Coin Slot Magazine - #043 - 1978 - August [International Arcade Museum]
THE COIN SLOT
"Most Wanted"
List
By Dick Bueschel
Author's Notes:
Our apologies to the FBI, of course, but it's time
that the slot machine collectors had their own "Most Wanted" list
If you think that every type of machine that's going to be found has
been found already you may as well collect toy banks or carnival glass
and settle back into the soft life of what seems to be a fully cataloged
field of endeavor.
Slots, happily, have a long way to go.
How a
complete field of collecting could go so long without being com
pletely catagorized and listed is beyond me, except for the fact it's
so damned hard to do. Slot machines offer more pure diversity than
almost any field of collecting, and the fact that it's loaded with un
knowns is, to use an out-of-f ield word, adventuresome. When you're
out there digging you never know what you'll find.
finding goes on and on.
And yet the
A lot of collectors thought that the original
finds might have been used up long ago, but the facts belie the
thought.
The last three months alone have been mindbenders. Cases
in point; collector Bernie Gold came up with the first Colby COM
BINATION LUNG TESTER AND DICE THROWING MACHINE,
circa 1895, in April.
Then, Minneapolis collector Gene Foster made
a bid on a heavily painted cast iron leggy machine with a 5-way coin
head over a color wheel sans graphics or a company name-with the
exception of "WMCO." on the casting-and later discovered that his
new acquisition was the only known Watling LITTLE SIX or CHECK-
BOY, depending on which restored glass is used, with a beautiful
.com in May, Bernie Gold
Then,
m
:
u
m
did it again, coming up with
only
use known Charles C. Bishop & Co.
m
d fro d the
-
e
e
d
TRI—0—GRAPH,
a in 1889. This combination coin-operated
nloa patented
arc and
.
w
o
w
dirty-picture
peep
show
dice thrower (and we'll have an article
D
ww
/
/
:
p
about it in tt a future THE COIN SLOT) is made of tin, bentwood,
h
nickel-plated cabinet below the paint.
cheap plywood and cardboard surrounding a clockwork mechanism
© The International Arcade Museum
http://www.arcade-museum.com/