Stamp vending machine that doesn't vend stamps?

[alan57]

Noticed this stamp vending machine on Ebay, unusual as it doesn't seem to vend stamps.

The mechanical parts inside indicate that it vended coins or possibly tokens, never seen one like this before.

Looks like you would put a 6d in the slot and got?

Anybody any ideas what it was for?

[pennymachines]

The plate says Brecknell, Munro (or Dolman?) & Rogers - my guess is a change machine that's lost its instruction plate: 6 pence piece in, pull the handle for a slice of 3 old pennies from each tube. Perhaps the small window? beneath the slot indicates when it's out of pennies... but how?

[brigham]

Almost certainly a GPO item, to give pennies to work a telephone coin-box.
I wonder if it fits the rare Kiosk No.4 (K4)?

[coppinpr]

I guess it could have been used in conjunction with their underground ticket machines. Did the original ones take various coins or only pennies?

[malcymal]

It's a rather nice thing. My 1d old play bandit and 6d bandit sit next to each other and this would be rather nice for change to swap between the two; surely a nice addition to a collection.

[brigham]

Time to search some old station concourse pics...

[malcymal]

Well so far I've found the exact colour match on an old payphone. Maybe something like this could have been bolted to the side?!?!

[coppinpr]

I wonder if it fits the rare Kiosk No.4 (K4)?

That was my first thought but it's not likely. The K4 had a stamp machine and a letter box but they were built flush into the kiosk for security. More likely this was for a,GPO coin op phone but not one mounted in a kiosk, perhaps a hotel, pub, club, or even more likely, an underground station, where it could serve more than one type of machine where it was at least partly kept an eye on. Am I right in thinking that there is a coin chute for the 6ds going out of the bottom of the machine?

Now I wouldn't mind one of these in my collection.

[alan57]

Some update on the vending machine. When the 6d coin is placed in the slot, 2 x 3d bits were vended.
Dates from 1959, when the letter rate went up to 3d.

[pennymachines]

So it's Brecknell, Dolman & Rogers.
I'm not buying the London Underground theory. The BMR ticket machines (which were around as early as 1937) accepted a range of coins and gave change.

[alan57]

The information I got today was from Steve Knight who runs the Colne Valley Postal history museum.
Apparently very few were made. He knows of only 2 that are left (his and this one), his is faulty and he's not sure if this one works at all!

[coppinpr]

Well, the 3d revelation also takes out the phone theory. It would seem stamps are the direction it's leading us. What a convoluted idea; put in a 6d get two x 3d put one 3d in the stamp machine and get 1 x 3d stamp, put the other 3d in and get a second stamp and hey presto! After only 5 mins work you have two stamps!! That's if you had a 6d coin to start with, magic Of course you could buy just one stamp and use the other 3d to play a pin table down the local arcade (or don't buy stamps and play the pin table twice!)

[coppinpr]

Surely the similarities between this stamp vendor and the coin machine must answer the question.