Puck gripper

[pennymachines]

Catalogue description: "An Edwardian cast iron 'Test your Strength' machine, in the form of a smartly dressed young man whose outstretched hand has to be squeezed to register on the calibrated dial on his chest, with running ostrich trade mark".

On small foreign coin, not working. It was in an auction today - I'd be interested to hear what others make of it. Anyone seen one before?

[gameswat]

WOW!! Damn, I would've bid hard on this one if I'd seen it. I was the under bidder on the Everitt grip test recently and in comparison it was pretty average. The original paint on this is superb. I'd have loved having this thing arrive from overseas with the mystery of opening the back to see how much is there and what it needed to run! The mech can't be that complicated anyway. I'm calling made in Germany. I have a friend with a staggering collection of European and US figural machines who would have killed for him.

[badpenny]

I have a recollection of something similar in the Nic Costa collection, but I can't find the book at the minute to check

[coin-op]

I have a recollection of something similar in the Nic Costa collection

I think you might be thinking of the Ally Sloper vending machine featured in a drawing in his book.

Regarding the gripper, seems nice, even if it's a repro. My thoughts are that the balance of ageing and colour on it is just too good to be true. Reminds me of the cast iron mechanical savings banks which appeared going on twenty years ago; they all had a pretty aged look to them. The way you spotted them as fake was often that they didn't work properly, so I'd be interested to know what the mech was like on the gripper...did it work?

[pennymachines]

I'm calling made in Germany. I have a friend with a staggering collection of European and US figural machines who would have killed for him.

It's interesting you say that, because I thought exactly the same. Looks more European than American, definitely not British, more German than French. I wonder if your friend could throw more light on it.

I have a recollection of something similar in the Nic Costa collection, but I can't find the book at the minute to check

I'm guessing you mean the Electric Soldier (below). That's the closest looking machine I've seen in the UK. It was catalogued as c1875, maker unknown, Germany, but I remember discussion as to its authenticity. Somebody assured me it had started life as a clock and some naughty person had botched it into something resembling a coin-operated shocker - notice the crudely bent coin slot on his chest. Needless to say it didn't work.

Question is - was the Edwardian Gentleman born over 100 years ago in Germany, for example, or more recently, somewhere like China?
When I first looked at the image my immediate reaction was that it had to be a repro of some sort. Something about the "perfect patina" just didn't ring true and it reminded me of other clever fakes I'd seen. I sent the picture to a collector friend without hinting at my suspicions. His reaction: "It looks like a repro that has been aged to my uneducated eye! Like the cast iron money banks."

Counting against these doubts was the fact that I'd never seen one before - either repro or real, so I made the trip to Banbury confident that I could solve the mystery. The outcome wasn't as clear cut as I expected. The auctioneer related how the machine had arrived with assorted other junk from a gentleman who claimed to have had "some of those wooden framed slot machines" which had rotted beyond salvage - the remnants of an arcade operated by an ancestor of the family. The gentleman allegedly made no fanfare about the machine and it was the auctioneer who suggested it should be held back for their specialist fine art sale.

So the backstory sounds quite plausible, except I'm curious as to why a machine from an old British arcade has never been operated on a British coin. Was the chap just wily enough to know the auction house would ensure the item was properly marketed without any prompting from him? The above photo from their catalogue appeared at ukauctioneers.com. I'm not sure whether it made the Antique Trade Gazette.

I pored over the machine for 10 minutes or more but could find nothing absolutely conclusive. However, a number of things just didn't feel right:

1. Dark stained paper dial. Paper foxes and ages in various ways. I've seen it take on an overall brownness when applied directly to a metal surface which has thoroughly rusted, but this looked more like it had been dipped in woodstain or suchlike. Also the paper looked too thin.
2. Original paperwork can sometimes be distinguished by the deep impression of the printing made by the old presses. By comparison, a photocopy's print seems to lie on the surface as seemed to be the case here. The heavy staining made this difficult to discern.
3. The inside of the casting had been painted gloss black and some sort of hard dark mucky looking stuff looked like it had been applied to all the metalwork, springs, nuts, bolts, etc. I have never seen the like before in a genuine old machine - and I've seen a few.
4. The threads on some of the larger bolts had the rough look of cheap modern parts but it was difficult to tell because of the aforesaid muck.
5. The mechanism did not work, partly, no doubt, because it was hard bound by the mucky stuff, but the brass cogs that turned the pointer were meshed too tightly as if they had not been accurately cut. I had the impression it might be possible to get it to work, being a fairly simple mechanism, with some judicious fettling. I felt that rather than being jammed through age and neglect - it had never functioned. (As you squeeze the fingers, the figure's wooden eyes roll).
6. I didn't notice any of the hand and coin wear you would expect around the gripper fingers and coin slot.
7. The pretty patina which roused suspicion in the first place. Paint on old machinery is sometimes crazed with fine lines, but I've only seen this heavy crackled paint effect (around the bow tie, for example) on cleverly distressed reproductions.

Somebody more knowledgeable about old springs and bolt threads could probably say definitively whether they were modern or not and if you could remove and inspect the paper dial, it would almost certainly hold the answer.

So, I can't say conclusively it's a fake. I can say that in many years of collecting I've never come across a machine before which didn't announce itself as real or fake within a few minutes of close inspection. That was enough to scare me off and I bid low on that basis. I know there were three phone bidders, so the final price of £3900 doesn't surprise me. If it was a copy, it seems reasonable to assume that more will emerge eventually.

[slotalot]

Hi, I have found some more photos of the Electric Soldier in the dark depths of my computer, it shows the workings in the back :thumbs:, as for the mystery gripper I have a feeling that I have seen one before but I can't remember where

[gameswat]

Interesting. I can't believe that this is a fantasy piece that was recently made up from someone's imagination. The stuff from China is made in bulk so we'd be swimming in these things if that was so. And for the trouble somebody would've had to go to that's not much profit? Could they really have hoped for it to bring really serious money in a non specialist auction?? There are far easier ways to rip people off.
I did see a cast iron Electric Sailor that a US buyer got from Europe four years ago that was built from scratch and sold for very serious money. Though on inspection the base of the machine was just welded plate, rather than one hollow casting. Guess that was too hard for their foundry to accomplish. Another one was being offered a little later with identical paint!
As you can tell from my underbid on the Everitt gripper my idea of bidding high isn't very much, so if I'd seen this there's no way I'd have come away with it!

[gameswat]

Penny Machines - I'm interested to know if the rear of the machine was open or if it had a back? Thinking about it I realised the machine looks very much like a Germanised version of the Caille Uncle Sam, even down to the way the hand grip sits below the bottom of the waist casting. Did you get any photos of the mech? Thanks.

[pennymachines]

Hi gameswat,

There was no back on it.
I took a camera, but foolishly didn't use it. I now wish I'd taken a few close-ups of the inside. Someone might have spotted something interesting. I agree, I don't believe for a moment it could be the one-off creation of an imaginative faker. If it's a reproduction, it was recast from an original and there are probably more. Time will tell on this, I guess.

In the internet age, provided a rare slot machine is properly catalogued on-line (as most items in fine art sales are), the top collectors or their agents will find it. I know this from years of bitter experience. And if the item isn't 100% kosher, it's likely to get a higher price this way than if it appeared in a slot machine auction where many experts would examine it "in the flesh".

The auctioneer mentioned that another collector made the trip to view it, and I think he went away convinced it was OK. Perhaps it was impolitic even to discuss it here, but the mystery intrigued me and I was interested to see if anyone could throw light on it.

[john t peterson]

Never one to let ignorance stand in the way of opinion, I'd like to get into the fun here.

I'm with Mr. PM on this. The coincidences on this story are just too incredible to support the original line of coming from a British arcade.
- Why a black substance on the interior instead of a healthy coating of rust?
- Why no signs of normal abuse from the punters?
- And, for heavens sake, why no pants??

A clever faker, in my opinion. I'm happy to take it off the poor sucker who bought it for a fraction of the hammer price.

[pennymachines]

The other thing I forgot to mention was the smell. A smorgasbord of aromas assault your nose when you stick it into the innards of an old slot machine - congealed oil, grease, nicotine, mould, must, dust, and other indefinable smells. All I got from this was a faint but distinct smell of new paint.

[badpenny]

AAH ...... the thick plottens! I'll bet it's had a repro coat of paint

[slotalot]

AAH ...... the thick plottens! I'll bet it's had a repro coat of paint

Or a Repro painted coat!!!!... sorry...this is getting silly PM is right though, you do get lots of age smells with a genuine machine.. I know my latest project smelt like a mouse cage when I first got it...Bl***y mice they will eat anything :blub:

[pennymachines]

I know my latest project smelt like a mouse cage

I found a Jennings Governor like that - ponging of a urinal and full of mouse droppings.

[gameswat]

I know exactly what you mean about the unique smell of old machines....but wood absorbs and cast iron doesn't. A cast iron machine with a long missing back is not likely to smell of much since any odour will have wafted away over time. I presume the glossy black paint on the interior looked new? So possibly someone had a go at doing this thing up in the recent past? I see this a lot, half-assed amateur resto jobs that never work right!! If that exterior paint is actually new then why didn't the expert responsible do the rest?!? I still think it's real.

[pennymachines]

Agreed, you wouldn't expect the musty smell from a cast iron game without a back on it, but I would expect if anything a slight old oily smell, not a new paint smell. The black paint was over the entire inside of the casting and the hard brown stuff over everything else, including springs and screw heads (except the brass cogs). To achieve this, the whole mechanism would have had to be disassembled. Why would someone do that unless they were trying to disguise something? If you disassembled the mechanism, wouldn't you concentrate on getting it to work rather than gumming it up with paint? I wish I'd photographed it to show what I'm talking about.

If that exterior paint is actually new then why didn't the expert responsible do the rest?!?

I assume they did, but you would expect more effort to go into patinating the front of the machine. Besides, it's much harder to "antique" a non-painted metal surface. That's the most suspicious thing - why was every part of the mechanism, including the large spring coated in this hard paint-like stuff? It looked like the effect you might get if you mixed brown paint with dust and other rubbish before spraying it on. And again, why would anyone - original manufacturer or later restorer- paint the inside of the main casting?

Some tips for spotting fakes here: How to Spot Fake Cast Iron Banks

I still think it's real.

You may be right, but having inspected it closely I remain unconvinced I was handling an antique.

[john t peterson]

Gameswat. you're a romantic. And that is a good thing, I think! I'm still voting with Mr. PennyMachines.

[bryans fan]

Unfortunately I can`t bring anything new to the table so to speak, but I have been watching this thread with interest. My immediate reaction was that it was a repro aged to look genuine, and just like coin op I thought of the cast iron money banks. With PennyMachines having actually seen it, (but strangely forgetting to take photos... it`s his age!) and reading his report I still err on the side of a repro. it looks like painted to look old rather than old paint. If it is a restored original, then it has been clumsily done to look old. Perhaps we shall never know, unless they crop up on eBay in some numbers.
This is not a particularly good comparison, but for what its worth I will show it. I attend steam fairs quite a bit (wearing an anorak naturally) and I like models of fairground stuff. Recently the model stalls have been inundated with models of traction engines, from China, aged to look old (not cast iron, but painted to look distressed).
Also they are particularly good at cast iron repros.
Here is a photo of such an example. This reminds me of the finish on the grip tester.
This is just my opinion.

[pennymachines]

I received the following from Bob - a distinguished collector of ancient slot machines from Oz, whose depth of experience with early and rare stuff is certainly greater than mine:

I think the mystery gripper is probably a genuine old gripper. I would think that it originally had a wooden base which served as a cash box.

There are many, many machines that I have come across in patents that have not surfaced and may not have survived but have most likely been made such as the Ally Sloper coin op machine which is only ever mentioned in Nic Costas writings. Plenty of contemporary illustrations and advertisements show machines that have not survived at all, or have survived in only one known example.

I have come across many bullshit stories told to auctioneers concerning the provenance of machines. Sometimes a story is made up that sounds good but actually undervalues the importance, age or rarity of the machine.

I’ve rust lacquered and/or painted the inside of every one of the dozens of cast iron machines I’ve restored. I didn’t want them to rust from the inside.

However I mainly wanted to write to warn readers not to go to the cast iron fakery site that you have a link to. My anti-virus programme Kaspersky, supposedly the best anti-virus programme blocks me from this site which it says contains a Trojan virus.

That's ironic - a website about fakery with a suspected trojan! I've replaced it with a link to a similar article.
By-the-way, Bob - I was able to log on here with the username "Bob" (capital "B") and the password you use for the Arena. Can you give it another try?

[pennymachines]

More diligent researchers have pointed out that on p.96 of Wenn Der Groschen Fällt... there's a small image of Puck beside a German public swimming bath, Circa 1930. I've updated the title of this thread to include his name.