Profit Sharer

The Profit Sharer, made by Electra Mfg. Co. of Kansas City, Missouri in 1932, is not itself a pinball machine but a "Jack Pot Attachment" - a device fitted to the front of a pinball cabinet to convert existing non-payout pinball machines into payout (gambling) machines. Period advertising shows it was marketed to operators and jobbers as a way to retrofit older pin games already in the field.

Because the Profit Sharer was an add-on conversion accessory rather than a complete game, it had no playfield or scoring mechanism of its own - those belonged to whichever pinball machine it was attached to. Specific technical details of how the attachment worked are not well documented today.

A nearly identically named "Profit Sharer" device was also produced in 1932 by Field Manufacturing Corporation of Peoria, Illinois; the two appear to be separate, competing products aimed at the same trade rather than the same item. As an example of the payout-conversion accessories common in the pre-war coin-op industry, the Electra Mfg. Co. Profit Sharer remains a curious footnote in pinball history.