Gold Award

The Gold Award, manufactured by Rock-ola Manufacturing Corporation in September 1935, is an electromechanical (EM), single-player, flipperless payout machine with a water-sports theme. It is battery operated and cost 1 ball for 5 cents to play.

The game's appeal centered on its payout: a 'Gold Award' token payout was worth five dollars, and a meter on the machine tracked the number of such payouts - a significant sum for players during the Depression era.

Details about Gold Award's designer and specific artwork are not documented, but as a battery-operated payout machine from Rock-ola's active years (1932-1938), it offers a glimpse into the payout-machine segment of pinball's early history, distinct from the free-play, flipper-based games that would come to define the industry decades later.