Posted 4 years ago
dav2no1
(836 items)
Anigin Pachinko Machine
20 1/2" x 32"
This machine has been in the house since I was a little kid. I believe that it was made in the 50s or 60s. My mother was Japanese and I was told the story of my uncle who was married to a yakuza boss's daughter and had several Pachinko parlors in Japan. But this appears to be a home model.
I did see there was another Anigin model posted on CW about 10 years ago. Can't seem to find any information on this company.
One of the interesting features of this model is, the orange button. When you run out of balls, you hit the orange button and it acts like a payout giving you a small handful of balls. The different pay slots will give you different amounts of balls depending on the difficulty of the slot. There is also a small ashtray next to the payout slot.
For years I thought that the little cup in the back that catches the balls was just put there. But my research shows these are original.
It's been sitting in the bar for a decade or more. So I finally moved it into the workshop to clean it up. Of course I had to test it ..for several hours. I had lubed everything up and cleaned it up as best I could for the moment. In the future it will get a deep cleaning.
I first tested it by dropping balls into each of the pay slots, and every one worked. But I noticed as I continued to play it, that it wouldn't pay out properly. Over the years my niece and nephew have played with it while getting babysat by Grandma. I figured out there was some smaller steel balls that were not Pachinko balls. These were causing it to jam.
PACHINKO
Pachinko is a type of mechanical game originating in Japan and is used as both a form of recreational arcade game and as a gambling device, filling a Japanese gambling niche comparable to that of the slot machine in Western gambling.
Pachinko machines were first built during the 1920s as a children's toy called the "Corinth game", based on and named after the American "Corinthian bagatelle". Another likely inspiration was the Billard japonais, 'Japanese billiards', invented in Western Europe during the 18th century.
Mine is a 1974. Yours look earlier than that. Do you know the year?
Got to be 1950s to 60s?
Normally there are stickers in the lower left side of the play field under the glass. You can see them on mine. Those are issued from the Japanese government. Basically a license for use, from what I understand. They don't have a western style date, but a there is a formula to convert the date and get the age of the machine. (You can find the formula on the internet) I see your machine doesn't have them. Not sure if they were removed or if your machine was made before they started issuing them. From what I know, Pachinko started post WWII, so 50s would be very early. It would be interesting to get a time frame. At this point you would probably have to see if you could find a similar one with a know date.
Some Interesting reading..
https://www.pachinkoboy.com/history/
Thanks for the info. Great site. I had no idea that it had existed before the war. Although with the shortage of metal at the time, most were probably recycled. I guess that why I have never seen one older than the 1950s. Thanks again for sharing, always enjoy learning something.