Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

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bob
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by bob »

I had forgotten that the name of the chewing gum sold in these machines in New South Wales was YZ, but remembered only that it was not ACE. Here’s a photo of a rather battered Y-Z machine as used in New South Wales.


YZ Chewing Gum 062.jpg

In the very early years of my collecting a YZ chewing gum machine appeared in the window of a small antique shop just around the corner from where I lived. The shop was closed for the Christmas holidays and tantalisingly I waited every day for it to reopen. After a couple of weeks they reopened and I went to the shop to buy it and was most disappointed to find that it had been sold to a buyer in Perth, West Australia, a collector of vitreous enamel signs. So it’s probably still out there somewhere for Gameswat to find.

I also had another ACE chewing gum machine. It had been stored outside and although the vitreous enamel cover of the machine was in good condition, the mechanism inside was rusted and corroded.
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by pennymachines »

Hey Bob - could you post a bigger, better picture of your fabulous Monument Cigarette Vending Machine for the Museum?
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

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I've taken some more photos of the monument cigarette machine. It's a hard machine to photograph.
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by bob »

Today in researching something I am about to write dealing with one of my most unusual restorations, I came across a couple of answers to recent concerns. The book I was looking in is a German book called Automaten Welten. There I came across another maker of a figural match vending machine the existence of which has been written about in this forum previously. It’s a German vending machine made in 1939 by Bruno Hoehne apparatenfabrk in 1939. This is also confirmed by another German book Schoene Alte Automaten. Both books also feature a perfume vending machine made by W Seeger in 1920 which is the same machine as I wrote about above, the Midget Perfume Spray. One of these machines without a marquee was sold in an Australian country town in February of this year and I e-mailed a couple of Australian friends about this at the time:
Attached is a photo of a machine similar to the one in the recent auction in Toowomba. It has a lovely hand painted marquee. It was originally offered to me by the Hans the husband of a German lady running an antique doll shop in Parramatta nearly 40 years ago, who was selling a couple of coin op machines. He wanted a price higher than I was prepared to pay for this machine, but I bought a couple of others from them... I saw it again years later (1988) in an antique collectibles shop in Queensland on the Newell Highway. The shop owner said it was not for sale as it was in his personal collection, but took my phone number and said that if he were ever to want to sell it he would let me know immediately. Needless to say, he didn’t, and years later I heard that he had sold it to someone else. C’est la Vie.
So I never had the Midget Match Merchant in my collection, but did have the lovely Australian Perfume Fountain, which I neglected to state previously, was also appropriately located in the bathroom of our home for many years.
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by pennymachines »

Bob wrote: Thu Jun 21, 2018 2:00 am It's a hard machine to photograph.
Sorry to be a pain Bob, but do you have bigger versions of those images to upload? With the background cropped the image is less than 200px wide so it doesn't really do the machine justice.
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by bob »

Sorry to be obtuse Mr Pennymachines, how do I get "bigger" images?
By the way, I thought I had posted them upright, not on their sides and could not find how to alter.
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by bob »

Here's a photo of a machine I came across in New Zealand in 1993. This was a cast iron Cadbury's vending machine with vitreous enamel plates that had been found bricked in behind a wall in a shop in New Zealand some years before. I don't think the machine is still in New Zealand.
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by pennymachines »

Wow, that's a beauty Bob - nabbed for the Museum.
I've rotated your other pics (and made changes to fix image orientation from iPhones etc.) I'll PM you about image sizes.
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by bob »

Wow Mr Pennymachines ! I've looked in the Museum and what you can do with a photo is fantastic.
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by 13rebel »

Yes indeed! Great job Mr.PM
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

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I learnt recently from a collector friend in Sydney that he had bought the Old Thro Ball machine at an auction sale of showman’s equipment in about 2001. The machine was in a much more deteriorated state than in the photo that I have published here which has a date stamp of 1988. However, although the photo was taken by the owner in 1988, I did not see the photo or these machines until a later trip to Sydney 1994. I then bought another machine shown in this dated set of photos, the Whirlygig but more of that below.*

My Sydney collector friend says that the object of the Old Thro Ball machine was indeed to catch a ping pong ball in the cup. This was fairly difficult at first but the player did not lose the ball if it did not land in the cup. Mostly it was returned for another shot, so that one got about ten shots before the ball was actually lost and it did not return to the ledge that propelled the ball. After a while one learnt how much force to exert on the ball in order to land in the target. He got a bit bored with the machine and sold it on to a collector in Adelaide a few years later. When he bought it at auction the cabinet paint was peeling and he stripped it and re-polished the cabinet which he did not consider to be the machine's original one. So, presumably the machine survives in Australia.

*Topic split & moved to The Whirlygig fortune teller - Site Admin
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by bob »

Here's a copy of the Shelspeshel Australian patent.
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by pennymachines »

Thanks for that Bob. I've added them to the Pokies article (together with 20+ new pokies in the gallery). As I suspected, the Shelspeshel patent doesn't claim anything very novel that wasn't already in the trade stimulators it was based upon. It refers to seven small technical improvements and:
improved spring control means and arrangement thereof adapted to be actuated by the player whereby he may control the speed and rotation of mechanism parts
Hmmm... SkEpTiCaL

Talking of Australian-made machines, what about these three?

A very Art Deco 1931 Weighing machine by the Bousche Scale Co. of Australia (described here).
Bousche-Scale.jpg

A very basic kiddies horse ride:

31013689.jpg

and a more substantial job, circa 1946, by John Dow & Co., Flemington Victoria (Pat. 7737-46?)
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gameswat
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by gameswat »

That's A US made scale PM, by Barnes called the Navco. Just has an Aussie operators badge on it. This happened a lot over here as often the real makers name is removed or scratched off to keep the operators monopoly safe.
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by gameswat »

Tut tut PM, Bob already talked about the Dow horses on this very thread - see page 2! :o :burp: :tut
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by pennymachines »

I am suitable contrite and a tiny bit more educated. !!UHOH!!
Maybe one of us should inform the Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences, Australia that their scale wasn't made in Oceania.
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by bob »

The Bousche scales had a lovely art deco design but the mechanism wasn’t so great and they weren’t very accurate. Consequently they were operated in New South Wales where the government weights and scales department checked scales in shops selling food etc., but not personal weighing machines. So Bousche scales and some other makes of scales were able to be operated there but not in Victoria where the weight and scales people checked these machines regularly and issued them with a license and stickers or lead plugs that went on the scales when first operated.
I spoke to a curator at the Sydney Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (Powerhouse Museum) at length a few months ago re coin op machines and sent him a stack of photos relevant to what had been discussed and did not even get an acknowledgement that they had received them. Rather disappointing.
The Dow Kiddie rides had beautiful wooden horses that were carved by and maintained by Robert Bartlett, a rocking horse manufacturer of 50 years. In later years they used a more modern looking fibreglass horse as shown in Mr Pennymachines illustrations.
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by pennymachines »

After the old La Guardia smashing bandits in New York bit, here's some rare footage showing banks of Jubilee Rivieras being played and the machines being assembled, presumably in Nutt & Muddle's factory at Barcom Avenue, Rushcutters Bay.

Image
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by badpenny »

Hilarious bit of film that.
The bloke who just lifts a complete machine up and plonks it straight into a cardboard box, reminded me of myself….. I've got an ear on each side of my head too.

I assume the machine that's emptying its hopper is destined to be rediverted back to quality control to find out why it's done that.
BP :cool:
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Re: Australian Manufactured Coin Op Machines

Post by aristomatic »

Some selective editing at the end there......?!?

Reminds me of a video shot at my house, the camera took various shots of different models, e.g. handle being pulled, close-up of reels spinning & stopping, then the coins spitting into the payout tray. Then in the editing, shows handle pull of one machine, then cuts to reels of a different make machine then finally edits shots of the payout from a 3rd different make and model machine. Nothing wrong in that as they are not inferring it's the same machine and probably just used the best individual shots that's all.

Thanks for the heads up Mr pm, not seen that one before and particularly as it showed one of my current Jubilee models being played, which is always nice to see.
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