Your game has definitely been modified, and it's very likely the flippers were added by the operator in late 1947 or early 1948. As others have noted, this game came out just a few months before Humpty Dumpty, the first game with flippers. Once Humpty Dumpty hit the locations, no one wanted to play the pre-flipper machines any more. That, of course, meant that the locations (who usually got 50% of the cash pan) wanted only flipper machines.

Imagine being an operator who had just bought one or more brand-new machines in the summer of 1947. There's no way you'd be happy about having to pull those games off location after just a few months. So operators retrofitted their nearly new games with flippers so the locations would continue to accept them.

It's also important to note that the first flipper machines were really designed to play like pre-flipper games, just with the added thrill of being able to bat the ball around a little bit. Humpty Dumpty is a good example. It was designed by Harry Mabs, who up until that point had designed only pre-flipper games (obviously). If you look at the PF design of Humpty Dumpty, it really is primarily a pre-flipper game. There is only one shot that takes advantage of the flippers, and that is the kick-out hole just below the central diamond bumper. Otherwise, this game plays pretty much the same as all other pre-flipper machines.

The reason I mention this is because it helps to explain why no one was upset that the flippers on the retrofitted games of the 1940s didn't give the player much to shoot for. None of the early flipper games really did, either. At that time, it was enough that you could bat the ball around once in a while, rather than just watch it roll to the bottom of the playfield. It took the pingame designers a while to learn how to arrange the playfield elements (including the location of the flipper bats) to make good use of the flippers for game play.

One other unusual feature of Lucky Star is that it is one of the few Gottlieb games that makes use of an early version of the Gottlieb score motor. This score motor only has three switch positions, and features a cam that has only two score motor cycles per revolution. This early score motor design apparantly turned out to be inadequate. Starting with Humpty Dumpty, in addition to adding the flippers, Gottlieb also upgraded their games to a new style score motor with four switch positions and a cam with three score motor cycles per revolution. This score motor design was clearly better, as it is the one that was used all the way up to the end of Gottlieb EMs in the late 1970s.

While it's true that these games aren't worth a whole lot money-wise, I think they are still a very interesting part of the history of pinball, and I think it's great that you are bringing yours back to life.

- TimMe