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Miles-Hi Gum

Miles Autostack Vending Co., Chicago, IL, c. 1927, 18 ¹/₂". This is a porcelainized cast iron machine that weighs more than most boat anchors. Silent Salesmen Too says it weighs 34 pounds. I've not confirmed that number but I won't dispute it.

The Miles-Hi was made by the same company that made the Miles Wrigley'S PK vendor and uses a similar (or perhaps identical) mechanism "that vends wrapped package gum in bulk without stacking." This seems to be the globe version of that model, which are the only two models that Silent Salesmen Too attributes to the Miles Autostack Vending Co. The globe is embossed with the name of the company, which is a cool feature on any machine. The graphics on the front and sides are part of the porcelain, they're not decals installed on the porcelain.

The example above is 100% original except for the lock on the lid and the lock on the back door. I bought it at the Chicagoland show in April 2023 as a prearranged deal that had been in the works for a while before that. It's the only one known, and I had a bit of history with it even though I'd never owned it. How can that be, you ask? Here's how:

This is one of the machines I honed in on when I first got Silent Salesmen Too back in the early-to-mid 1990s. Look at the pictures above and I won't have to explain why. I wanted it! I don't recall knowing at the time that this was the only example known, but I'm sure I knew it was rare. When the Stan Harris auction came around in November 1995, this machine was listed in the catalog. I was psyched, but I was relatively fresh to the hobby then and I thought it would almost certainly sell for more than I was comfortable paying for it. I had it on my wish list anyway when I went to the auction, but when I saw it during the preview it was a lot bigger than I thought it'd be. It wasn't the cute little machine I thought it was, it was....substantial. Don't ask me why I ever thought it was a cute little machine to begin with---I don't know why, especially since the height is stated in Silent Salesmen Too---but my interest in this behemoth diminished upon seeing it. That was good because it sold for more than I'd have paid for it even if it had been a cute little machine, so I didn't feel any sense of loss since I didn't like it that much anyway.

Over the years since that auction I sometimes thought about this machine, wondering if I'd given it a fair shake in my 1995 assessment of it. The size didn't bother me once I'd assimilated it into my thinking---my reaction to it at the Harris auction wasn't because it was too big, it was because it was so much bigger than I'd expected it to be. Once my expectation adapted to reality, the size wasn't an issue. I missed the machine even though I'd never had it to miss, and I sometimes wondered where it'd gone.

Then one day I visited a friend and was touring his collection and there it was! I looked at it closely and felt none of the negative reaction I'd had at the Harris auction. It was exactly as I expected it to be by that point, and it was pretty spectacular. My friend/the owner and I talked about it---not about my buying it, just about what a swell machine it was---and I left without mentioning it again. As I thought about it over the next few months, I perceived the Miles-Hi to not be my friend's style of machine. We all have certain niches of collectibles we like and those we don't (or to be more accurate, we have things we like a lot and those we like less so), and this didn't strike me as being within his niche.

So I called him and asked if he'd consider selling it. He said he would, and my first thought was "wow, I might actually get to own it." It'd been more than 25 years since I'd first seen it at the Harris auction, and maybe I'd be able to rectify the "mistake" in judgement I'd made back then. "The one that got away" is used to describe boys and girls, but it can apply to other things as well. I'd always thought of this as one that got away, and I now had the chance to rectify that loss.

We discussed price and agreed on one, and he brought the machine to the next show. It's now mine and is one I plan to never sell. We don't often get the chance to get back the one that got away, but in this case I did and was grateful for having the chance to do it.