What an amazing letter! It's so great to see how Gottlieb (and Mr. Neyens in particular) supported their operators. Also I love that this operator is in Wisconsin (an Add-A-Ball only state at that time) and they are discussing Hearts and Spades, the AAB version of Spin-A-Card.
Quoted from frenchmarky:'71 was a good year for 'em.
Yes, that was the year they moved to the beautiful new factory they built in Northlake. So this letter would have been written shortly before that move.
I grew up about a mile from the Kostner Ave factory in Chicago in the 1960s. Although it was primarily a residential area, our neighborhood was mixed-use, with small factories, commercial buildings, and houses interleaved. My family phone number growing up was also an AL-2 (ALBANY exchange) number, which was how I was taught it. It morphed into the 252 prefix in the 70s, when the idea of belonging to a named phone exchange became obsolete. A very different era, in so many ways.
- TimMe