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Coinman
of the Month
MURRAYPANITZ
This month's Coinman is a much-respected
arcade operator on the east coast.
Murray Panitz, a Long Island, New York
resident, has been in the industry since 1952 when
he saw an advertisement in the New York Times
that someone wanted to seU their arcade. "It was
more or less a sick horse," said Panitz. But he
decided to go ahead anyway and buy the business
since he had been toying with the idea of getting
into the coin machine business for some time.
That first acquisition, he said, consisted of about
75 or 80 pieces; it's grown a little bit since
then- today he owns singly and coUectively (with
his various associatesfabout 9,000 pieces. There
are no vending or music pieces in that number.
His operation today includes arcades - he calls
them family amusement centers - in amusement
parks and shopping centers. His string of centers
stretches from New Hampshire to the Florida
coast, with the bulk of those operations being in the
three-state area of Massachusetts, Connecticut,
and New York.
His firm goes under the name Just Fun.
IndividuaUy he owns about ten of the centers and
coUectively he owns about six more for about
sixteen operations in aU. Some of those centers,
however, are strictly summer operations.
His operations range in size from 1,200 square
feet to as large as 10,000 square feet. It's his
summer operations which expand to the 10,000-
square-foot figure . His shopping center locations
12
average about 1,500 to 2,000 square feet.
His operation includes everything from the very
exotic arcade pieces to, of course, the pinbaU and
video games. He's got a load of promotion ideas to
keep the quarters roUing in. Among them, in his
summer locations, he's very big on skee baU and has
his machines set to dispense coupons for
redemption centers. "Skee baU," he says, "is stiU a
very good game. And it's something that Mom and
Dad can play."
And to further his promotion activities, now he's
getting into tokens, the way of the future for arcade
operators.
To listen to Murray talk about his business, it 's
clear that you're talking to someone who loves the
industry. He's constantly using adjectives such as
"dynamic," "exciting," and "chaUenging" to de -
scribe the industry. And he 's hard-pressed to find a
bad side about the industry, though readers of this
interview wiU see that he doesn't look at things
through rose-colored glasses.
This month's Coinman is 52 years old and
married. His wife 's name is Gayle. And he has two
daughters, Justine and Sheley. A Business
Administration graduate from New York Univer-
sity, his main diversion is a good one; he's into
photography. He has his own black-and-white
developing room and has had some of his pictures
published in Photographers Magazine. He also has
some pictures hanging in a hospital and a museum.
Not bad.
His other diversions include skiing and travel.
PLA Y METER, April, 1978