Not aware of a database. I can tell you there isn't much market for old Bingo machines. They are heavy to move. Nobody works on them. They are boring to play.

Sure, some people collect them for historic preservation. I've seen people give them away. I see them for sale on CL in the range of $100-$300. Crazy people list them for $1000 or more, but I can't imagine they ever get anywhere near that. I'd say you'd be lucky to get more than $300 each.

Jethro pretty much said it all: they weigh a ton, not many people know how to work on them, they arent much fun, they take up a lot of space, and they don't have much collector value.

If you have lots of extra space and they are crazy cheap...go for it. If you are limited in space...go for something better.

My brother sold 2 and a bunch of extra parts for $400 and it took awhile. Not much demand.

If you have space they make nest decorations. They’re almost universally worthless though...

by worthless I mean you’re not gonna get more than $500 most likely. There are a few guys who work on them. There’s the Bingo podcast, but few and far between. Hard to believe but bingo machines were the true golden age of pinball, those things made stupid money and everyone wanted a piece of the action.
Those were the days pinball was heavily controlled by the mafia.

hehe ... I live 20 miles from san jose, and I work on them

I won't argue with the rest tho. The main market seems to be either people who played them when they were operated or people who are curious how they work. The pacific pinball museum in alameda, ca sold fully workings ones with decent cosmetics for $500-$600 each (lido had a cracked backglass).

an almost perfect backglass is usually sellable for $75-$100 by itself. Typical warehouse games that don't run and have been thrashed on route generally sell for $0-$200, depending on the game and how beat up it is. If you had to pay someone to go thru it and get it running well, you'd lose money. Overhauling a game can take 20+ hours on just the mechanicals. If someone did a really good cleaning/repaint/refinish job, then the $1000 price tags start making more sense.

I bought a County Fair in early spring for $100. My first and yes freakin heavy. It needed playfield and cabinet cleaning. All steppers needed tear downs and cleaning. And a few broken wires. With the help from the guys on this forum, I was able to get this machine working 100%. Then, this Fall, I picked up 4 more ... 3 Bikinis, Lido and a parts machine for FREE. I gave away 2 Bikinis and the Lido BUT I kept 1 Bikini and with the help of these guys in this forum it's up and running 100% from what I can tell so far. Again all steppers needed tear downs and cleaning, broken wires, wires that were not soldered to where they are supposed to be. Tracing wires through the wire loom (that one was fun). Still have cleaning to do but Im getting there. It is a good pandemic stress relief working on these and trying to understand them. I don't think I will add anymore to our basement-cade.

Have a few and enjoyed the restoration process. These things are heavy and very complex.
If you like a restoration challenge pick up a couple. Once you restore a bingo you'll have a much greater
appreciation for them. Game play is boring compared to flipper pins but once you get
into them you'll discover a wide variety of interesting features and rule sets. They are
really gambling games so a better comparison would be to slots. There is a really good
book out about Bally Bingos.

Pricing is a little different on East and West coasts, though we're usually only talking a couple hundred + or -, so baldtwit is pretty much spot on. Screen games (in particular Lido and a few others referenced below) are generally more valuable out East.

East Coast tends to have a bigger variety of games come up for sale, Squares, Screens, Lines, six cards. West Coast tends to have more woodrails. There were many many bingos made and so if you look long enough, you'll generally find the title you want, regardless of coast (minus the real rarities).

If you're in it for making money, you're going to be disappointed with the amount of work relative to payout.

As far as gameplay, I can definitely vouch that the games are exciting and fun - six cards that are super quick playing and require lots of thinking-on-your-feet, more cerebral Magic Lines and Magic Pockets games where you need to think in columns, Magic Squares games where each rotation of the numbers could bring you closer to victory (or, more likely, defeat), Magic Screen games that involve some of the best aspects of chess, tetris, and puzzle solving, Mystic Lines games that require you to stay out of the star zones at all costs... "oh, looks like you hit the star".

Pricing does vary by condition (of course) and title. A common thought is that 'all bingos are $50/free' - and this persists across lots of people who don't know the variation in gameplay and mechanical features of the games. Many think they are just all huge and heavy and offer the exact same experience. A title like Bounty, Golden Gate, Silver Sails, Bikini, or Lido will bring significantly more money than, say, an Atlantic City.

Based on the titles you listed, it seems that the games are around the Squares era - so you've got a Lines game in Variety, Squares with Key West, and early screen with Ballerina. All good games in their way, though I prefer a later Lines game like Gay Time or Big Time. Variety is notable for being the first game with moving numbers.

I stand corrected! Never say never. People do work on them. My bad.

Please forgive me if I sounded insensitive when I said they were boring. I should have said "I find them boring, but not everyone does." It's just a totally different animal than a flipper game with pop bumpers, slingshots, drop targets and spinners.

Go below here to this link for pricing.

https://bingo.cdyn.com/market/buying.html

I have collected many Bingos in the last 25 years and still have six left in my collection at the present time. I also spent a large portion of my youth playing them on route.

If you do end up with any of these magnificent games that Bally manufactured from 1951 to 1980, make sure you give yourself a chance to learn about their operation and also how to literally played them or you my pass up a chance at finding out how great a pinball machine they truly are.

FCD01E2B-0B82-4515-9231-095F951C0056 (resized).jpeg

I wouldn't take one even if somebody tried giving it to me

There's not a free credit button per se, but there are a couple of ways of testing - one would be quickly strumming the coin switch (one way Bally had to defeat coins on strings/stop taking money if the game couldn't be played due to too much money in the coin box) was to tilt the game if the coin switch was held for too long.

Another way is to press on the start relay actuator. This has 120V running through so watch your fingers, but will give you an idea how much attention a game will need (outside of whatever is wrong with the coin circuit).

If the game doesn't kick to life there, then there's a few places to check. The fuse blocks are pretty notorious for having bad connectivity. The fiber material Bally used wasn't really resistant to heat, so they curl a bit and can prevent the entire game from working.

In the reset state, all your odds should be at the first position (if shown), your squares or screen should be in a default position (screen has a lot of little connecting lines and doesn't look like Tetris pieces), and the Extra Balls indicator should be off. The shutter (that holds the balls on the playfield) should be open, and a ball should be in the shooter lane.

That's an understatement. Ingenious, complex rulesets that you as the player control. It's a pinball of incredible complexity. Especially when you consider the time Silver Sails was created... 1962. Amazing.

Before trying to start a game either through manually pushing in the start relay, which is normally located in the back box or head of the game on the right hand side or like Nick said by flicking the coin switch...make sure there are all 8 balls in the ball trough. Five of the balls are for regular play and the other 3 are for the 3 extra balls a player can buy in after playing the first 5 balls.

Silver Sails is a very sought after Magic Screen game along with the other most desirable top five Bingos, like Golden Gate, Bikini and a few others I won’t mention.It is also one of the most complicated to learn the features on though. I wouldn’t pass it up.

There isn’t much in the lower cabinet as far as mechanical unit etc... the back box is where most of the game components are that operate the game.

Go here to learn how bingos work.
http://www.pinballcollectorsresource.com/russ_files/inside.html

Glad to hear this. More for the rest of us!

Were bingos available to play anywhere "for amusement", or were they used exclusively for gambling?

If they were for "amusement," was the bartender paying out free drinks or cash under the table / over the bar?

afaik, only in nevada were the games legally operated with coin payout, and the addition of the coin pay mechanism was aftermarket. A few other places around the usa that tolerated the games may have allowed direct coin payout, but it wasn't legal - or was highly restricted to places like private clubs.

except for a few oddball machines where you got scores that behaved like credits, the bingos all used a replay register to accumulate credits for wins. Whether the location would pay cash or merch for the credits was up to them. I'd guess that people wouldn't be stuffing their paychecks into the machines if all they got was "amusement"

in the mid-70's, bally added the "kumbackkey" to many machines. The idea was the location would record the number of credits the player had when they wanted to leave and then reset the credits. When the player came back at a later date, the location could use the key to put the credits back on the game.

it was probably more of a legal dodge than a useful feature.

I grew up playing one in my grandfathers gas station. Probably why I like them still today. Most store owners, like my grandfather, payed out winning credits, so it was a gambling machine for all intensive purposes in their day. The magic square games are the best.

I agree they are heavy, however, the come apart very easily since the playfield is very simple. The head is where all the mechanics are.

They are unbelievable mechanical works of art, in my opinion. It fascinates me how these things worked pre transistor.

I would agree they don’t go for much. I have seen a couple well restored that sell for around $1000. They are typically the magic square types, otherwise they go for about $250 if they fully work.

In Ohio they had the. “For amusement” Most were operated by some of the organized crime families in the areas, either from Akron or over by St. Clairsville / Wheeling.

I grew up in the largest city in NJ called Newark in the late 1960’s up to the 1990’s. I would play a bingo in many establishments like candy stores, hallmark store, Italian cafes, Blue Castle hamburger place, Italian lemon ice/pizzeria place, dinners, bars and any other establishment these vendors could find to place their to run their bingos.

I started playing at them all at age 13. I would take buses around the big city to play at these places, if I had to. All these places would pay you cash for your replays or credits wins on the spot.

I also played bingos on the boardwalk on Seaside Hts in the late 1960’s and 1970’s at a couple of arcades. I remember hitting a 5 in a line on a Bally Dude Ranch bingo and getting paid off with a carton of cigarettes as a prize payment.

I also played a Bally Key West bingo in another boardwalk establishment called fascination and my replays or credits were paid out in redemption tickets for prizes. There were no cash payouts on the boardwalk establishments that I knew of.

I was very addicted to these Bingo pinball machines for many many years and have an astronomical amount of playing time on them and became a very good player, which caused me to be barred from lots of these establishments. Some of the vendors were connect to organized crime, so they made the rules if you were to good of a player. Some would rig and alter Bingos to their favor too.

A tremendous amount of players lost tons of money in these machines and I witnessed this firsthand. When vendors opened up the front door on their bingos coins would pour out from coin boxes being overflowing. Bingos hold the record for the best money earners for any vendor operating them.

Every ball shot into playfield is important, but vary on each individual bingo. The six card games have a kind of different strategy then a magic screen game and that goes for a moving lines or turning corners game, but are similar in leading a player on the right path to in line replays/credits for the players.

Following balls already in a numbered hole can help a player make numbers he needs to win replays. We bingo players call this following the blockers (like in football) you know like when a running back finds the holes lineman create for yardage.Hopefully you understand the scenario.

A player as he plays through the balls in play must view the best path and correct side (left or right or center) when ball leaves is shot through the metal gate at the top of the playfield.Remember this is not a fast pace game at all and a player must think every possible angle to winning replays as he finds the proper path to guide balls into the best numbered hole for in line wins. Each ball before shooting should be a well thoughtful event.

Remember this flipper pinball games are like playing the game checkers and bingo pinball machines are like playing the game of chess. They are totally the opposite.

Anyway, I can go on here with more tips on how to play a bingo, but for sure you’ll have enough to digest with in this post.

In the very beginning stages for learning how to play a bingo pinball machine a player must incorporate lots of time, patience, skill, practice, strong mental capacity and focus, stance and comfort to learn how to guide ball throughout the playfield numbered holes for in line wins/replays/credits.

Learning to Literally play a bingo pinball machine not going to come easy at first and a newcomer to this tough to win at pinball machine could get discouraged and want to give up because winning replays isn’t easy to do.If it were many vendors/operators would have been paying out cash to players all the time and Bally would have been out of the bingo manufacturing business.

Like any other game that is not so easy of game to learn at first (like pool/billiards for example) a player must strive forward through the challenges and push themselves to get over the early stages of the machine defeating them in the beginning.

Go to this links below to try to understand the challenges a bingo pinball machine will bring to the player path to learning.

http://danny.cdyn.com/viccamp.htm
http://danny.cdyn.com/vicipdb.htm

It would depend on the establishment location and amount of players who were addicted. I’ve seen players lose their entire pay check and sign for an IOU to try to win back their hard earned cash. In the early 1970’s when Bally bingos started manufacturing many new six card bingos for a quarter a play.... I knew all the hot spots throughout the city where a bingo then could bring in thousands a week. Before 1970 six card bingos were a dime play and in the 1950’s were a nickel a play.

Bingos in most states and localities were considered gambling machines and eventually
deemed illegal. But this didn't happen right away. There were a few tricks to keep Johnny Law from cutting into the
very high profits made by these games. I've seen some machines where the 'credit'
counter unit was blanked out on the BG or the unit entirely removed. At that point
its 'for amusement only'.

As gambling machines the payout was typically a nickle a credit for games that
took nickles. Tournaments were held too.

These games were wildly popular in the 1950's (and later) which is why Bally's
production in this decade was almost exclusively bingos. The other major
maker was United.

IMO (for what thats worth), every serious pinball collection that has vintage
games should have at least one bingo. Or even better, one example of each
type (multi card, magic squares, moving line and magic screen). Still looking for
a magic screen myself.

Nice discussion that may help save a machine or three from getting junked.
Steve

For those that haven't seen Vic play a bingo, you've missed out. I remember at Allentown one year Vic was explaining what he was trying to accomplish on a game, and explained each ball's objective prior to being shot. Hard to describe how Vic magically hit a 5 in line for all to witness, and basically calling each shot. I can't remember the game or the payout, but that was a memorable experience.

I agree and I have a beautiful 100% playing Can Can magic screen game. It will be the last to leave the stable. Possibly as it is so heavy!

Here’s a link to the fantastic fun day at the Allentown show when I got a chance to play Steve Smith’s beautiful Bally Golden Gate magic screen bingo.

http://danny.cdyn.com/shows102k.htm

BINGO = HEAVY

At a huge Arcade in Nags Head all the Bingo machines were on the left in a "Controlled" area. Only Adults were allowed over there and I didn't understand the fascination.
They were full with people waiting in line to play.
Must have been cash payout as there were no prizes I can remember.

Someone just offered me a free Bally High Flyer bingo machine. What should I do?

I remember when High Flyer hit the streets in 1977. Bally added the red diagonal feature which gave us six card players many more chances to win replays for just the maximum cost of 8 quarters.

The nice features included on High Flyer were the super lines, 4 corners score 5 in a line, rollerover buttons light super lines or 4 corners on playfield and double or nothing on your wins at end of game.

It’s a really nice player and being it’s a six card game a newbie will become a better player faster, since six card bingo have many more winning combinations on the game and maximum 8 coins entry with only 5 balls per play make for quicker games than non six card bingos.

I think you will enjoy High Flyer if you put the time into to learn the features and literally learn how to control the ball for replays. I would get the game.
Check it out in operation. The flippers on this High Flyer were not factory and most likely a vendor added them at some point.

Offer it to someone with no electricity in the winter storm to use it as firewood. Lololol. I kid, i kid!

Accept it, of course! See if you can clean it up and get it working! You just may really enjoy it.

My Bingo story..... I grew up in England and my first bingo experience was at a local cafe. I was about 14, at the time.

It was a County Fair and I was mesmerized by the most beautiful backglass! Of course, I quickly lost my allowance and would return every Saturday, when my Dad gave me another week's pocket money.

One day, I went into the cafe and there was a guy there fixing the machine. I looked into the backbox and could not believe what I was seeing. All those wires, relays and whirring motors! I was hooked.

I swore that, one day, I would save enough money to buy my own bingo machine and get even with it!

Fast forward and many bingos played elsewhere, I finally bought my own bingo for home use. It was a Golden Gate.

Shortly thereafter, I emigrated to the USA and continued my love of bingos and pinball, in general.

I have owned many bingo titles including Gay Time, Silver Sails, Golden Gate, Lido, Bikini and a few others that I can't remember.

It all culminated about 13 years ago when I was fortunate enough to find a HUO Silver Sails. My pride and joy! What a beauty she was! The soft purring of the (almost) new motors was a joy to behold! Beautiful wood and sparkling chrome.

I sold my pride and joy a couple of years later but can't remember how much I sold it for. I think it was close to $3,000 but really can't be sure.

I now play bingos on my computer but would really like to own another one.

If anyone knows of an electronic bingo for sale, that is in really nice condition cosmetically, please send me a private message.

Thanks for reading my bingo story.

Roger

There is a back door that has two locks on it. Bring some WD-40 and lube the locks and keys....One is located on the very top of the back door and the other is on the very bottom of the back door. Hopefully there are keys to unlock the back door. The locks are standard locks like the coin door lock.

There should be a 1” metal ring on the back door that you will need to pull open the back door.

Be very careful when swing open the back door. Silver Sails is one of the heaviest heads on a bingo and could tip the entire game to fall backwards and crash on the floor or yourself.

When opening the back door make sure you are aware of the heavy weight and keep a hand underneath the bottom of the back door for support when opening.

If there are no keys with the game to open the back door, check to see if you can open the back door anyways. Sometime their just in the unlocked position. Hopefully you won’t have to drill the locks out.

Note: there are also locks on the side of the head, one on the right and left wooden side rails that frame around the back glass. You won’t need to do anything with them at the moment. These wooden side rail locks are for access to change bulbs and work on the internal mechanisms.

Once you open the back door, there is also a metal door locking hinge in the very top left side of the back door. This will secure the door fully open.

Here’s a picture of my 1979 Bally (six card) Dixieland to give an ahead time view of what expect when you open up the Silver Sails. It won’t be exactly the same, but similar of the amount of components that will be pack into the back box.

If you are going to inspect and operate the Silver Sails before biding on the game read below a simplified check list on what to look for.
1) check and make sure all 8 balls are in ball trough.
2) drop coin in slot or flick coin mechanism thin wire or press start relay located in back box manually to start game.
3) continue dropping coin or quickly flicking wire coin mechanism or pressing start relay manually to increase green, yellow and red odds values which appear on lower portion of back glass. They will increase at random.
4) as you continue to drop coins into game etc...watch for feature odds also to light up and appear on back glass...like magic screen positions A,B,C,D,E, and all other features.
5)at this point go to back box and make sure both 110 volt motors with the small fans are turning and all other components are functioning correctly without any smoke coming from them or sticking and buzzing.
6) go back to front of game and shoot your 1st ball out.
7) once 1st ball had been shot through metal top arch gate the playfield the shutter board should close and allow 1st ball to land in numbered hole and be trapped there.
8) shoot 2nd ball and this ball and the next three balls shot should all be lit on back glass and trapped on playfield.
9) if any 3 balls are in a vertical or horizontal line on the back glass card the machine should payout the correct odds by pressing the C button on lockdown bar.
8) if machine pays out correctly then the machine is working so far.
9) there will be many other things to check in the future on the game, but at least the game is generally functioning.

Watch my video on a Bally Roller Derby Magic screen bingo. It will be helpful if and when you check out the Silver Sails your interested in.

2E259EF6-5668-430F-9622-3A38A2D9DD24 (resized).jpeg

I am working on a Williams Hi-Hand. I got it just to have a project, with no intent to keep it. (The seller was within a mile of me and the price was right.) But this thread has me excited to see how good I can get on it.

Poker theme. No moving cards, no special features. Just get the balls in the right holes for a dime. No credits, no payoff chart. For Amusement Only? I guess when the player wins they call the proprietor over for a beer or payoff.

Hard to see how it could be an exciting game compared to other bingos, but one has a local tax sticker from 1975 and one from 1980 so they were in use for a long time. Someone must have been dropping dimes into them.

I restored one for my son in law ....lot of work ......really complicated machine and the schematics ...well lets just say they sucked .......they would show an open contact for each switch, relay and you had to determine if it was to the right or left whether it was NC or NO ......I find in this hobby most of the people opt for machines they played as a teenager and since the bingo machines were popular in the 50's and 60's those guys are all over 70 so the demand for them is not there anymore ...you can find a lot of machines for less than 400 bucks and that is probably paying too much. These machines were like slot machines back in the day and when there is no real payout in money the excitement is just not there for them, not to mention the market.

Basically these machines (Besides Williams High Hand, Bally had Twin Joker and Joker's Wild) were "For Amusement Only" but meant for two players to shoot five balls apiece and each get a poker hand that lights up on the backglass. High hand wins a bet between players, Beer, a dollar ($5 these days, "It's only five dollars") etc.

That explains it.

I remember seeing a couple of Twin Jokers on route back in the day. Neither one of them lasted very long at each establishment.

The two main problems were the machines didn’t get much play, which meant hardly any profit at all. The other problem was players that bet against each other for all types of wagers, would end up in a verbal or physical fight because sometimes one player wouldn’t pay up the bet. Owners of the establishments knew this was bad for business and the game didn’t last more than a week.Twin Joker was a complete flop for Bally.

A buddy of mine had very nice condition Twin Joker in his collection recently, which I had located for him from PA collector about 5 years ago. I would always play the game when I was there and enjoyed the game a lot. He also had a factory topper on it that was very cool. Last year he was force to sell the game since he moved into a smaller home. If I had the room for it, I would have bought it. It actually was a nice player for home use.

if you don't want it, donate it to the pacific pinball museum in alameda. I'll fetch it and take it up to their warehouse. They may fix it up and sell it, but with no revenue due to museum being closed for covid, they could use the small amount of cash the game could sell for around here.