C.O.C.A. Times

on them. So, I'd put my money on it being a
Parkers - maybe. On the other hand it might be by
some unrecorded maker".
Thank you, David. As you can see, Class, other
than the manufacturer, the date of manufacturer,
and the prototype status of the machine, I think
we can agree that I nailed the Lucky Horse Shoe!
B.M. Co., it's made of good old English oak.
Mine actually had a small pale blue paper label
which I can't find at the moment. I think it had an
initial followed by the name "Parker". Horse
Shoes does resemble a Parkers machine in some
way. Parkers didn't make a huge number of
machines and half of those were in use in their
own arcades. Over the years they turned out sev-
eral quite different styled allwins, some of which
had a similar Odeon style to the Horse Shoe (in
veneered softwood). They rarely put their moniker
Post Script: Are you feeling lucky? Want to
talk about British games? Drop me a line at
jp4@charter.net or call (952) 891-2312.
The ''New" Griswold Wheel of Fortune
by Ken Durham
Yes "new", but I'm talking about "new" in
1933. When the Groetchen Tool Company intro-
duced the Gold Rush and Solitaire trade stimula-
tors in 1933, they were copies of the 1890's
Griswold Wheel of Fortune.
Apparently, the story is that the President of the
Groetchen Tool Company, Richard Groetchen,
found the Griswold Wheel of Fortune still operat-
ing in a small drug store in Minnesota.
According to the proprietor, who kept a detailed
log of the machine's receipts, the Wheel of Fortune
had generated $65,000. At a nickel a play, that
meant the Wheel of Fortune was played 33 times
every day for the 27 year period it was in operation.
When Richard Groetchen heard this story, he
quickly decided to design a modern version of the
Wheel of Fortune. The result was the "Gold Rush"
and the "Solitaire" trade stimulators.
The Solitaire was made with a single dial with
numbers on it, just like the original Wheel of
Fortune. The Gold Rush was made with fruit sym-
bols to replicate the popular Little Duke slot
machine.
A third version was made for "closed" territo-
ries, where gambling was illegal. It had a "calen-
dar" motif. The top dial showed the day of the
week (Mon., Tue., etc.), the lower dial showed the
30 days of the month. If you got the right combi-
nation for today's date, you were a winner.
Richard Groetchen was convinced he had a win-
ner. But times had changed and the Solitaire and
Gold Rush weren't as popular as the Griswold
Wheel of Fortune. As a result, today you find many
more 1890's Wheel of Fortunes than you can find
1930's Solitaire or Gold Rush trade stimulators.
If you want more information on this story, you
may want to consult the Fall 1977 (Premier) issue
of Loose Change or the original articles which
appeared in the September 1933 issues of
Automatic Age and The Billboard.
5