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 Since the prices are out of date and many of the dealers/collectors may no longer be collecting the machine we have purposely left this information out of the web version.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).


What? Who? When? How Much?|
By Dick Bueschel

How old is my machine, who made it and what's it worth?
I try and talk about aesthetics, the industrial history behind a machine, its meaning and purpose and wrap with a few comments about the graphics involved, and the same question comes back.
How old is my machine, who made it and what's it worth?
General antiquers and avid collectors seem to share a common bond. They want to believe they (a) made a good buy somewhere along the line, and (b) have something valuable around the house. And when it comes to coin machines, value seems to go with age.
It ain't so, folks. Much as I would like to relate oldness to value, and rareness to mega value, it just doesn't happen. Coin machines are like cast iron banks, Tiffany period lamps, glassware and bronzes. Some are up there, and some aren't. Some have been reproduced, and some have been misrepresented. And some are sleepers, often valued more for their oddities rather than their straight line histories. In short, you gotta know the territory.
That's what we will try to accomplish with this column. We can't all become experts, but we can learn enough to make that good buy once in a while, and avoid the bad ones. When thousands of different types of the same machine are made it seems odd that some are very valuable while others-that look a lot like them-are not. Faddishness has a lot to do with it, and the name on the machine. Such as the name Fey! Find a Fey name on a coin-op and you've found something. I should explain that, because some Fey trade stimulator machines aren't really that valuable. But most Fey automatic payout slots are.
Charles August Fey-a German (Bavarian) by birth, and wanderer by inclination-came to the United States from Der Vaterland, ending up in San Francisco in the early 1880s. Industrious, clever and highly inventive, he got involved in coin machines very early, making his first machine in 1885. Fey, and a man named Gustav F.W. Schultze (and another named Gustave Hochriem) really gave birth to the slot machine industry of today. True, there were coin machine makers in the East, in Brooklyn, New York City, Elmira, Syracuse, Rochester, Columbus, Detroit and mostly in Chicago, but Schultz and Fey and Hochriem created the basic automatic gambling payout machine formats. The slot machine illustrated in the masthead of this column is a Schultz format, developed in San Francisco in the early 1890s and copied in Chicago and, in an unlikely technology transfer, in Paris, France. The Chicago makers were the D. N. Schall Company, Paul E. Berger, the Cowper Manufacturing Company and Charles A. Wagner. Notice something. Other than one Anglo name, most of these names are of German origin. It can probably be said that the automatic payout slot machine was a German invention of the late 19th century, only it was created in America.
In the early 1900s the Fey family says the late 1890s, but I claim 1906 based on the metallurgy, components, cast cabinet and graphics, and I pick my date as a prototype was damaged in the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire Fey did a wonderful thing. He married the 3-reel display of older machines, the payout slides of a machine made in Detroit by the Caille brothers (See, those German names again), coupled the reels to punched discs that made the machine a mechanical computer, and created the first modern automatic payout slot machine. The basic 3-reel format holds true to this day. Glad to be an American (while still drinking San Francisco steam beer with his displaced countrymen) he called it the LIBERTY BELL.
If you want a valuable slot machine, find a Fey LIBERTY BELL. It is very unmistakable. It has little golden colored cast iron feet, a cracked Liberty Bell symbol on top, 3 reels with card playing symbols, an all metal black painted cabinet and the names "Chas.Fey & Co. S. F." in the top casting. You can't mistake it for any other machine. Yet hundreds of people do for the very simple reason that it is worth anywhere from $75,000 to $150,000 depending on who you are talking to, such as a seller or a buyer. 3 are known; maybe a 4th. Yet at least 25 were made as its serial numbers go that high.
The problem is that just about everybody else after that named their machines the LIBERTY BELL, or the similar OPERATORS BELL, put on the little feet, and even kept the name long after wooden cabinets came in to make the machines lighter. The big maker being the Mills Novelty Company in Chicago, who started making their LIBERTY BELL in 1907. And then everyone (Watling, Caille, Silver King, Industry Novelty, Burnham & Mills and some others) copied Mills. Or revamped-that is, rebuilt the Mills machines in their image until the coming of World War 1 when the wooden cabinet cast front machines finally entered the picture. That continued until the 1960s.
Suffice to say, we've got some rich history going here, and we'll get back to it now and again. Also, suffice to say, most questions about coin machines are about payout slot machines, and the second most are about pinballs. We've got two of the first and one of the second up for answers this time around, so see how convoluted the machines and the answers (and values!) can be.
And the typical questions? UsuallyHow old is my machine, who made it and what's it worth, said one way or the other?
Q. - I have enclosed a picture of a slot that I recently acquired and would like to restore. Any help that you could provide with identification would be greatly appreciated. Jim White, Groveland, FL
A. - A perfect way to make the point that slot machines often appear to be one thing, but have become something else, with the change having an effect on value. This machine was originally made by the Mills Novelty Company in Chicago, probably as a Mills 25 JACKPOT "Poinsettia"of 1929 or so. If you take a look at the top right of the cabinet, just across from the playing handle, you'll see a die stamped serial number. More than likely it is in the neighborhood of 230,000 to 260,000, and that dates the original machine. But by the early 1930s jackpots, at first unique, became common. They also got bigger and better. So the Rockola Manufacturing Company, also of Chicago, bought up wads of old Mills JACKPOT machines and put on new fronts with a coupled mechanism to drop three-not just one-jackpots. They called it the Rock-Ola SUPER TRIPLE. So what we have here is a Mills 1929 mechanism, left, and a revamped 1934 Rockola cabinet, right. Together they make a machine worth more than the original Mills. It's all written up on page 95 of An Illustrated Price Guide to 100 Collectible Slot Machines, Vol. 3 (Hoflin Publishing, 4401 Zephyr Street, Wheat Ridge, CO 80033-3299, phone 303-420-2222, price $19.95 plus $2 postage) and is valued at around $125 to $400 as a junker up to around $2,000 in excellent condition. The Mills JACKPOT is worth half that.
Q. - I am sending photos of a pinball game recently acquired in an estate sale. I have looked in all the pinball books but am unable to find information. I would appreciate any information on the game and its value. It uses ten glass marbles and operates on a 6-volt wet cell. The pinball was manufactured in Seattle, Washington by "Rube Gross & Co." Cliff Denney, Lewiston, ID
A. - Welcome to the pinball rarity club! If you believe that all pinballs were made in Chicago, this will be a surprise. Sure, 99-99/100ths were. But there are a few tantalizing auslanders that make the study of pinball interesting. In the early days of the game -- 1932 to around 1935 -- many of the game ideas came out of the West Coast, from Southern California to the tip of the State of Washington, and some producers even made their games there. Rube Gross is one. He started late in 1934, and finally folded his game tent a few years later. In the meantime he created many very interesting games. FURY was his best seller, created in 1935. The name came from the highly original little kickers all around the playfield that whacked the ball all over the place once it was in play. That's why the batteries were needed. Value? Hard to say, as it hasn't been cataloged in a price guide. But on the open market it'll range from $250 to $400 depending on condition. Most pinballs don't go that high, while some go well beyond that. Once again, you've got to know the games.
Q. - Enclosed you will find a picture of a 25 slot machine made by the Mills Novelty Company. According to a book in the library there were only 1,400 of these machines. It was built between 1933 and 1940. It has a stamp on the side that reads "Genuine Mills machines bear a trademark exactly like the above. All others are imitations." I have already received an offer of over $20,000 from a collector in Florida. I am still waiting for an offer from a collector located in Southern California. I am selling to the highest bidder. Ray Brooks, Arlington, TX.
A. - Take the Florida offer if the guy wants it that bad, but be ready to give the money back. The problem is that this machine is not what it is reputed to be. First, it isn't a Mills. It's the Japanese copy, made by SEGA Enterprises Limited as their 1960 model MAD MONIES in a "Criss Cross" version. A former Mills employee took the drawings and samples to Japan, and they made a very creditable copy which they mostly sold in England in the middle 1960s. Actual production dates are 1960 through 1970. About 20,000 of them were used in U.S. Service Clubs in Vietnam and elsewhere throughout the British Commonwealth and the Far East. It is likely that the Mills sticker is a reproduction stuck on the cabinet. Dealers tell me that a SEGA 1960 model MAD MONIES is worth around $300 wholesale and $600 and up retail. I don't know what you paid for this machine or where you got it, but a good look at some of the current price guides or readership of columns like this might save you and the potential next buyer a lot of heartache and money. I know that this is not the answer you expected, but I hope that we are helping you and others who face similar situations. Knowledge is not only power; it's safety. It's not that SEGA machines are bad. They aren't, and some owners prefer them to the Mills models as they play better and the mechanisms are much improved. But they just aren't worth the big bucks. Most offshore machines aren't.
Copyright Richard M. Bueschel, 1991