The Gold Bowl
About This Machine
The Gold Bowl stands as one of the most enigmatic and intriguing pure mechanical pinball machines to have survived. Its manufacturer and year of production are unknown, adding to its mystique among collectors and historians. The playfield is unusual: it is completely unpainted, with no point values or wording, only a blue card on the upper apron and a diamond-shaped card on the lower left apron displaying the game's name and instructions.
The machine's ball-handling system deviates from typical pinball designs. Rather than a standard shooter knob, a vertically operating ball lift handle sits where the shooter would normally be, while the actual ball shooter is located at the top center of the cabinet front, feeding the ball onto the upper playfield. The shooter knob pivots to send the ball toward any of four long horseshoe lanes, which lead to a total of sixteen trap holes.
Curiously, two long lanes at the bottom of the playfield appear to feed balls back up to the shooter area from both the left and right lower edges - an arrangement that implies an unusual under-playfield ball-routing mechanism not yet fully understood. Also puzzling is that nothing on the game visibly relates to the name "The Gold Bowl," though an explanation may lie in the instruction card, which has not been legible in surviving photos.
Technical Details
- Notable Features:
- Trap holes (16), Horseshoe lanes (4). This pin table is completely unpainted. The playfield has no point scores assigned to the holes and no wording. The upper apron is fully covered with a blue card showing the game name. The lower left apron has a diamond-shaped card showing the game name and instructions. A ball lift handle, operating vertically, fills the area on the right side of the cabinet front where a ball shooter knob typically would be. The ball shooter is in the top center of the cabinet front, shooting the ball onto the playfield from the area that would be the outhole in other games. The shooter knob pivots to shoot the ball anywhere along the upper playfield and the design of the upper playfield is centered around this, with long horseshoe lanes leading to trap holes. A coin slide is on the left side of the cabinet front.