The Soccer by Jentzsch and Meerz

[bryans fan]

EXCEPTIONAL!!!

[wembleylion]

WOW! Gameswat, your workmanship is absolutely brilliant.
John

[arrgee]

As always Gameswat.............. absolute pure craftsmanship, very well done.

[john t peterson]

Simply Stunning!!

J Peterson

[gameswat]

Geez you guys are hard to impress.......but I'll take those comments as a compliment. cheers

[pennymachines]

It's good for another 100 years!
Here's a different version of the Fussballspieler, with gravity-fed 10 Pfennig auto payout.
This one was made by West & Ludwig (see The Berlin Connection).

[gameswat]

I guess I just stumbled onto the reason this circa 1928 J&M export Soccer is so rare in the UK. I was clearing out some old coin-op paperwork to sell and came across a mystery box? Turned out to be a huge collection of "The Coin Slot" magazines from the '70s and '80s that I'd completely forgotten I ever had! Decided to read through them again and amazing all the new info I've found. Was over 10 years ago I last read them. Anyway I promptly found a story by Nic Costa with this information relating to the Jentzsch & Meerz agency in the UK.

From a Nov 1982 article titled "Scott Adickes and Company Ltd."

The secret of their success lay in the adept manner in which they had secured a number of key distributorships. Ad Adickes' German connections had enabled him to acquire the much vaunted agency for that most famous of German companies, Jentzsch & Meerz of Leipzig. The agency had long been held by another expatriate German, Ernest Haas. By the late '20s, Hass was a very sick man. Because of this, his business suffered and the sale of J&M machines in England slumped. Adickes seized upon the opportunity this offered and began importing machines direct from Germany for sale in England, undercutting Haas' prices in the process. Soon the German manufacturers could not help but notice that they were selling more machines through this 'upstart' than through their recognised agent. By the time of Haas' death in 1933, Adickes had been awarded the agency.