the Nic Costa Archive version 1.1

Overview

Nic Costa is one of the premier researchers of coinop history.  Similar to what Dick Bueschel achieved in the USA, Nic Costa pursued with the UK's (and world's) coinop history.  

The Nic Costa Archive: Coinop History is an initiative out of Canterbury Christ Church University in the UK overseen by Dr. Alan Meades.  The archive consists of all of Nic's index card catalogues and research files, which have now been digitized.

Download a ZIP of the Nic Costa Archive v1.1 from archive.org

Related Books

Some of Nic's books on coinop:

Automatic Pleasures: the History of the Coin Machine

More Automatic Pleasures- The Slot Machine Revolution

Penny in the Slot: Conceiving the Internet- the Birth of the Coin Machine 1735-1883

Dr. Alan Meade has also published a coinop book:

Arcade Britannia: A Social History of the British Amusement Arcade

Archive Structure

The archive is currently in version 1.1 but I hope for this to be an iterative process.  Currently none of the files have useful names, but there is now a folder structure setup to help assist finding information.  One purpose of the archive is to help inform the world of the materials within.  For example, pages of negatives are scanned in, but the negatives themselves have not undergone preservationist scanning.  Likewise, some of the materials found within are done with quick scans, not preservationist scans.

Since the research is centered around UK/Europe, countries outside of that range like USA and Japan often have their own folders.  The sorting system I set up is still quite preliminary.

Here is the current folder structure:

1. flyers & photos & misc
1. allwin backflashes
2. flyers, ads, catalogues (UK, europe)
3. Japan
4. magazines, newspapers, articles
5. misc
6. paper, scraps, letters
7. Photographic Views Phototype Derbyshire
8. postcards
9. Samson Bolland Holloway (family interviewed late 1970s)
10. Stereoscopic and Mutoscope nudes
11. The Album of Folkestone
12. USA
2. index cards
1. Arcade Locations
2. Coin-op Articles
3. Companies - [A through Z]
4. Companies French
5. Companies German
6. Companies US - [A through I -- more sorting needed]
7. Company - [Bally (Bingos), Daval, Evans, Exhibit, Mills, Rock-ola, Skill Control, United]
8. Machine Types
9. Machines - [# through Z]
10. Machines General Info
11. Machines US
12. Magazines
13. NEED PLACING
14. People - [A through Z]
15. Societies
3. photo slides & negatives

Highlights from the Archive

To begin, I want to give examples of the last 2 main folders, so we are going in a somewhat reverse order.

The "photo slides & negatives" folder contains scans like this:

The "index cards" folder is a database in paper format.  This is a wonderful glimpse in to how research would be conducted before the days of affordable and readily accessible computers.

Companies - C
Caille Brothers

Machine Types
Strength

Machines - M
Miniature Cricket

People - W
Whales, Oliver

There are many wonderful bits of ephemera to be discovered in "flyers & photos & misc".  Within there are a handful of subfolders, and let's just glance at a few of the things we find:

flyers, ads, catalogues (UK, europe)

Japan

letters from Japanese pachinko historian Kazuo Sugiyama from the 1990s!

magazines, newspapers, articles

paper, scraps, letters

postcards

postmarked 1908

so many postcards of piers

Samson Bolland Holloway (family interviewed late 1970s)

Stereoscopic and Mutoscope nudes

USA

Continental Bingo by Bally

Turf Club by Chicago Coin