Payout

A payout machine is a machine that dispenses a physical award to the player.^[1]

Paying out in coins was common, but also there were things like candy and merchandise.^[2] The apparatus sat in plain sight on the cabinet. A pull knob on the front of Les Deux As drops a winning player’s tokens into a cup below,^[3] and A. J. Stephens and Company set the same cup into the cabinet front of Stevo Jackpot.^[4]

One model, multiple payout types

A single model could often be ordered with different types of payouts. Stoner Manufacturing Company’s Zipper came three ways — “Ticket, cash, or check models were available”.^[5] Carom was sold both as a coin-paying game and as a ticket vendor.^[6]

How it differs from ticket payout

Whereas a payout machine dispenses the actual prize, a Ticket Payout machine dispenses a ticket which is then redeemed for a prize.

How it differs from merchant-paid

Whereas a payout machine dispenses the prize itself, a Merchant-Paid Award machine displays the fact that the player has won, and the storekeeper hands over the prize.

Coins, and the law that followed them

Bally released the first pinball machine to pay out on its own, Rocket, in 1933,^[7] and the coin-paying games that followed drew the regulation that shaped the rest of the century: the delivery of rewards “via cash payouts or prizes” was one of the two grounds on which pinball was classed as gambling.^[8] The coin-paying machines were eventually classed as gambling devices and banned in most states,^[9] and the trade answered by changing what came out of the chute rather than giving up the mechanism: tokens took the place of coins, and the machines accepted them back.^[10] The other answer was to make the award worthless away from the machine — the Replay — and that is the one the industry kept.

Payout survived where the law allowed it. Keeney was still building upright payout games for export in the 1960s,^[11] the decade American law narrowed its aim to payout machines specifically.^[12] Some late examples hedged, letting the operator decide whether a win paid cash or added credits.^[13]