Daily Limit

The O. D. Jennings and Company's Daily Limit from February 1936 is an artifact of the mid-1930s boom in coin-operated pin tables. Jennings, a Chicago manufacturer active from 1932 to 1938, built this electro-mechanical, single-player payout machine during a period of rapid innovation in the burgeoning coin-machine industry. As a one-ball game priced at 5 cents per play, Daily Limit belongs to the payout category that blurred the line between amusement and gambling in the pre-flipper era.

Play on the Daily Limit was simple: a single ball per coin, shot onto the playfield with the outcome determining any payout. The cabinet was advertised as 48 1/2 inches long, 25 inches wide, 16 1/2 inches high in the front and 19 1/2 inches high in the back, not including legs - a full-sized pin table for its day. IPDB notes it previously listed the game's date as May 1936 before settling on February.

Little is known about the designer or artist behind Daily Limit, leaving us to appreciate it as an artifact of the era. For pinball enthusiasts, this 1936 Jennings creation offers a fascinating window into the early days of electro-mechanical payout games and the industry's rapid growth during the 1930s.