This information provided via the courtesy of Vintage Slots of Colorado, Inc.

If you have an antique coin machine and want to sell it, please send me an email. If I am not interested in it, I will forward your email to a collector who probably is.


The following information is the web version of Coin Op on CD which was a book all about antique coin machines and it was distributed on a CD-ROM. This book was written in 1995 and sold in 1996. Please take this into consideration when reading the articles. There are no plans to come out with version 2. However, we do plan on periodically updating the information on the web version.
The CD version of the book has pricing information as well as a dealer directory. Since the prices are out of date and many of the dealers/collectors may no longer be collecting the machine we have purposely left this information out of the web version. However, we do keep in contact with many dealers and collectors who are actively buying and selling machines and would be happy to put you in touch with one if you have a machine you are looking to sell.

If you are looking to purchase an antique coin machine you may also send me an email and I will put you in touch with a reputable dealer. Odds are, I will not be selling the machine you are looking for (since I rarely sell any machines).


Finding Antique Coin-Ops Requires Searching
By Dick Bueschel

Some years back, maybe as late as the early 1980s, when you asked a coin machine collector or dealer where they got a certain machine they were quite likely to say, "In a barn," "In an out-of-the-way antique shop," or, "Under the elevator shaft of an old slot machine factory." I didn't make this up, and machines have been found that way. I have made finds in the basements (rat infested, I might add) of old skid row buildings that had once been arcades, in run down factory warehouse sheds, in junk yards and on the commuter train, the latter leading to discussion that led to a discovery. Anyone who has been into vintage coin-ops for any length of time will have a pocketful of stories, and someone once suggested that a book on the subject of finds would be interesting reading.
But when you ask someone today, the answers are likely to be quite different: "In a mall," "at the Chicagoland Show," or the most likely, "I got it from a specialized coin machine dealer in St.Louis, Missouri," or wherever. Times have changed. The quick and easy conclusion is that all of the good old machine finds have ended, and we have flushed out all we'll ever find in the woodwork. While there is a degree of truth to that statement, it really isn't so. Perhaps there aren't as many machines readily available in the "finder" market as their used to be, but major discoveries are still being made. The amazing fact is that the finest peanut vending machine ever found was sitting in a shop in upstate New York late in 1992 and went on to garner big dollars from a specialized collector. The same is true for trade stimulators and slot machines, not to mention jukeboxes and arcade machines. The finds are still being made, and some of them are stunning. It's just that the finds are being made in different places, and you don't hear about them as often as you used to.
One reason for that is the antique mall. When malls first started we had now idea that they would change the marketing of antiques so drastically. Well, if you heard it here first, they have. And I'll tell you how.
For that we have to back up a bit. Let us return to those Golden Days of Yesteryear, when all you had to do was take your station wagon (vans were in their infancy) and tool around the countryside and find stuff. This was particularly apropos for coin machine collectors. I remember one collector telling me about the trip he took along the Ohio River from Little Egypt at the tip of southern Illinois to the eastern end of Ohio, finding stuff all along the way. He virtually build a collection of trade stimulators on that one three day trip. His excitement at making his finds was infectious; he explained how he had gone into a dark, old antique shop at the bottom end of Indiana, where he spotted a tall turn-of-the-century poker machine along the back wall. Four shops later he found a bartop dice game, and when the trip was over he had five or six machines he didn't have before. These used to be called "buying trips." The machines weren't in old barns or garages or basements, but right out there for everybody to see in an antique shop. The important thing was that you had to find the shop, and go in and see what they had. It made a tour exciting. The prices were good, too. It's not that the dealer didn't know what the machines were worth. It was that pricing was in its infancy, and no one knew what they should sell for. So even priced at what the traffic would bear, some machines were high priced, while others were dirt cheap. You had to be on your toes selling, and keep your wits buying.
Contrast that to today's market. For one thing, there is a price guide for everything. Not that they reflect true values. Often they are way off the mark, as it is difficult for any one person or a pricing panel to know everything. Particularly in a field where the coming and going fads are so volatile and rapid. But if something is listed in a book at $500, no matter what the condition, you can bet that a dealer has it at $625 or thereabouts to cover the possible palaver that accompanies coin machine buying. One thing that we have tried to do with this column is present rational and realistic pricing. In the long run it helps us all. Dealers that have machines sitting around for years gathering dust at the listed prices aren't doing themselves any good when they can turn them into productive pieces if they are priced where the market can accept them and actually buy something. Same for the owner of a machine that wants to sell it. Just because that price guide says $500 doesn't mean that you'll get that in a sale. People that have made high bids at auctions based on book values, only to find that they are stuck with the machines when they try to sell them for anywhere near what they paid for them, can attest to that problem. To keep machines churning, and create a market for both buyer and seller, we have to get real in our concept of what things are worth. Otherwise they sit, no matter what their rarity or desirability.
But now I want to get back to the antique mall, and the greatest change in coin machine finding, and marketing. When that antiquer of some years back made that trip along the Ohio River the targets were shops, and what might be in them. Nowadays it is a lot easier to go from one town to another and see antiques because there are malls in just about every area (would you believe that Spearfish, South Dakota, has two!). But there is also a price to pay for that convenience. Somehow we are visiting shops much more and enjoying it less, to paraphrase an old cigarette advertising phrase that even president Kennedy seemed to enjoy. In those days past it was up to us to find the coin-ops in dingy shops, and as travellers we had an advantage over the dealers that had to stay put, or couldn't be everywhere at once. But these days, when someone comes up with a great machine, and takes it into their mall booth, bingo! Before you know it there are a dozen dealers gawking at it, and zip! zip! zip!, based on the opinions of some and the price book knowledge of others, it moves through four or five hands with a bump in value each time before a collector ever sees the thing. Sure, finds have been made in malls, but they are few and far between as the dealers in the same malls are there first and foremost. A nice piece hardly has a chance to bring the excitement and flush of finding at a reasonable price to someone that will keep it.
Do I miss the Good Old Days of "hittin' the shops?" You bet I do. I enjoy malls, don't get me wrong. But they are the Wal Marts of antiques, and have a way of blowing out the little old ladies that sell things from grandma's house. Is it any less fun today? No, it isn't, because antiquing is fun no matter when and how you do it, and finds are still being made. Good ones, too. But you've really got to beat the bushes in the countryside, or have a lot of knowledge and know something about a machine that no one else in a mall knows, more often than not pitting your expertise against a couple of dozen people that work hard at their craft and are often, and oftentimes more often, as smart as you are. The amazing thing is that if you want to collect something ¥ anything ¥ you can start the collection today and be well in your way in a few months. Malls can help you do that, faster. Butthere was a time when you could pass a barn with a sign "Antiques for Sale" that wasn't there the week before, and would be gone in a month, and find something that became one of the treasures of your collection. These may be the good old days, but there were some then, too.
Q. - I have a Groetchen PIKES PEAK. You get 5 balls for a penny, plus gum. The object is to move a ball from the bottom to the top. What is its age, availability and retail price? Do you have suggestions for marketing this item? D. B., Irving, TX.
A. - The Groetchen Tool Company PIKE'S PEAK made in Chicago was one of those machines lost in the shuffle of World War 2. It came out in February 1941 as a raging success because it was cheap, and fun. It's classified as an arcade game, although it was usually found in cigar shops and ice cream parlors. It is just fun to play, and working that ball up to the top of the mountain is a true coin-op challenge.
By the end of 1941, with the coming of the war, production ended, and PIKE'S PEAK never came back. In terms of value it retails for about $275, with $125-$150 a normal wholesale level. It isn't a common machine, but it is not particularly rare. But to this day, it's a gas to get that ball up there.
As for marketing it, I'd try a classified ad in the Coin-Op Section 66 of Antique Week, bring it to a coin-op show, or put it on consignment in a shop or mall. Someone that plays it will just have to have it.
Q. - I hope you might be able to give me some information about my Speciality Mfg. Co. machine. By placing 1› in the slot you can shoot at the target. I would particularly like to know the age and value. W. T., Kansas City, KS.
A. - Your machine is in the classic arcade format of the countertop gun, first created by the A.B.T. Manufacturing Company in the middle 1920s. Specialty Manufacturing Company of Chicago made a modified version in your "penny back" (that's the little cup on the side) No. 48 TARGET PRACTICE model which they sold from 1927 until World War 2 (by which time the company name had changed to Specialty Coin Machine Builders). Your machine can be dated to circa 1929 by its company name and Jefferson Street address. Specialty also made No.49 LITTLE PERFECTION gum vending and No.50 BABY GRANDE floor standing models of the same machine.
As for value, it depends a lot on condition. You did say yours was working but, most important, you didn't say if the "penny back' feature still works. That's usually the feature that goes out. Based on the old 1927 advertisements you are missing the cast aluminum nameplate on the front, and possibly the machine name and instructions marquee at the top back. Look to see if there are any screw holes there, for that's how the marquee was usually fitted. The going rate for a dealer sale of the Specialty No.48 "penny back" in good condition is around $450 or so, so if you're selling you can expect to get about half that. But the missing cast front and marquee hurts your value, so I'd say it's in the $75 to $150 range.
Q. - I was given a MUTOSCOPE coin-op machine by an old friend of mine. It doesn't work. The white metal bracket that holds the pictures is broken. Does anyone have parts, or should I just forget it? N. F., Whiting, IN.
A. - You should never give up on a coin machine. Maybe there are times, I guess, but not in the case of your nifty International Mutoscope Corp. MUTOSCOPE MODEL S. Early Mutoscopes were cast iron, and expensive. When the company decided to take some of the cost out of production in 1929 they made the cabinet of sheet steel and some of the working parts out of pot metal. The machine picked up the nickname "Tin Mutoscope" and, in the case of the MODEL S, the "Letterbox." It should have been "Brittlebones" as these things broke all the time. The good news is that because of that, the parts have been reproduced. Try "Mutoscope Headquarters" at National Jukebox Exchange, Box 460, Mayfield, NY 12117 and explain what you need. They'll probably have it.
(c) Richard M. Bueschel, 1994