In the late 1940's gambling pins were legal in Minnesota. Kind of. They paid out tokens. If you knew the person you bought them back for 5¢ each. And be sure the law wasn't watching.

Around 1950 they were outlawed. Basically the ops were paying out more in payoffs than the games made, so they brought things to a halt. The ops wanted to run them legal or not at all. And out they went.

Many of the ops were crying, "what will we do, what will we do ?". The state East of Minnesota, Wisconsin, didn't have the gambling pins. The Wisconsin ops weren't sympathetic having never had them. They told the Minnesota ops, "Learn to be ops".

LTG : )