Newbie... first skee-ball machine

hotrodbrando

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Donor 2024
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Hey all, finally checked off a bucket list item and got my first machine out of an auction. I haven't opened it up for exact year but It's somewhere around 1964. That's because the decals I can see have address with Penna as the state, not PA.

Any way, came with a full set of balls, only one is separating. Play surface is hard as a rock, so I need to work on that. The machine a friend has from the same era actually has a leather surface, not cork. I haven't looked closely at what is on here, but it could be leather, as it comes about with other very old and dry leather items I have had in the past... More to come as I dig into this... My Mom (she's 80 ) and I rolled some balls on it, manually operating the ball release. I've got to look it over first before I plug it in so I don't release the magic smoke...

Quarter box still had some in it, latest one I found was 1966.

Side note: I think some "modern" parts were put in it over the years during repairs...

More fun to come!!!
 

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That looks more like an 80's. The 60's machines had a different color
scheme and the mechanical scoring, along with the pull handle on the
coin mech.
 
Looks exactly like the ones that were all along the Jersey shore boardwalks in the 80s and 90s.
 
PCJohn, this one is a Lansdale unit (PTC), I am going to be looking for date codes inside, but the newest it could be is 1985, when Skee Ball was sold and moved, and now by researching a little more, I think the oldest if could be is 1967. I'll try and get under it for the ink stamp on the wood, but the decal for the coin part is the same one they used back till the 50's. I do belive some of the parts have been updated but the majority of it is from the PTC era...
 
This is the original decal on the game. Lansdale was PTC, and Chalfont was the '85 and newer machines... skee decal.jpg
 
Looks like the company has bounced around a lot. From wikipedia:

As the war drew to a close, the Philadelphia Toboggan Company (PTC) contacted Wurlitzer to ask about either licensing the rights to Skee-Ball or selling it outright.[23] By January 1946, PTC was the new owner and manufacturer of Skee-Ball.[24] That lasted until 1977 when Skee-Ball, Inc., was spun-off from PTC under the same ownership.[25] By 1984, Joe Sladek and three other partners had bought the company.[26] Over the next several years Sladek bought out his partners and renamed the company Skee-Ball Amusement Games Inc.[26] In February 2016, Bay Tek Games, Inc., of Pulaski, Wisconsin, acquired Skee-Ball Amusement Games, Inc., acquiring the rights to the legacy Skee-Ball game and trademark in the process, and moved its manufacturing to Pulaski.[27]
 
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