This upright counter trade stimulator is the precursor to all the Caille, Mills and Watling upright counter poker machines. The Canda upright counter poker trade stimulator began the whole whirlwind of the five reel poker trade stimulators in saloons, general stores and cigar houses.

This could be that one particular machine which
started it all!

This trade stimulator belonged to one family for over 115 years and had a prominent place in their general store for more than 70 of those years. It was passed from great great grandfather to great grandfather to grandfather, then father. He passed it on to his daughter in 2006. This particular machine began its life on the counter of Meggs Corners, a general store which evolved into a service station, in the outskirts of San Antonio, Texas. It has been in the Meggs family since before the turn of the century. The family sold it to us about a year ago to pay taxes on a family owned property.

The picture all the way to the right is of the family owned Meggs Corners after it became a service station in the 1940's. This picture and a brief history will stay with the machine to preserve its special place in the Meggs family heritage.

We, at C&A slot Restorations have not altered this fine machine from its original, feel, look or play. The machine still has its original wood, in great condition (absolutely no dry rot), the original finish and patina, even the original marquee frame and payout sign.

All that we have done to this benchmark of American history is clean it and caringly bring it back to ORIGINAL condition. At C&A slot Restorations we take pride in preserving the originality of antique trade stimulators and slot machines.

As you can see here the ORIGINAL marquee with ORIGINAL printed payout card is still in great condition. This machine was meant to be played with any coin, hence the payout card was printed on one side with the 'One Cent' payouts and the other with the '5 cent' payouts.

The playing card strips are the ONLY part of this machine which are not original. When we got the machine the original strips were very badly moth eaten and molded. Unfortunately, we had no choice but to replace them, but not to fear. We have an in-house artist who duplicated the cards to ORIGINAL high quality specs.

You can also see the cleanliness of the mechanism. We very carefully and slowly disassemble, clean and rust proof each part then reassemble, lube and test

Here you can see that no detail gets overlooked when we bring a machine back to it's glory. Even the inside of the machine is impeccably clean.

You can see here this machine has the ORIGINAL back door lock and that the back door is marked with a stamp from the factory (62). We can speculate what the stamp means, was it inspected by inspector 62, or is this the 62nd machine out of the factory? Nobody really knows.