1977 - July [International Arcade Museum]
The Pictorial Swan Song
of the Floor Machine
By Richard M. Bueschel
By the fall of 1923, Barney Sicking knew he had a storage problem.
A pioneer slot machine jobber and sometime manufacturer, Sicking
had been in the business for almost thirty years. Bernard Sicking
started in Cincinnati as a grocer, then became a slot machine agent
in 1895, placing machines on percentage and selling them direct to
locations. By 1899, he was making machines of his own from Canada
and Caille parts and components, running his routes and selling new
and used machines, the latter picked up as trade-ins, which were then
repaired and sold refurbished. By now calling his firm The Sicking
Manufacturing Company, Sicking was operating in a wide radius
around Cincinnati, and selling machines to operators in over a dozen
middle, southern and eastern states. By 1907 he had filled a four-
story building at 1922 Freeman Avenue with salesrooms, repair shops,
new machines, his own machines, and on the top floor, trade-ins.
Sicking's success over the years carried him all the way from the very
early days of the "Drop-A-Nickel-ln-The-Slot" pocket coin drops
through cigar and card machines, the first counter wheel automatic
payouts, the early card floor machines and the later automatic pay
out color wheel floor machines, trade stimulators, music boxes, or
chestral and automatic Reginas, right up to the days of the counter
gum Vender 3-reel Bell machines with fruit symbols. That's when the
business finally changed for the flat bottomed three-reel slot machine
in an oak cabinet, popularized and heavily promoted by The Mills
Novelty Company of Chicago after World War I, rapidly took over as
just about the only form of slot machine in general use in the early
nineteen-twenties. Everything else was quickly old-hat, and Sicking
had a warehouse full of the stuff.
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Not only was Barney Sicking stuck with a bunch of old machines,
already antiques, he also needed the storage room for his booming
machines ever produced on a single sales piece. On two sides of a
large 27" x 21" flyer, Sicking reproduced the catalogue illustrations
© The International Arcade Museum
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