Coin Slot Magazine - #070 - 1980 - December [International Arcade Museum]
Coin Slot Guide Project Doubled
Continued from page 39
on a steady stream (they still do!) for guides not yet printed
or listed, indicating an above average interest in the series.
The major problems were ones of timing and the availabili
ty of material, and both had to be met to disperse the
needed information to collectors and to keep the series
viable.
The problem — actually, the opportunity — of timing
was met head on by hard work. I should say endless hard
work. The initial reception proved the guides were pop
ular. It also proved that there is no such thing as a number
one guide, or a number two or whatever. If a collector or
coin machine buff wants or needs a guide for a specific
machine, to them that is guide number one. If the guide
they need is No. 25 or No. 50, and the printing isn't
scheduled for months away, for them it's hard to wait. The
solution to this need was to push the production schedule
as rapidly as possible. And that's hard work all along the
line. With six titles completed by October 1979 the
production schedule went into high gear. By October
1980, one flat year later, Coin Slot Guide No. 33 was being
printed, with the 27 additional titles produced in a twelve
month period. That's at the rate of over two guides a
month, practically a killing pace. Coin Slot Books works
pretty close to the wire with this schedule for it takes
author Dick Bueschel well over three months to assemble
the artwork and produce the manuscript for each guide,
provided he has the material and graphics on hand in his
collection, or has access to the necessary illustrations and
antique manuals. Where such manuals do not exist, or
have not yet been found, Dick is faced with the herculean
task of creating one.
Fortunately Dick is well organized, or at least seems to
be. In spite of the fact that he is always working on a
number of guides concurrently, he somehow keeps each
guide separate from the others, providing us with a
"package" within two weeks of receiving a guide
"package" type is being set and halftones are being shot to
match the layout format, with material ready for
proofreading and corrections or alterations less than a
month after the manuscript was received. With all material
checked and last minute edits made, the guide is printed
and bound less than two months after initial receipt. I don't
know if you know much about printing or not, but that's a
terrific performance.
The problem of available material is ever tougher, with
the need for original and useful material paramount to the
guide series. In early discussions about the Coin Slot
Guides author Bueschel stated his concept clearly. "The
most important single ingredient in any book, be it big, or
something as modest as a Coin Slot Guide, is content.
You've got to give the reader something for their money
that they can get nowhere else; you've got to make the
book worthwhile or there's no point in doing it". He has
stuck to this concept through thick and thin and has, at
times, screwed up the publication schedule as a result. For
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© The International Arcade Museum
42 — THE COIN SLOT
instance, at the time the guides were first blocked out
there were a number of collective guides in which two or
three similar machines were grouped. Guide No. 50 was
specified for the Mills 3 BELLS and 4 BELLS; No. 40 for the
Paupa & Hochriem, Mills and Caille ELK and PILOT
models and their variants; and No. 21 for the Mills, Caille
and Sitman & Pitt COMMERCIAL, DRAW POKER and
MODEL, among others. Through original digging, dis
covery, buying, trading and loan from other "slot paper"
collectors more material than anticipated was located. As
a result the content for each guide was enhanced, with
guide No. 50 now solely for the Mills 4 BELLS, supported
by original manuals and parts list with a separate Guide
No. 102 in the second group of guides, just now numbered,
for the Mills 3 BELLS. The same thing happened to guide
No. 40. Just as serious writing on the guide began, author
Bueschel discovered a complete set of original early 1900s
patent drawings for the PILOT machines showing them to
be considerably different than the ELK models by P&H,
Mills and Caille provided by French coin machine collec
tor Gaston Stiel, split up Guide No. 40 into an ELK guide
under the original number and a later PILOT Guide No.
116 in the second hundred series. Perhaps the biggest
change came with the trade stimulator Guide No. 21 for
the
Sittman
&
Pitt/Monarch/Reliance/Mills/Caille/-
MODEL / RELIANCE / VICTOR / DRAW POKER-
/ FLORADORA. This guide was all typeset and ready
to print when a Mills COMMERCIAL manual was
discovered by Elgin, Illinois collector Russ Newman. A
believer in the series, Newman offered the content to Dick
Bueschel to include in the guide. At the same time Dick
had discovered a wealth of new data for the Chas.
Leonhardt, Jr. and Monarch Card Machine Company
machines made in San Francisco in the 1890s, with much
help from trade stimulator collector Bill Whelan of Daly
City, California, as well as original data about The
Sundwall Company in Seattle, circa 1906, and the John L.
Foley Manufacturing Company in Chicago, the machinist-
genius behind the DRAW POKER machine of 1906. So
Guide No. 21 was pulled away from the printer when itwas
already all set to go, and then completely restructured to
add the data and illustrations pertaining to these unique
drop card machines while pulling out all reference to the
Mills COMMERCIAL for use in the later Guide No. 109 in
the second-hundred series.
One wonders how Bueschel and the printer can keep
track of what's going on at this pace. Dick describes it this
way, "The only way I can do it is to actively work on seven
or eight guides at the same time. Each guide takes me from
one to four months to gather and write, so by doing a
group of them on-and-off at the same time I can make the
best use of my time. All one hundred initial guides are
blocked out in large pocket folders, each holding the
material that will be reproduced in the guide, plus my
historical notes. But even at that I get confused some times
because there's so much going on at once. I love it when
new material shows up that'll make a better guide, but that
often means I've got to back track and reorganize
everything to fit it in. I used to think I was organized, with
everything filed in its place, but at the rate we're batting out
the guides, my working desk and basement files have
degenerated to piles and stacks of papers, drawings and
photos, each of critical importance to some guide or other,
present or future."
The project is exhiliarating, however, for according to
Dick, "it's the thrill of discovery, plus the enormous help
from other collectors, that makes the guide series so
http://www.arcade-museum.com/
DECEMBER, 1980