~1920s one sen pachinko by unknown

Name: one sen pachinko (real name unknown)

Year: ~1920s

Company: unknown 

This early machine uses a large ball, not a small pachinko ball. There are a handful of European machines that use this size of ball.  Note the size of the hole comes out of.

This machine was on display at the Pachinko Museum (パチンコ博物館).

visible on the far left  (from the Pachinko Museum pamphlet)

image of the face of the game

 

machine on the left.  (from the Pachinko Museum pamphlet)

 

There is a similar machine in a famous catalogue that is estimated from around 1929.

１錢の玉遊び [No. 16] (A ball game played with 1 sen) by 日本娯楽機製作所 (Japan Amusement Machine Manufacturing)

There are a few notable differences between this machine the photographed machine above, but they are both strikingly similar.  This one also has the meshed hoop ball entrances, the hole layout is adjusted slightly, and this one appears to have a coin-return slot.

I have encountered a few other machines with a similarly large ball, but even these are extremely obscure (presumed) British games.

unknown hat catcher

 

snooker-themed allwin-style game

WIN pocket from the above snooker machine

pocket from the game at the Pachinko Museum

Each of these pockets has 3 horizontal bands and one center vertical band.  I believe the British machines are late 1920s, though it's hard to say for sure since documentation is scarce.  While I am leaving this machine as ~1920s, it might even be early 1930s.

This Bolland machine was listed as "1930s", but I have yet to get that confirmed.  as you can see by the ball hole, this is another large ball game.

The 3 Sixes by Bolland

 

 

One thing I look for is the ratio of Ball Hall size to coin slot size. we can see similar examples of large ball games if we look back a decade or two earlier.

1910 The Cresset by Cresset Auto Machine Co.

 look at the ball hole size:

 

Pickwick:

A look at the balls:

we can also see larger balls used in earlier French machines:

French slot machine, stamped inside A Bessmann

 

As best I can tell, the use of larger balls began with Pickwick style machines, but then fell out of fashion in the early 1930s.

A few German wall machines post-World War II used similarly sized white balls, with a number of popular machines in the late 60s and into the 70s. Many of these German machines were imported into Japan in the 1970s, and a number of Japanese arcade machines in the 1970s copied aspects of the German designs.