Buckley Manufacturing Company was a Chicago maker active in pinball from 1932 through 1936, with a compact catalog of eleven known titles that mirrors the industry’s rapid shift from countertop bagatelles to electrically assisted payout-oriented games. Early Buckley machines such as Favorite, Little Joe, Lucky Star, and Windy City were Pure Mechanical tables rooted in the penny-novelty trade. By 1935 and 1936, the company had moved toward Electromechanical designs including Diamond Mine, Hop-Scotch, Pay Day, Sure Shot, and Fair Play.

What distinguishes Buckley is the degree to which its later games leaned toward payout and operator flexibility. Surviving documentation for Sure Shot, Combination, and Fair Play shows models offered as straight amusement tables, payout registers, or automatic-payout machines, placing Buckley squarely in the gray zone where early pinball, trade stimulation, and gambling-adjacent equipment overlapped. That profile makes the company a useful reminder that 1930s Chicago pinball was not yet a settled form: it was an experimental branch of the wider coin-machine business, and Buckley’s short run captures that unsettled commercial moment unusually well.