Zipball

Zipball is a pure mechanical table-top/counter game from an unknown manufacturer, believed to date to around 1932. It operated on U.S. pennies, offering 5 balls for 1 cent, and is built entirely of wood with a metal coin slide and ball shooter.

The playing-card theme is expressed directly on the playfield: nails are arranged into twelve scoring pockets and two 'out' pockets, each scoring pocket assigned both a point value (25 to 600 points) and a playing-card rank in the suit of hearts (with the '10' represented by the letter 'T' and no '3' present). Playfield text reads 'Zipball -- Game Of Skill,' along with the phrases 'Duce Wild In Hearts' and 'Double Score In Numbers' (the misspelling of 'deuce' is original to the game). As a pure mechanical game from this era, play relies on aiming and plunging the ball rather than flippers, which had not yet been invented.

No manufacturer name, copyright date, or other markings have been found anywhere on the known example, including its coin slide, leaving Zipball's origins a mystery. Without further documentation, its designer and exact production history remain unknown, but its playing-card scoring scheme makes it a distinctive example of early coin-operated skill games.