Double Header

Double Header, manufactured by the Mills Novelty Company of Chicago in May 1936, is a single-player electro-mechanical machine from pinball's pre-war years. Specifically, it is a one-ball payout machine: players received a single ball for five cents, and winning play was rewarded with a coin payout, placing the game firmly on the gambling side of the coin machine trade that flourished in the mid-1930s.

The single-ball, nickel-a-play format made for brief sessions where everything rode on one shot, a style of play that was enormously popular with operators of the era even as it drew increasing legal scrutiny in many jurisdictions.

Little is documented about Double Header's artwork or theme. One curious footnote survives in the trade press: Billboard advertisements published ten months apart show a large drop in the game's price, a reminder of how quickly machines depreciated in the fast-moving coin-op market of the 1930s.