C.O.C.A. Times

This Corndog Won't Hunt
by John Peterson
It all started innocently enough. It always does,
you know. The headliner on Ebay said: "Penny
Machine Stimulator 1920's England NR." The
word description was equally enticing: "This fun
old machine from England used the large English
penny . .... I don't know exactly how this works. It
looks like it has some kind of a wire attached to a
battery of some sort and all kinds of gears. I haven't
a clue other than this is out of a purchase of things
from the 1920's I recently
acquired." The three pic-
tures showed the case from
two angles and one picture
of the interior. All in all, a
most intriguing and quite
unrevealing offering with a
$49.99 opening bid.
British people. I found them to be warm hearted,
generous of spirit and all around fun; in a word, just
like Americans but with a better accent! When I
finally got around to pursuing coin-operated items
in the early 1990's, I stumbled across a British "all-
win" machine and after that, I didn't have a choice.
My collection has progressed slowly and I relish the
research into the background of these machines as
much as I do the collecting.
This Ebay machine, mysteriously named
"RAINBOW ROULETTE" definitely had my
attention. I pulled out my reference books and
sought possible manufacturers. In this respect, col-
lectors of American made machines have a distinct
advantage. Americans recognized early on that
product placement has important advertising impli-
cations. As a result, almost all American manufac-
turers stamped their name on the case or works,
very prominently in some instances. For some
unknown reason, the English are exactly the oppo-
site. It is extremely rare to find an English coin-
operated game with the name of the manufacturer
on it and the older ones almost never have any iden-
tification other than the name of the game, if that.
The matter is complicated somewhat by the fact that
it was not uncommon for several manufacturers to
make machines with the same name. The games
may or may not be the same type of play.
Therefore, when researching the games, you start
with the name. If the name appears in one of the
reference books, you may or may not have a match.
The books that I have are good but by no means
comprehensive in their coverage of the vast subject
of British coin-op. The next step is to look at the
machine itself. Some of the manufacturers had a
distinctive style to their games in both cabinetry and
hardware. This is more art than science and attri-
bution based solely on the "look" of the game is
suspect at best.
"Rainbow Roulette" was not listed in any of my
books nor did I recognize the case work . My court
of last appeal under these circumstances is my
English collecting buddies. I've never met any of
them face to face but have developed friendships
Rainbow Roulette
To set the record, I am a
collector of British coin-op
games. I'm not really sure
how that all got started. It
may relate back to my days in the early 1970's when
as a US Navy pilot I was flying over to Europe on a
regular basis. I spent a lot of fun time in London
and the surrounding pubs and many of their antique
stores. I was not collecting coin- operated items at
that time. In retrospect it would have been fortu-
itous had I been doing so but at the time I was con-
sumed by antique music boxes and pump organs.
One was easy to transport but very expensive to
purchase and the other just the opposite. More than
one full-sized pump organ came across the Atlantic
in the back of my C-130. I also fell in love with the
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