Beach Club

Beach Club, produced by Nate Schneller Incorporated (trade name Nasco) in July 1949, is a rare and intriguing example of the postwar conversion business. Rather than an all-new machine, Beach Club is a conversion of Gottlieb's flipperless 1947 game Lucky Star, updated by Nasco with the flippers that had transformed pinball since their 1947 introduction. Nasco itself was a short-lived operation, active only from 1949 to 1951, which adds to the game's scarcity today.

Gameplay follows the standard formula of the day, five balls for five cents, with two flippers giving players control over the ball's trajectory. The playfield also carries two pop bumpers, seven passive bumpers, and four kick-out holes, a layout that mixes the older passive-scoring style with the newer action features of the flipper era.

The theme captures the carefree spirit of summer, with beach, boating, and swimming motifs. As a surviving artifact of the conversion houses that briefly flourished around the flipper boom, Beach Club is a fascinating piece for collectors of late-1940s pinball.