C.O.C.A. Times

CHICAGO LAND
by Tom Gustwiller
At the last Chicago Show no one could miss the
vast array of good machines in Larry Debaughs'
booth. Larry and Jay Freedman had picked up most
of the remaining machines left in the Las Vegas col-
lection. There was one machine that no one seemed
to understand. It was the Portola by Specialty
Machine Works of San Francisco. The Portola was
a dice machine that was not coin operated. The dice
would pop when you pushed the handle down every
time. It had the original award card but it worked
without a coin. If you looked at the machine close,
you could see it was cast iron, but the top had been
replaced with heavy sheet metal and replated along
with the rest of the machine. In San Francisco all
slot machines were outlawed after July 1, 1909.
When Ordinance 729 became law, about 3,200 slot
machines grossing 12 million dollars a year became
useless. To circumvent the law, both Charlie Fey
and a new company, the Specialty Machine Works,
rebuilt dice machines taking out the coin accepting
part of the mechanism. The machines contained no
coin slot and paid over the counter in drinks and
cigars. These machines were rebuilt to get around
the new Anti-Gambling Ordinance. For more about
this story go to page 56 of Marshall Feys book on
Slot Machines.
Deadline for next issue:
September 15, 2001
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