Coin Slot

Coin Slot Magazine - #069 - 1980 - November [International Arcade Museum]
SERIAL
NUMBER
UPDATE
By Dick Bueschel
on how to root out old coin machines?". Well, while there
haven't been too many articles on the subject, that very
subject makes up the main editorial copy of the forthcom
ing "100 Most Collectible Trade Stimulators—Volume 2".
There will be more in this book about finding machines—
After a brief wandering into the nifty world of trade
and stories of major finds, and funny incidents—than
stimulators it's time to come back to the "big slots" and
payouts. Skipping a month added up to a pile up of data
and serial number offerings by collectors, and the result is
anywhere else in print to date. The volume 2 trade
some education and interesting things. You'll see as we go
year.
along.
We've got a lot of serials this month, and some of them
quite different. There's the Mills HANDLOAD "Black
Front" for instance, sent in by collector Bob Lewis in New
York City. Then a Rockola SUPER-TRIPLE showed up
with the serial 174,399, making it a revamp of the Mills 1927
OPERATOR BELL.
Among the most interesting to ever show up in the Serial
Number Update was a 5-way wooden cabinet floor
machine with an OWL nameplate sent in by a collector
who wishes to remain unnamed, living as he does in
Tennessee. It was most certainly an OWL, but equally was
most certainly not a Mills OWL. It wasn't a Caille, Watling,
Schall, Berger or White OWL either, and the outside
nameplate only confused the issue. It said: "H.E. Williams,
Slot Machines, St. Louis". So we had a mystery. But not for
long. I immediately got ahold of my friend in the history
and geneaology department at the St. Louis Public
Library, and back came the information that there was
stimulator book is now being typed and will go to the
printer in another 60 days, so be looking for it later this
The volume 3 "100 Most Collectible Slots" is coming
right behind it, and this volume will have 100 new and
different payout slots plus all of the serial numbers in the
Serial Number Update for the past three years plus an
additional three times as many numbers from previous
lists developed before the Serial Number Update. It'll be a
collectors mainstay in years ahead in identifying and
dating machines.
As a wrapup,
here's two marvelous pictures of a
Jennings CHIEF "4-Star Chief" sent in by collector
Sanford Porter of Duluth, MN. Sanford writes us to say that
the machine was found in a private club and were only
moved on a "few occasions when it was relocated to the
golf course as a result of a phone call from the sheriff of an
impending raid by sheriff's deputies". Sanford said he
found the machine in a chicken coop, and added "My
desire at the time was to acquire 'a' machine, and
regretfully, I left behind many other machines of all
denominations that were offered free for the taking".
named
Sanford, take some advice from a friend. Don't tell
"H.E.Williams, Novelties" right downtown on Olive Street,
another soul where the chicken coop is, and go back.
but he was only in business under that name for one year:
Stranger things have happened and they just might still be
1901. So that dates the machine. More interesting yet,
there.
Williams had been—in 1899 and 1900—the manager of the
Serials this month came from Melvin H. Brooks in
Milwaukee; Stan Wilker in Ranchos Palos Verdes, Bill
Johnson in Rosamond and Gary Merrill in Cedar Ridge,
CA: Sanford Porter in Duluth; Al Moore in Omaha; Bob
Lewis in New York, NY; Tom Rapinese in Largo, FL; Tom
Boothroyd in Indiana; Michael R. Pinkosky, in Stratford,
CT; and unnamed collectors in Tennessee and Connec
Jones, who asked "do you ever intend to publish articles
ticut.
indeed
a
slot
machine
maker
in
St.
Louis
com office
.
McDonald Manufacturing Company
St.
Louis
m
:
u
m made u the
se McDonald
fro that
(remember? The company
KING
m
d
-
e
e
d on his
d
BEE!) before he a
went
own.
So you see how finding
a
o
l
c
n add to w. machine
ar
machines
can
history.
ow
D
w
w
Speaking of
finding machines, there was a letter-to-the-
/
/
:
tp August issue of The Coin Slot from Guil
editor in
ht the
© The
Arcade
Museum
28 International
— THE COIN
SLOT
NOVEMBER, 1980
http://www.arcade-museum.com/