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Adams Pepsin Tutti-Frutti Gum

Railway Automatic Sales Co., Brooklyn, NY, c. 1898, 18 ¹/₄". This is a 1-column gum vendor with porcelain panels that cover both sides and most of the front. It was made as a right-handed version and as a left-handed version, with the differences being: 1) which side had the exit chute, and 2) the chirality (for all you chemists out there!) of the lever mechanism on the front. The one pictured above is the left-handed version; the right-handed version has the exit chute on the ride side and the mechanism is the mirror image (the enantiomer!) of the one pictured above. The example pictured on page 130 of Silent Salesmen Too is the right-handed version. I don't know which, if either, is the more common version.

I knew of this model but don't recall ever seeing one in person before I bought this one. I probably did see one in a collection and just don't remember, but it is rare so it's possible I never saw one but it's more likely that I did and don't recall it. I'd put the probability that I'd never seen one at 18.2% (for all you statisticians out there!), and the odds that I'd seen one and didn't remember at 81.8%. Either way, I've always thought it was a model I'd like to own, for multiple reasons that I don't need to describe to anyone reading this website.

Two (!) of them appeared in the April 2022 Morphy auction and I decided to take a shot. One was the right-handed version, the other was the left-handed version. Through the pictures shown in the online information and talking to friends who saw the machines in person, I came to believe that both were excellent examples but that the left-handed version might possibly perhaps be a teensy bit more pleasing overall to the eye . . . but not by enough to matter, especially when they'd probably never be in the same room ever again, so why pick nits? So I set the same maximum bid for both and tuned in from afar, ready to bid online and snag the first one that didn't go over my max. The right-handed version went first and the hammer price was well above that max. I knew then that I also wouldn't get the other one because the underbidder on the first one would still be around for the second one and would bid as much (or nearly as much) on that one . . . right? Well, the second one went on the block an hour or two later and I bought it for a price substantially below that of the first one. Can I explain that? Well . . maybe the underbidder of the first one had fallen asleep, or was in the bathroom with severe gastrointestinal distress, or spent all his money on winning bids in the interim, or had caught a case of Auction Fever with the first one and had cured himself before the second one hit the block, or didn't know there was a nearly-identical machine later in the auction, or had been scolded by his boss for watching online auctions while at work or had a meeting that took him away from his computer. One thing that's certain is that auctions are unpredictable, and sometimes I benefit from that unpredictability and sometimes I suffer from it. This was one of the good outcomes!

The example above is 100% original.

Silent Salesmen Too lists another model as "Adams' Pepsin Tutti-Frutti Gum" along with this one on page 130, but the two models listed with that name are quite different in size, design, and presence. You can read more about the larger 2-column model here and see both models pictured together here. Note the apostrophe after the "Adams" on the 2-column model but not on the 1-column model above. I don't know whether the apostrophe or the lack of apostrophe is the mistake although the apostrophe on another Adams suggests that it's the one above.