Gumball Pachinko-like penny machine

[tommy4132]

I pick up this machine up a couple of weeks ago and just finished restoring. You fire the penny into the field and if you get it in certain slots you could trade for merchandise. You would get a gumball just for playing. There was a piece on the gumball portion that was badly damaged and wasn't sure exactly how to repair it, so a made one out of wood and it works great. Here are some photos.

[hanabi]

Wow that looks great!!

Super restoration work

[Moparformances]

nice looking

[MrGneiss]

Wow, is that the one from ebay..That turned out great!!

[mxfaiman]

Looks good.

Can you post a quick vid showing how it works? I'm curious.

[tommy4132]

Here is a quick video. I apologizes for the poor quality and the bad reflection and yes this is the one from ebay. Trade stimulator - YouTube

[Card Shark]

Nice looking machine.

[pachiwall]

Nice work! Especially on the missing gumball dispenser. As I understand...you would get a gumball for each play ( if you wanted), this was to circumvent gambling laws of the time. The excuse was that it was a vending machine, as opposed to a gambling machine. Many American slot machines had a mint vendor added for just this reason. Later they were built into the casting and were an integral part of the machine. The ones with an add on vendor are worth a premium IF the vendor wasn't discarded over the years.
Is the cabinet metal or wood? I originally thought wood (in which case I would have stripped and rubbed with boiled linseed oil), but in the video it sounded like metal, where painting is the only practical option.

[tommy4132]

It was made of metal. I decided to paint it red to give it that gumball machine look. It appeared the gumball portion has not worked for a very long time and was motified to work without. Everthing was there but the wheel that sorts and dispenses the gumballs completely fell apart. Since i removed a lot of original parts and removed and covered the original decals, i doubt it is worth very much. I was just looking for something unique for the gameroom. This thing was not well cared for and was in really bad shape. I new when i got it i was looking to just salvage what i could.

[pachiwall]

I thought it must have been metal, otherwise you would have preserved the wood grain. I can't find the before pics, but the finish looked like old cracking varnish. Plus, almost everything was made of wood back then. Wood have been sweet! Progress...first wood, then metal, now plastic.Turned out nice. I have eyeballed one or two from time to time...but they always end up costing too much, hell they usually START at more than I am willing to pay. Must be a group of collectors of penny drop machines that keep the demand (and prices up). Usually they are simply a "drop in top" type device...yours is what I consider more deluxe and more desirable, with the penny flicker and targets. Looks very difficult to hit ANY of the three top targets!

[hanabi]

Here's the link to the original eBay listing thread

Ebay Auction: Gumball Pachinko-like penny machine

It has a few pics

[pachiwall]

See what I mean. I would have thought that it was wood with cracking varnish. If I bought it, I would have had visions of bringing out the beauty of the grain, and been disappointed when it wasn't what I thought. BUT it would have been my own fault, because I probably wouldn't have asked if wood or metal!