What can you buy with a penny these days? Not very much, it turns out. And not that it matters anyway, since pennies are getting harder to come by. Collectors are starting to hoard them, and banks are getting stingy with giving them out. In England, pennies haven’t been minted for general use since 1967, but once in a while in an old-time pub you can still find a penny arcade game. There are no big payouts or flashing lights, but it’s still a pleasant way to waste time. We just got a nice one at the gallery, blissfully absent of circuits and chips, and it’s quite the attention-getter. For those with long memories, let’s scroll back the years.
As a whole, the category is known as coin-op and includes everything from peep shows to slot machines and photo booths to pinball. Its mechanical origins grew out of the Industrial Revolution during the late 19th century when advances in metallurgy, precision manufacturing and volume assembly began to take hold. Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope was among the first of its kind, and its popularity created a whole new entertainment medium: one with easy access, individual involvement, and repeatable results. Entire businesses sprang forth in England and elsewhere, some related to existing amusement parks but other stand-alone entities that became known as penny parlors.
The golden age for such amusements took place during the first third of the 20th century. All kinds of penny amusements were introduced, including strength and intellect testers, puzzles, fortune tellers and those that offered a prize for the completion of some modest activity. You could listen to various sounds or watch the illusion of a brief silent movie as a series of static images rotated on a wheel. By the 1920s, there were shooting galleries, stationary bicycles and machines that dispensed candies and other goodies. Demand exploded as the quantity and variety of such machines continued to grow.
In the 1930s, a new type of penny arcade game was introduced: pinball. Pioneered by men like David Gottlieb and Ray Mononey, the concept was to create a contest between human and machine whereby the human could improve his/her results through repeated play. It was addicting, so much so that some municipalities sought to ban the game due to its purported link to delinquency. That semi-illicit aura only served to make such games more popular, and before long there were pinball games with such sporting themes as baseball, horse racing, shuffleboard and target shooting where players could rack up points to earn free play or prizes.
Things changed in the 1960s with the advent of electro-mechanical games, and again a decade later when arcade video games began to take over. Penny arcades became video arcades, and a second golden age of person game-playing ensued. However, the dawn of the 21st century brought with the ability to play such games at home, and the category began to sag. Those relatively few arcades that survive today are either in high-traffic tourist locations or connected to eateries such as Chuck E. Cheese’s. All the same, to sit down and play an old mechanical penny arcade game is still mesmerizing. Who needs all those lights and sounds anyway?
Mike Rivkin and his wife, Linda, are long-time residents of Rancho Mirage. For many years, he was an award-winning catalogue publisher and has authored seven books, along with countless articles. Now, he’s the owner of Antique Galleries of Palm Springs. His antiques column appears Sundays in The Desert Sun. Want to send Mike a question about antiques? Drop him a line at silverfishpress@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Why collectors are starting to hoard pennies
Reporting by Mike Rivkin, Special to The Desert Sun / Palm Springs Desert Sun
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