Derby King

The Derby King, produced by the Great Lakes Coin Machine Company of Toledo, Ohio in August 1947, is not an original design but a conversion game: a rework of an existing machine that operators could deploy as a 'new' title. Specifically, Derby King is a conversion of any of three Bally one-ball payout games - 1940's 'Sport King', 1940's 'Long Shot', or 1941's 'Kentucky'. Conversions like this were common in the 1940s, when wartime material restrictions and market economics made refreshing old cabinets more practical than building new ones.

As a one-ball payout machine with a horse racing theme, Derby King belongs to the gambling side of the 1940s coin machine trade. The player received a single ball per coin, with the result determining a payout, in the style of the Bally racing games it was built from.

Little information survives about Great Lakes Coin Machine Company, which appears to have operated only around 1947, making Derby King a curious footnote in the postwar conversion-game market and an intriguing subject for collectors and historians of the era.