Coin Slot

Coin Slot Magazine - #039 - 1978 - April[International Arcade Museum]
However, the collecting of slot machines evokes the crass images of
gambling, illegal profits, smokey rooms and the flashy casinos with
their plastic life styles.
How does5 a person become involved in such
a strange and misunderstood hobby? Many collectors of recent years
collect because of the enormous financial rewards. These people are
dealers, not collectors.
Without the dealers, these merchants of coin
operated machines, the collectors would have a much harder time of
adding to their collection.
Not all collectors are as fortunate as I in
having the time and inclination to search the dusty attics, barns, and
saloon basements for machines.
have collected for years?
But what about the big guys who
Who are these men who collected for per
sonal interest and fascination? They areas interesting and fascinating
as the machines they collect. Their historical and mechanical know
ledge is often astonishing. They were the pioneers of collecting to
whom novice collectors owe so much.
I often wonder why and how
they began collecting these clunking cumbersome devices.
I can easily trace my beginnings as a slot machine collector. It be
gan when I was a graduate student in 1965 at Ohio University. I was a
clock collector of several years with a local reputation of some me
chanical ability.
I was asked to re-bush and clean some unusual
clock mechanisms. Unusual indeed to a clock collector. No dial or
hands, no excape wheel, verge or pendulum.
I wonder how they
were wound without a key arbor or mainspring. Just a simple series
of reduction gears with spring loaded ratchets on what appears to be
the "main wheel." The power was finally transferred to the last
wheel, to which was an inordinately large fan of four inches or so
length with counter weights on each of the two blades.
This curious mechanism was surely not a lot of things.
I was not
a roasting jack, or time-telling device, or regulating mechanism like
any I had seen before.
It was simply a consumer of power from an
unidentifiable but very powerful source.
I was openly inquisitive
about these strange clocks, but received guarded answers.
After cleaning, bushing, and straightening or replacing a fan or
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As my interest
wheel, I would return these curiosities with my modest charge. They
curiosity about these strange clocks.
My curiosity ended and my in
terest flamed on the day I had the opportunity to place the clock-
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