Charm

Chicago Coin Machinery Company's 1932 'Charm' is a Pure Mechanical pin game from a short-lived company that had spent 1931 making accessories for pin games before releasing this — its only known pin table. The firm's partners, H.R. Nelson and C.J. Sandberg, are not to be confused with the much larger and longer-running Chicago Coin Machine Manufacturing Company, which operated until 1977.

Period advertising touted a "novel new tail spin feature," but the ad never explained what this meant, and it isn't evident in the one surviving overhead image of the game, so its exact nature remains unknown. What is documented: players got 7 balls for a single cent, and the game was advertised with a black-and-silver playing field and an ebony-finished cabinet measuring 32 by 16 inches.

Because only a single overhead photograph of Charm is known to survive, it isn't even certain whether it was built as a counter game or a full-size pin table. Its scarcity and its status as Chicago Coin Machinery's sole known release make it a curious footnote in early pinball manufacturing history.