scans: Mechanical Memories Magazines

The Internet Archive has been blessed by user @allwin_archivist uploading 80 issues of Mechanical Memories Magazine!

Beginning with issue 1 from April 2006 to issue 87 from October 2014, the only issues not included here seem to be 2, 12, 22, 57, 75, 76, 77.

There also seems to be 3 auction catalogues uploaded to the account.

Download them all at The Internet Archive.

Mechanical Memories Magazine Issue 01 (Apr. 2006) (600DPI)

Mechanical Memories Magazine Issue 87 (Oct. 2014) (600DPI)

scan: The Costa-Haskell Collection of early and important Coin Machines (1997)

I am very happy to share one of my favourite auction catalogues.  This catalogue featured some of the most wonderful machines made between 1885-1915, and only a few machines outside of those years.  This is one of the most important collections of European coinop history ever assembled.

Download the PDF from archive.org

The Costa-Haskell Collection of early and important Coin Machines (1997)
@ archive.org

sample pages:

scan: Amusement Machines by Lynn F Pearson (1992; 2010)

This is a small pamphlet/book with a quick history of British arcade machines, first published in 1992.

Download the PDF at archive.org

Amusement Machines by Lynn F Pearson (1992; 2010)

scan: ヨーロッパに生まれ日本で育ったパチンコ百年史 [A Centennial History of Pachinko Born in Europe and Raised in Japan] (2002)

A perfect companion to the episode TVムック故郷は欧州　意外なパチンコ進化論 (TV Mook Mystery Journey: Surprising theory of pachinko evolution) that I posted, and also did an arcade exploratin for.  This book explores the history of pachinko in the context of European machines!

ヨーロッパに生まれ日本で育ったパチンコ百年史

I am very grateful to my friend who digitized this for me.  I seldom buy books twice, but I really needed a scanned copy of this to translate the text.  Without a digital copy, it because extremely difficult to read.  So an extra copy was purchased, debound, and properly scanned.

A visit to the Hastings ' pier

We even get to see Nic Costa again!

exploring the arcade in 1992-01 TVムック故郷は欧州 意外なパチンコ進化論 / TV Mook Mystery Journey: Surprising theory of pachinko evolution

I just recently was able to share 1992-01 TVムック故郷は欧州　意外なパチンコ進化論 / TV Mook Mystery Journey: Surprising theory of pachinko evolution in another post, so of course we need to dive in and focus on the games!  The machines here follow the video, and so we early games from Japan, USA, UK, and France.

Be sure to check out the post about the video, but here is the English subtitled version again:

ダービー2 (Derby 2) by 京楽 (Kyoraku)

The next 2 games are toy Corinthian game bagatelles from Japan.  They do not use a plunger, they are played by using a small wooden cue to hit/push the ball up the shooter lane.  While most USA bagatelle toys had plungers, many places around the world still loved the versions where you used a small cue.

These next two photos show large Corinthian bagatelle games, probably from the 1930s.

large Corinthian tables, part of the birth of smartball

this is most likely a sign for a Corinthian parlor

small machines moving in and out...

When the pandemic came to North America I already had a pile of things waiting for me at the mail pickup place in Ogdensburg NY.  Lots of us in Ottawa would send packages to places like MyUSAddress and pop over the border to grab things.

There was a brief window when the Canada / US border was open and didn't require an expensive PCR test, and I took the opportunity to run down and grab 2.5 years worth of packages.

it was a lot

I say "brief window" because with the Omicron variant on the rise I presume that any day now the borders will once again have limitations.  Thankfully I was able to get my entire haul.  

There were 4 big items in the batch: