Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

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bob
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Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by bob »

It’s most gratifying that my contributions here are appreciated. Thanks Speedwell, Bryans Fan and others in the past. I can’t write a weekly column but will try to contribute more often. Thanks also to Mr Pennymachines for actually doing a “Wineasies From Down Under” item on this site.
Consequently I’ve assembled a collection of other Aussie machines that might be of interest to people here.

A lot of these coin op machines are vending machines that I managed to collect. Most of these I searched and found the patent for, occasionally the patent details were on the machine. Some machines may have been made in England and used there as well as in Australia, sometimes they may have been made in the UK or US especially for use in Australia with Australian products. Some are one-offs or made in small and occasionally large quantities by an operator for his own use, sometimes they are original mechanism and cabinet designs, sometimes straight out copies. Examples of the copied type of machine were made after World War 2 when there were restrictions on the import of non essential/luxury items and copies of American juke boxes were made by operators who wanted juke boxes at a time when they were most popular and profitable but not available to import. A great deal of research on this area was carried out by the late “Frog” who created a website that still exists on the internet that provides a lot of information on the Australian “Musicola” jukeboxes and also mentions the Australian copies of the Wurlitzer 600 and Model S jukeboxes. The Australian manufacturer actually called itself the Wurlitzer Phonograph Company of Australia Pty Ltd without any authorisation from the American Wurlitzer Company which took the Australian manufacturer to court, but lost the case as the Australian company did not have the extended crossbar on the “t”.

The link to the Musicola site is: http://musicolajukeboxes.com/
Some of the Australian made machines date from the earliest days of coin op machines and of course some of the latest bandits now go all over the world from Australia, although in earlier times coin op machines made in Australia were made for use exclusively in Australia and perhaps New Zealand.


Sharp's Shock Machine 2.JPG


Sharp's Shock Machine 1.JPG


Sharp's Shock Machine .JPG

I’ll start with a couple of Australian shock machines. As is often the case with Aussie machines there is no manufacturer’s name on the machine and it is impossible to trace the date of manufacture or any history of the company making them. Such is the case with the floor standing machine headed with the sign “A Shocking Experience” of I have come across a number of examples. I would guess its date of manufacture being in the nineteen thirties or forties probably in Melbourne or Sydney. Another Australian shock machine has been discovered this year by Norm Sharp who founded and used to operate “Sharp’s Magic Movie House and Penny Arcade Museum” in the Victorian country town of Echuca. Norm went on a buying trip to the United States in before opening his Museum in 1988 and I put old penny coin slides on these machines and also had some of my machines on loan in his Museum. The machine that Norm turned up was originally operated on the New South Wales town of Maclean in aid of the local hospital. It is a very early machine dating from 1897 and has full details of the manufacturer on the printed label on the front of the machine. The mechanism is rather primitive but still works and is attached to the front of the cabinet. It can be lifted up and out due to the cabinet’s tongue and groove construction, a rather neat solution to the problem of repair and maintenance.

I have come across a number of examples of the Australian made “A Shocking Experience” although the machine has a name, no manufacturer is stated on the machine, a not uncommon occurrence with Australian machines.


aussie shocker.JPG


aussieshockerface.JPG

Another electric shock machine found in Australia is the Electro made in neighbouring New Zealand.


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Other Electric shock machines operated here include the Detroit Medical Battery, commonly thought to be British but actually American. These would very likely to have come here via its British Distributor with a mechanism, sign and coin entry made for a British/Australian copper penny coin. Other electric shock machines found in Australia are Mills floor standing and countertop models and British countertop or wall models.

Another Australian machine is the Ja Jo countertop Puncher, a uniquely Australian small countertop strength testing machine. I found the Australian patent for this which was granted in 1934 although strangely, the label on the machine gives the unlikely and incorrect wartime patent date of 1944. I only ever came across one of these in my collecting but recently DD’sToys, a contributor to this site, has come across a few of them surviving together till now together.


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JaJo.jpg

A larger Australian strength tester is the Durkin Punching bag machine. This is an Australian machine similar to the Mills and Mutoscope punching bag machines with a similar mechanism. It was made in the 1920’s by Durkin Engineering Company who provided equipment for showmen. The family is still prominent in the Agricultural Show business in Australia and have rides at various Australian shows including chairlifts etc.


Durkin Punching Bag041.jpg

Some Australian made fortune tellers were made for outdoor use by showmen and use the long established mechanism of a cup holding the coin, the weight of which dropping engages a segment of a gear with a gear on a spinning pointer. These machines were on location at Sharp’s Penny Arcade for some years.


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Another Australian strength tester is the Handy Grip Test which is a copy of a machine made by both Caille in the US and also a German manufacturer. The same company, a coin op machine operator in Sandgate, a seaside suburb near Brisbane Queensland, also manufactured a coin operated rifle on a stand.


Handy Grip Test Close Up.jpg
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Gun Sandgate Queensland038.jpg


German Handy Grip.jpg
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Another Australian coin op is a copy of a Salter weighing machine. I have the Australian design patent No 7585 of 1929 for this by Robert Burke who manufactured and retailed catering equipment in Melbourne and was still in business in Melbourne 50 years later when I started collecting. It is identical to a Salter scale except for the cash box bulge in the column.


Burke Scale.jpg
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Some Australian machines are quite likely one offs. In this category would be the Sydney Luna Park workshop made Cleopatra machine which was sold at the Luna Park auction sale and has been in the Echuca Penny Arcade museum for some years. The player holds a bar whilst the machine takes a reading of his or her electric “conductivity” somewhat like a lie detector does.


Cleopatra Machine Sydney Luna Park039.jpg

Another machine that has Luna Park connections is the Bomb a Tank which has a moving plane dropping the penny with the player trying to land it on the tank. If you succeed you get your penny bank. Unusual in that there is no access to the machines mechanism only to the cash box, the machine’s mechanism was built, then a floor standing cabinet around it, with no provision for any maintenance or repair.


Bomb a Tank588.jpg

There are quite a lot more Aussie machines but I’ll write about some more of these in a future contribution.
Last edited by bob on Fri Jun 08, 2018 1:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by bryans fan »

As usual a fascinating read, thank you Bob.
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by special when lit »

Great read.
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by 13rebel »

As always,interesting and well written,thanks Bob.
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by ddstoys »

Always a great read bob your contributions are always first class.

So many great Aussie machines out there.
I have an Aussie built Bryan’s clock that I purchased from gameswat built around an imported mech and a ply cabinet. I also have one of the rifle stand games as well.

Also a few other Aussie built games but I’ll wait and see what treasures bob pulls from his archives first.
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by treefrog »

Where are all those lovely rare Aussie bandits I want in my collection :D

Good read
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bob
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by bob »

I am afraid that readers here such as Treefrog are going to be deeply disappointed if they are hoping for extensive coverage of Australian poker machines here made by Aristocrat or Jubilee. They would all know far, far more than I do about such machines. I have never collected these I'm afraid, for a number of reasons.
For a start they have been highly illegal to possess during the whole period of my collecting. It is possible to get a permit to own a limited number of "antique" machines but this is difficult to obtain and to my knowledge only two were ever issued. One to Norm Sharp when he owned an antique Penny Arcade and one to a Melbourne collector who has contributed here. Another reason is that most Aristocrat machines available here are more recent than the coin op machines I was interested in.

Sadly most of the interesting older American machines from the '20s and '30s were sent back to the US by the container load many, many years ago by the man in charge of the service department at Ainsworth Industries. He realised many, many years ago, the value of these old machines in the collectible market in the United States and was able to obtain them very cheaply as trade-ins from clubs that ran poker machines who were buying new machines and still had old American pre war machines in their sheds.

I have of course repaired and restored such machines for other people and am familiar with their mechanisms. My own collection of Australian poker machines consisted of an APEX early Australian poker machine that my son found the workmen at the factory next to where he was working had been using in their lunch break. He offered them $20 for it in 1982, they were sick of playing it, and another machine was added to my collection.


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In 1984 I came across an old retired penny arcade operator who had nothing left but a few parts. I asked if he had any machines and he said: "no not really except an old pokie that the kids used to play with, but you wouldn't want that". I offered him $25 and that's how I got my Mills Keeney jackpot conversion front gooseneck poker machine.


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The following year, in exchange for two of them, I restored 12 Little Duke poker machines that were not working and in a terrible state as they had been left in storage for decades in an attic by an operator. He realised that they were now becoming valuable to collectors. I enjoyed restoring the first six as they all had different problems to overcome. Restoring the second lot was very boring and tedious as I by then I really knew a lot about Little Dukes. These were all the poker machines that were ever in my collection, although I have of course restored and repaired quite few others.
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by john t peterson »

Bob,
Will you please move to Tennessee and be my newest best friend? I've given up on Gameswat.

J Peterson
Lonesome in America. !!PLEASE!!
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by treefrog »

Thanks Bob, I love the award plate on that Apex machine, I don’t think you could fit another poker symbol on it.....

I don’t recall it being conclusively discussed on the forum before, but never fully understood how Australia ended up with cards symbols, US fruit and U.K. certainly earlier machines were numbers....... Pokers are my favourites, if not the most difficult to read.

Keep on posting, all we need is some more of the more experienced collectors U.K., US and other locales doing the same. !!THUMBSX2!!
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by bob »

As Treefrog states early Australian made poker machines had playing card symbols. I have checked all my photos of Apex, Aristocrat Clubman and Clubmaster and various early models of Silver Jubilee machines and they invariably had poker playing card symbols. Why these were chosen is not really known but it does seem likely that Australian club poker machine players readily understood these symbols and their values and therefore preferred them to any other kind.
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by speedwell »

Thanks Bob for all the interesting and informative posts as always. Great pictures too.
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

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Not even the suggested week has gone by and yet a further contribution from me, again dealing mostly with Australian made machines. But then it is a long weekend here in Oz, in honour of the Queen’s Birthday, no less, which is still months away.

One of my earliest coin op machine acquisitions was from an elderly operator who had bought the Penny Patience machine company which made large wall “golf” type machines from an Australian patent on this type of machine. In this machine , which had a jackpot mechanism, half the coins played went into this visible jackpot. After some years the machine was declared illegal as a gambling machine. Consequently the manufacturer an operator of coin op machines eliminated the jackpot mechanism and put the machine on a floor standing cabinet. He improved play by replacing the captive washer used to propel the coin with a tapper mechanism. The machine has a hidden adjustment that the player is not aware of, which makes the play more or less difficult, by raising or lowering a “stop” at each end of the machine and the coin’s travel. The elongated holes in the playfield are there, the operator explained to me, to stop the player banging the glass (which is a “fluid” material) with their fist and momentarily trapping the penny which would subsequently travel slowly and gently drop onto the level below, and so on enabling an easy win of the jackpot.


Penny Patience with captive washers036.jpg


Penny Patience Floorstanding Model.jpg
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I have also come across other examples of the Penny Patience/Golf machines that have been made in Australia in rather basic metal cabinets.


Tin Patience.jpg


Aust Golf type machine052.jpg

The same manufacturer who made the Penny Patience also made a very basic similar machine called the “Penny Skill”. This was a very simple machine which was very easy to win on. The operator said that this was a good feature, as the player would inevitably keep playing until he lost and then the penny became the operators.


Penny Skill.JPG

He also made a similar very small basic fortune teller which had a spinning pointer, set in motion by the weight of the penny.


Have Your Fortune Told.JPG

Another machine that he manufactured in some quantity was the Skillo, a very well made “Clown Catcher” type of machine.


Skillo.jpg
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He also manufactured a companion machine to the upright model Penny Patience machine, the “100 % Skill Test”. This was a machine which returned your penny if you completed the track. However once you learned how this could be done, you could do it every time and so the machine lost the player’s interest, particularly since all that happened was that you got your own coin back.


100% Skill Test.jpg

Another machine that he manufactured was an almost exact copy of the Exhibit Supply Silver Bullets machine except that his was a single not dual gun machine and it used a copy of the unique Jennings Little Duke poker machine coin entry. The second photo shows the Exhibit Supply version of the Silver Bullets.


Silver Bullets single gun Australian copy037.jpg


Exhibit Supply Silver Bullets053.jpg

The person who originally patented the Penny Patience machine also took out a patent for a “column” type machine but I have never come across the actual machine. There is however an Australian column machine the Skillmaster, manufactured by an Australian coin op machine operator who actually put his name on the machine, a rather well made and attractive machine in a rather large cabinet about the same size as a British Challenger.


Skillmaster.jpg
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Another machine made here was the “Rock and Roll” where again the player manoeuvred a penny in the hopes of success. I have the Australian design patent with the date of 1947.


Rock and Roll Reaction Tester042.jpg

Only one example has ever turned up here of the “Mystery Cabinet”. This cute fortune teller has a “C” as a clue to the machine’s maker and a Bolland type card vending mechanism and may well be British.


Mystery Cabinet.jpg
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The “What does the Old Witch Say” card vendor is another machine where only one example has turned up here and again it may be a British machine.


What does the old Witch Say040.jpg

Cricket is an example of an American machine aimed at the Australian/ British market by changing various American features for British/Australian ones. The baseball bat has been changed to a cricket bat on the playfield and the lever that projects the balls has also been changed to a cricket bat. The original graphics were long gone when I got the remains of this machine and have been remade by me with the aid of cigarette cards of cricketers.


Cricket.jpg
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This trade stimulator gambling machine was made by a Sydney game manufacturer A.O. Buchanan of whom not much is known. Copied from and looking like a machine from the 1800’s it was made by Buchanan in 1937. Some were chrome plated as this one was; others were copper plated with a Florentine Bronze finish. It was a copy of the Little Duke, a trade stimulator that was the third machine made by Mills of Chicago in 1898. A version without the curved edges was made by the American Royal Novelty Company as the Royal Trader and then by Mills Novelty Company as the Mills Trader in 1904. The Australian machine simplified the betting variations into a more basic version by adding the name “The Australia” to the casting where the various gaming options were illustrated and relevant coin entries were on the original machines.Interestingly enough the lovely designs for the cabinets for all these machines were taken from those used by the Chicago Cash Register Company on their cash registers in the early- mid 1890’s, most likely a case of the designer recycling earlier successful designs of his or hers.


The  Australia.jpg
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Another interesting example of the reuse of much earlier machines is the case with the Charles Shelley “Shelspeshel”. The mechanisms used in these trade stimulators were from French trade stimulators dating from the 1890-1910 single wheel machines. These were illegal in France at the time they were bought cheaply by the Sydney coin op machine operator Charles Shelley after World War II. Shelley took out an Australian Patent No 136877 of 1947 that patented some features not present on the original machines. He then rehoused the machines in a more modern sheet metal housing and operated these machines. Several examples of these machines have survived.


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Sydney manufacturers of Poker machines such as Ainsworth “Aristocrat” machines and Nutt and Muddle, “Jubilee” have been most successful and manufactured many models of pokies/bandits that readers of this forum will be much more familiar with than I am, as these machines have been exported to many countries including the UK, so I will not deal with them here but there have been other manufacturers. The copy of the Mills Hi Top without its troublesome escalator system made by and labelled APEX on its front is perhaps the probably the best known of these and the earliest Australian poker machine.


Apex Bell.jpg
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A machine of interest is a Mills Novelty Co “QT” model poker machine with a distinctive reel symbol of a kangaroo, a couple of examples of which have turned up over the years. This probably occurred with this model having non standard symbols for poker machines, making it easier to introduce an unusual symbol. Unfortunately I don’t have a photo of this, perhaps Gameswat has one?

I had intended to put a couple more items in this posting but the system won't let me put any more photos on, there must be a limit to the number of photos or the amount of data. Never mind they will keep till next time.
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Last edited by bob on Mon Jun 11, 2018 2:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by john t peterson »

Goodness, Bob. What a delightful treasure trove of information complete with pictures. You're definitely on a roll here.

Accordingly, I now pronounce you a "National Treasure, Australia." You join the august ranks of Treasures which include Mr. PennyMachines, "National Treasure, Great Britain."

Well done, Sir.

J Peterson
Bestower of Honors, American Division :didact:
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by gameswat »

Bob wrote: Mon Jun 11, 2018 8:19 am
A machine of interest is a Mills Novelty Co “QT” model poker machine with a distinctive reel symbol of a kangaroo, a couple of examples of which have turned up over the years. This probably occurred with this model having non standard symbols for poker machines, making it easier to introduce an unusual symbol. Unfortunately I don’t have a photo of this, perhaps Gameswat has one?
I don't remember seeing a QT with Aussie strips Bob, the one I found locally was original with the US Iron Cross strips. But I do have this copy of a Nutt & Muddle award card that was on a 1950's machine we owned, and it clearly uses the QT Iron Cross symbols. Sadly couldn't copy the reel strips as they were too perfect to try and remove, as much as I wanted them.
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by bob »

Clearly my memory is astray here and what I saw was not a Mills QT but a Nutt and Muddle machine with the kangaroo symbols. I don't really remember it as a Mills QT, just a poker machine with the QT iron cross symbols and so assumed that it was a QT that I had seen.
I am sure that Rory is right and it was a Nutt and Muddle Jubilee machine. Thanks Rory for posting the award card which shows it all.
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

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I had intended to post the next couple of items last time but the system would not accept any more photos so here they are now.

Another machine, or rather the mechanism of one that I came across was a ticket vendor. As it had no plates on it, I never knew what type of ticket it vended or who had made it, nor have I come across another one in my travels. I assumed it was Australian, but it could be of British manufacture. It eventually went to Gameswat and finished up with DD’s Toys who has made an attractive wooden case for it. Has anyone come across a similar ticket vendor and can supply some information as to its manufacture and use?


Ticket Vendor.jpg
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I’ll include in this posting on Australian manufactured coin op machines another ticket vending machine. Certainly not of Australian origin, but one that I feel would be of interest to readers here, it belongs to a fellow Australian collector who found it many years ago. This is a small cast iron machine, similar but not identical to, others I have come across in a reprint of a German coin op machine catalogue of the very early 1900’s. It is complete with a most attractive vitreous enamel sign plate. Its last and perhaps only commercial use, was to sell tickets for a merry go round in Australia. Its original intended use, if one can judge by the decorations on its attractive cast iron front would most likely have been to sell tram tickets, although it was probably sold as a generic type of ticket vendor.


Merry go round Ticket Machine049.jpg

As I’ve previously stated I was interested in coin op machines from an early age. I was particularly interested in gambling machines that paid out money or tokens, although I was mainly interested in the mechanics of these rather than the gambling aspect. Aside from poker machines which were rare, as they were not legal outside of clubs and some country pubs, I was interested in rather complicated gambling type pinball machines that paid out tokens or registered credits that were illegally paid out by the shopkeepers where the machines were located. As the cost of playing these was threepence if they were in shops and sixpence (5 cents) if they were in pubs, I watched people lose their money on these rather than playing them myself. To give an idea of the value of such an amount at that time, sixpence was the price of a cinema ticket for me then, so these were costly games for a youngster to play. However, very early on I won a huge jackpot on one of these located in a hamburger shop and for a while I was sucked in by this and spent rather more money than I should have on such machines. Needless to say I never won another such jackpot.

In a building in the “city” of Melbourne (ie the central business district) opposite my father’s shop, there was, on an upper floor, the workshop of an operator of these types of machines where I whiled away quite a bit of time watching them being repaired and built. Once I borrowed, actually hired for a small weekly amount, a poker machine. This weighed about thirty kilos and I carried it home in a hessian bag on the tram, quite a task for a young lad. I was not sure what my parents would think of this, but in fact they quite approved, thinking that when I could see that you could only lose your money on them, I would cease wasting my pocket money on such devices. It did indeed teach me this lesson and since then I have only spent a most negligible amount on gambling of any sort.

Not much happened to further my interest in coin operated machines for many years although I was particularly fascinated by the Bally coin operated pin ball gambling machines. At first these consisted of one ball horse race type of machines known as “multiples”, as one could attempt to increase the odds of winning by adding more coins before actually commencing the game. Later these were declared totally illegal and were replaced by Bally Bingo pinball machines in which the player had to get three four or five balls in line to get replays which would be cashed out by the shopkeeper. One could also try to improve the chance of winning by adding additional coins before actually playing the game. These were brought out in the fifties, sixties and seventies with ever more complex features and variations. They were all over Melbourne in cafes, milk bars and hamburger joints. I resisted the urge to play them as I knew that one could only lose on them in the long run. However I used to watch with fascination as others played these ever more complex games which existed in a sort of semi legal state in Melbourne. My coin op machine collection eventually included one of these types of machine, a Turf King which was the last and most highly developed example of a “multiple” type machine.

These become illegal after this model came out and the place of this type of machine was taken by the Bally Bingo/in line pinball machines for many years with ever further development of novel features with increasingly compelling player appeal.


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Many, many years later, when I started collecting coin op machines I explored this operator’s abandoned premises in the basement of a derelict ice skating rink. There I found a couple of wrecks of machines that I restored, a Town Broker and a Target Skill, some parts and pinball back glasses and some interesting correspondence and other printed materials. But that’s another story, for another time.


Town Broker Game of Skill.JPG


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In the 1940s and 1950s this operator made most of his money from the Bally “multiple” gambling pinball machines. These could no longer be imported from the US and consequently, with the aid of the technical skills of a young telephone technician who “moonlighted” for him, he built such machines using telephone equipment such as “uniselectors , which were readily available from “surplus stores” which appeared after World War II and by rebuilding earlier Bally non gambling pinball machines. Some of these used Australian original painted back glasses that had the customary horse racing theme such as “Valley” and “Valley Derby” named after the Melbourne Moonee Valley racecourse.


Valley Pinball Backglass048.jpg


Valley Derby047.jpg

As well as operating these highly lucrative illegal and semi legal games, this operator also operated conventional coin op machines and made a couple of machines which much later became part of my coin op machine collection. One of these Ask Me Another was a straight out copy of an Exhibit Supply Fortune Teller machine, the other, the Witch Fortune Teller, was, I believe, an original.

The mechanism of these was very basic. The coin dropped through the slot to the coin bucket inside and the weight of the coin tilted the bucket until the coin fell out of it and it and it returned to its original position. Whilst the lever was tilted a mercury switch mounted on the lever powered a telephone type uni selector mechanism that lit up light globed behind the glass on the machines.


Ask Me Another.JPG


Witch Fortune Teller.jpg
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A machine of a similar type is the Your Fortune and Lucky Number which I believe was made in the Melbourne Luna Park workshop that made a number of similar machines that lit painted glasses detailing fortunes etc., from behind. This one is unusual in that it activates an electric motor driven pointer.


Your Fortune and Lucky Number054.jpg

I assume this lifter type strength tester to be Australian as I have never come across it in the US or UK and no markings are on it to indicate where it was made. The handle is of an interesting design catering for people of various heights.


Australian Lifter055.jpg

This is an Australian copy of the very popular British Conveyor machine.

Elevator Australian Conveyor copy051.jpg

I’ve always thought of this machine as American but Gameswat believes that it’s an Aussie machine copied from an American one using the American sourced belts of 35mm photos. Maker unknown.


Beauty on Parade stereo viewer before020.jpg

There have been other Australian made coin op machines not covered here, such as kiddie rides. These include a lovely series of horse ride machines made over 70 years ago by a company that commissioned a rocking horse maker to make them. The wooden horses were carved Robert Bartlett, a rocking horse manufacturer for the Dow manufacturing Co who had over 200 of these made. Each horse was named after an actual racehorse of the era. These were operated for over 50 years with the horses maintained by Bartlett. Some of these kiddie rides were still in use commercially until a few years ago. Kent Amusements, a rival kiddie ride company, also operated similar machines, also with horses carved by Bartlett.

Unfortunately I did not have a photo of one of these machines but have copied one from a book. This is actually the definitive book on Rocking Horses, a beautifully illustrated book, written by a friend of mine here in Melbourne:”The Rocking Horse, a History of Moving Horses” by Patricia Mullins. The photo is copyright to her and the book and any reproduction should be acknowledged.


Bartlett Horse on Kiddie Ride.JPG

In later years there have of course been large operators and manufacturers of poker machines and other coin op machines such as Hankins, who made five pinball machines here in Australia as well as many videogames, and Leisure and Allied who again operated and made, mostly under licence to overseas companies, many videogames from Space Invaders on, but these machines don’t fall under my area of interest.

Let me finish this posting however with some rather charming one off machines, that are an example of the quaint, almost “folk art” ball type machines, made by a showman in his seasonal layoff period.


Sloper's Flip Flop Machine045.jpg


Sloper's Flip Machine043.jpg


Sloper's Old ThroBall Machine046.jpg


Sloper's Whacko Machine044.jpg

The next and final postings of mine on this subject will cover what is quite a large area of Australian coin op machines, vending machines.
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gameswat
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by gameswat »

The Old Throball machine looks like BMCO or Bollands to me. Much like this Beat the Goalie in the museum. Very similar case and coin return on lower rhd.

Pretty sure I've seen an advert somewhere with a Ping Pong machine that might relate to this too?
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bryans fan
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by bryans fan »

Many thanks Bob for sharing these photos and reminisces with us. I just wish you were nearer!
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bob
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by bob »

Clearly Gameswat is right when he considers that Old Thro Ball is more professional looking than the other three showman’s games. However I think that all four show their origins as the remains of professionally made games that quite likely originated in the UK. This can be seen from the details in the door construction, the headboard and the hardware, such as coin tracks and handles , payout cup, etc., which have recycled.

Old Thro Ball is probably the closest to its original game with the cup near the top that brings to mind a game I have previously seen somewhere other than Beat the Goalie. However the coin return is nothing like the one on Beat the Goalie which for years I thought was a Matthewson machine because of the side handles that were on all his sports machines. It’s easy to get sucked into misapprehensions by the hardware. At that time British coin op collectors and historians thought that Beat the Goalie was a cobbled together machine. However I included these for their quaintness that had been introduced in Australia to these remnants of other machines.
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by gameswat »

Bob wrote: Fri Jun 15, 2018 3:23 am However the coin return is nothing like the one on Beat the Goalie
Well even though it's hard to see much detail in the Throball photo it sure looks to me like the blanked off coin return is the same matching rectangular shape as the coin slot, which in turn looks just like those used in the Goalie - missing the outer coin catching hardware of course which does often get broken off or deliberately removed. There are other similarities like the quite unusual small central control knob as used on Goalie, the central locks used on both doors, and rarely seen on a cashbox door as just about always on the end. The small arches on top corners of the door window are also very similar to my own "Over the Moon" Penny flip by BMCO and some other unusual larger cases they made. This machine just seems too good to just be a cobbled together one off in my view.
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