___________________________________________________________________________________________

Digesto Gumball

Digesto Gum Co., c. 1915, 10". I saw this at the Chicagoland show in November 2019 and considered buying it but didn't. I'd already overspent and it didn't jazz me enough to pay the price, but I did like it. Then Covid hit and the next three shows were cancelled, and during that time I'd occasionally wonder "now, why didn't I buy it?" before remembering the reason was a money thing. For some reason I can't recall now, I thought the seller sent it to auction after the show and that I'd missed my chance, but at the first post-Covid show in November 2021 after a 2-year hiatus, there it was, sitting on the same seller's table waiting for me to wink at it. I bought it as part of a package deal so the price was a little better, and I bought it early in the day before the "money thing" could dampen my interest again.

The base is cast iron and is dense. It looks early, consistent with its pre-WWI patent date, and uses an early-looking 1-cent coin-slide insert. Here's a closer-up shot of the base, which shows the tiger-striped finish a bit better than the full-machine shot above. The lid and hold-down ring are pressed steel with the same tiger-striped finish as the base. A tab on the lid fits into a tab-slot in the hold-down ring, as you can see here. The lid doesn't lock, it just sits in place on top of the hold-down ring. The small circular tab on the underside of the lid appears to be there to weigh down the side of the lid opposite the tab, and seems to be effective at it. With the lockless lid I'm assuming this wasn't a model that was left outside where gangs of 12-year-old ne'er-do-wells could have their way with it.

The decal on the globe is original and says the following:

THREE FOR ONE CENT
CHEW
DIGESTO
THE GUM FOR INDIGESTION
THE BLUE RIDGE GUM CO.
TO OPERATE PULL OUT
SLIDE INSERT ONE CENT
PUSH SLIDE WAY IN.
Guaranteed by the Manufacturer Under the Food and Drugs
Act, June 30, 1906. No. 2059.

It took me about 20 minutes of looking at the decal with reading glasses and then a magnifying glass under different lighting to figure out what it says. The image I linked to above the decal's transcription shows the decal as it's backlit. The longer I tried to decipher the decal's writing the clearer it got, to the point that it was obvious by the time I finished. I'm sure my transcription above is correct. Before I went through all this I questioned whether the decal was original, but all doubt was removed as I spent more time with the magnifying glass.

Check out the bottom of the product compartment here. I have large-ish gumballs in the machine for display but it looks like the product this machine was designed to vend were tiny balls that fit into the 3 slots shown in the picture. I assume you'd get 3 of those balls for a penny. I can't confirm that the machine works as intended without getting small round product that mimics the Digesto gum (The Gum for Indigestion!), but the agitator-lever on the bottom of the product compartment moves forth and back with or without a penny, and I don't see any movement in the 3 slots the balls go into when I push in the coin-insert slide with or without a penny. Soooooo, I suspect the machine is on free play and may not work even with a coin, but I can't be sure until I find that Digesto-sized product and test it. I hope my suspicion is wrong but I'm about 87.3% sure it's not.

This machine is 100% original.

___________________________________________________________________________________________