Lucky Card

Lucky Card, designed by Ed Krynski with artwork by Gordon Morison, was manufactured by Gottlieb in July 1977 as the add-a-ball version of Gottlieb's 'Lucky Hand' made for export to Italy; the replay version of the same game is Gottlieb's 1977 'Jacks Open'. Sales records confirm 459 units, every one of which was shipped to Italy, making this single-player electro-mechanical wedge head a genuinely scarce game in North America.

The centerpiece of the design is a nine-bank of drop targets governed by a progression ladder of "Shoot For" inserts on the playfield. Play opens with "2 Jacks" lit, and completing each lit step on the ladder resets all the drop targets for the next step. When Royal Flush is lit, knocking down the five red A-K-Q-J-10 targets not only resets the bank but fires a trip coil whose trip arm immediately drops the four black targets again, leaving only the five red targets standing to complete for a WOW award. Scoring the WOW repeats the pattern, so a skilled player can chain WOWs until the end of the game.

The layout is unusual in other ways too: there are no slingshots, and open-elbow inlanes allow the ball to pass from inlane to outlane and vice versa. Morison's playing-card artwork and the clever trip-arm mechanism make Lucky Card a distinctive entry in Gottlieb's late electro-mechanical catalog.