Discovery and Dispersal of the Holden Collection in Adelaide, Australia.

[gameswat]

From this collection Bob and I were able to discover another very rare machine that had once been in Australia, but sadly had been scrapped as we both only ended up with a part each. The Autarm pistol machine from 1900. I purchased one of the Detroit Medical Shockers shown above and once in my possession realised it was sitting on the rear stand of the Autarm machine. When I told Bob he said he had the cast iron marquee with unique play instructions from the same machine he obtained in a box of parts. So we guess someone either knocked it over or got sick of lugging it around. Only three examples currently known and the last sale was this year at the Morphy auction for $195,200 USD!!

[bob]

Oh the ones that got away!
I’ll attach a photo of the Autarm marquee and instructions. I got this from an antique collector dealer in Sydney about the time that the Holden collection was at Green’s Motorcade being restored.

Autarm Gun Marquee and Instructions

Autarm Gun Marquee.jpg (37.52 KiB) Viewed 4444 times

Interestingly when researching patents many years ago I looked in vain for a patent for the Detroit Medical Battery Electricity is Life electric shock machine for years among British patents as this was considered an English machine described by Nic Costa as the Imperial Shock Machine made by the Imperial Electric Company London 1901 in his book, also an article in Coin Slot showing a contemporary advertisement. Similarly Braithwaite considered it a British machine: “thought to be the product of the United Automatic Machine Co”.

Electricity is Life Before

Electricity is Life After

Altogether I have restored six of these Electricity is Life machines, a couple of which came from people who had restored the Greens Motorcade machines and still had the remnants of these and other bits and pieces. In order to enable these restorations I had a gentleman who repaired transformers and coils unwind one of the coils from these machines to count the turns and then make me replicas for the ones I was restoring. When unwinding an original he found some paper separating the layers of wires in the coils that contained a page from the catalogue of the company that had made the electric shock machine. This was an American company that made electrical indicators that showed servants which room in the house had rung a bell requesting their services. No wonder I couldn’t find a British patent for it, it was an American machine which had been sold in the UK and Australia. On searching further for this machine amongst American patents I found it as evidenced by the Patent posted below. I’ve attached some photos of what I started with and finished up with in my restoration of one of these machines. As Gameswat will confirm sometimes you don’t have much to work with here in Oz.

[pennymachines]

Ah, so those 'Electricity is Life' machines are American. Very interesting. As you say, they had become more or less established as British, the result presumably of there being at least one company importing them in some quantity with mechanisms and instruction enamels customized for the British penny. There are certainly quite a few over here. I always considered them a bit of an anomaly - the design is not at all British in character.

The Autarm pistol machine is a wonderful lump of metal. I see it was made by Splitdorf Laboratory, NY., about whom I know nothing.

And just to prove they're still getting away - how about this... At an auction house local to me last year, a Garrett's Bijou Gold Changer (lotted with other stuff) slipped through for £16!

Lot 103: 'BULLYLAND' DISNEY FIGURES, SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARVES ETC., A 'GARRETTS BIJOU' GOLD CHANGER AND WITH A QUANTITY OF BOARD GAMES, JIGSAWS ETC. Hammer price: £16

http://www.cuttlestones.co.uk/salecatal ... =100&f=350

[ddstoys]

Thanks bob fantastic read. And photos are always a pleasure and to think all this was in Australia.

[andydotp]

First time here in ages but heck Bob what a great article, thanks. Yourself and Gameswat certainly know your stuff - and where to find it.
Regards,
A.

[treefrog]

Nothing to do with this collection, but what about this converted Matthewsons Yacht Mermaid into a Fishtank for sale in the US for $128,000

Don't get too excited as it looks like a recent copy possibly as they have two for sale......would be a shame if it had been original

Interesting that the artist is supposedly Matthews.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Very-Rare-Nude- ... 2426138752

[bob]

Naturally I was interested by this turning up. I telephoned the seller who listed his mobile phone number in the ebay ad. It turns out that he used to have a large collection of antique barbers chairs, advertising signs and coin op gambling and arcade machines including one of the Matthewson gun games. He sold the Mermaid to Jasper in Chicago many years ago but before he sold the machine he had castings made which he turned into two aquarium tanks. He sold one of these and kept the other which he is now selling. His middle name is Matthew.
Congratulations to Treefrog who must be searching the internet really hard to have turned up this item.

[pennymachines]

They look to be very well made and painted. The asking price seems a bit OTT though.

Bob, something I meant to ask (and you're the only person I know who might have the answer) - can you describe what it was like to play the original Yacht Racer and more or less how it worked?
I'm reading the patent 19812 and understand that the players insert two pennies then pump the lever to force air out of vanes along the flagpoles which are set into the two globes. The airflow can be directed towards the ships' sails by turning a handle somewhere, pushing them along as they float. The mechanism sounds quite complicated and intricate. It seems the ships are attached to chains to bring them back to the starting position when the game is over. I've not yet figured how the machine determines when to return the coin, i.e. what ends the race.

[bob]

I’m only too happy to oblige, Mr Pennymachines. However although I had the machine for almost twenty years, I can really only describe the operation of the machine rather than the precise details of the way the mechanism achieves this. The reason for this is that the Yacht Race, unlike most of the machines in my collection, was fully restored, both mechanically and cosmetically, when I obtained it. And in all the years that I had it, it always worked perfectly so that I had no occasion to work on the mechanism. The detailed operation is fully described in the patent of course, but it is indeed a very complicated description in the patent.

The game works as follows. At the beginning of the game the two boats are in a locked position on the side of two half globes that are set in the brass tank of water. The left boat is on the left side of the left globe, the right boat on the right side of the right globe. Two handles, one on each side of the game work leather bellows which force a stream of compressed air through the flagpoles (brass tubes that emerge from above the globes and then point down towards the sails on the two yachts). These tubes may be rotated by each player by two knobs on the front of the machine on either side. These knobs can be seen on the front of the machines directly below the two yachts in the second, close up photo of the Yacht Race, earlier in this forum item, just below the levers.

The right hand lever as well as working the bellows is also used as a standard Matthewson coin mechanism. This works similarly to that on the Matthewson football game, only here the coins unlocks the boats and enables the streams of compressed air to move them, instead of releasing a ball in the football game. However on the football game it is easy to see who has won and the winning player takes the coin from the central payout. On the Yacht race it is hard to see who the winner is, in a close finish and consequently it is left to the machine to determine and pay out the winning penny accordingly, from a rather hidden recessed slot on either side of the machine. It is all the more difficult for players to be sure who the winner is, since as soon as one of the yachts reaches the finishing line, (ie having circumnavigated the globe) both boats are flung back to their starting position and the machine pays out the winner. What has happened is that when setting up the game one of the pennies goes into the cash box and the other penny is held in a position from where it is released into one of two tracks leading to one of the two payout slots on either side of the machine.

The only problems I encountered with the machine, were coin problems due to grandchildren putting too many coins in before going ahead with the game, and also if the water had evaporated sufficiently that the yachts were not fully submerged in the water which created “drag” on them, then they would fly back into the starting position too swiftly and the yachts fly out of their link to the floats and lever underneath them that connected them to the mechanism.

The reason for this being the only Yacht Race game to have survived is that it came to Australia before Matthewson converted all the other Yacht Race games to gun games. These would have been converted as the Yacht Race did not prove to be a successful money making game. It is quite slow to play and can take forever if the players are not both patient and have some degree of skill. The winner’s penny is not returned until one of the players has succeeded in finishing their task. In addition, the water in the tanks needed to be replenished after a certain amount evaporated.

A gun game, in comparison, is quite fast and conducive to repeated play and there is no tank of water to be replenished. Nonetheless, the Yacht Race is a most ingenious game with a very complicated yet thoroughly reliable mechanism, as well as having perhaps the most elaborate and beautiful cabinet of any coin op machine. It was an absolute delight to have it in my collection, not only because of its rarity but for these reasons.

[pennymachines]

Thank you Bob, that was a brilliant description. I can see, like a lot of these early but ambitious designs, it would have been problematic from an operator's point of view. What a fantastic game though! The Blowball, another 'pump and puff' competition (albeit much simpler) also suffers from a tendency to go on too long because players don't understand how to direct the air flow.

[gameswat]

First time I visited Bob many years ago we played the Yacht Race and after quite a few minutes we both abandoned the game about half way as our arms were getting tired! The jet of air is so tiny you had to be very specific at aiming it into the small sail to make the boat move. Even better than playing was opening the cashbox door

[bryans fan]

Thank you so much for sharing this information with us, it is so important that it is put down on paper, and it appears that you are the person best able to do this, apart from Rory.

[13rebel]

Thank you very much Bob for all this well written, interesting and informative information.

[mclemore]

An identical rare Avery scale ended up in the east coast of the United States and then was put on eBay maybe ten years ago? Since it was the only one I've ever seen I bid what I thought was a very strong number for it and I still lost the auction. It went to a European collector.

The two mermaid castings that have shown up... the one on eBay, and the one at Morphy Auctions, can never be used to make a convincing machine. I examined one of them closely last week. It has no back, and I'm not sure what it is made out of but it isn't cast iron (non-magnetic). I didn't look at it long enough to see if it was aluminum or resin. It's only molded on one side, the back of the mermaid (back side of castings is very rough if not stringy). As far as being copied years ago from one of the ones Jasper ended up with, that would answer the how. Jasper's mermaids are now with our Penny Arcadia collection in Los Angeles BTW.