Jockey Club

The Jockey Club, manufactured by the A.B.C. Coin Machine Company of Chicago, Illinois in February 1933, is an early example from the first years of the coin-operated pin game industry. It is a Pure Mechanical (PM) machine, meaning it operated entirely without electricity, relying on springs, gravity, and mechanical scoring, as was typical of the countertop marble games of the early 1930s.

Detailed gameplay documentation for the Jockey Club has not survived, and little is known about its layout beyond its single-player, purely mechanical construction. Like other pin games of its day, it would have been played by shooting balls into a field of scoring holes, long before the invention of flippers or powered bumpers.

As an artifact of the industry's formative years, the Jockey Club holds interest for collectors and historians. Much of its story remains to be uncovered, and its mechanical purity offers a glimpse into the earliest days of pinball's development.