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Mystery 2 Collar Button Vendor

Likely made by the Price Collar Button Machine Co., c. ~1905, 10 ³/₄". This is a plated cast iron vendor that dispenses a collar button for a nickel. It's dense and has great heft for its size, which is a feature I like in a machine. I was gonna list this as a "Price Collar Button vendor (rare version)" but before I did I checked Silent Salesmen Too and shazam!---there it is, listed as Mystery 2 on page 232. Mr. Enes wrote that "some people think that the Mystery 2 was made by the Price Collar Button Machine Co.," and you can count me among those people. I know Bill always did his homework and I'm guessing he didn't come across definitive evidence that this is a Price---hence he was circumspect in his description---but it's the most likely reason for the similarities. My gut tells me this is earlier than the more common Price Collar Button machine, which would make the more common Price model the successor to the one above.

Here's a picture of this model and the more common Price model side by side. This sure looks like a Price, don't it? This one's a little smaller and the globe doesn't come all the way down to the base, which leaves room for the collar button to be retrieved from the open area below the globe's edge rather than from a specific exit opening as on the more common model.

Both machines shown above are 100% original. The marquee is the same one in both pictures, just swapped between machines for your viewing pleasure.

You want their stories? Here you go:

• I saw the left example---but without the marquee---at the Chicagoland show in April 2022. I'd never seen one before and I liked it, but I didn't buy it on Friday because I was distracted by the myriad other things on the same seller's tables. When I returned on Saturday morning he had only two vendors left on those tables---this and an Ad-Lee E-Z, so I guess he had a good Friday! After having slept and packed the car, I took another look at it without Friday's hecticity and distractions and appreciated it more than I did the day before. Like you can have dinner one night and be ready to eat breakfast the next morning, I can buy a lot of stuff on Friday and be ready to buy again on Saturday. Plus, it looked lonely sitting nearly all alone on the seller's long banquet tables---it didn't deserve that fate. So I bought it, which I'm sure you've figured out by now.

  I sometimes think that maybe I don't need to return to the show on Saturday mornings, but then something like this happens (as it did at the previous show in November 2021, with the Rex Matches) and I remember there's a tangible benefit in going back for one last look-through with a fresh mind and new eyes.

• A year and a half later I saw the machine on the right---with the marquee---in the same seller's booth. I'll pause here to note the obvious, which is that some sellers have better stuff than others. For the same seller to have this same model twice in the course of two years is just....wow! Okay, back to the story: I liked the look of this one, too, and I especially liked that it had the marquee holder, which was obviously original. As I was looking it over I said to the seller "The marquee's a repro, right?" He seemed surprised and said "No, it's original." That really piqued my interest, and then the seller told me something that closed the deal, assuming it hadn't been closed already:

  It turns out there's a backstory to this specific machine, one I kinda knew about....but not really. A year or so before I bought either of the above machines, someone had contacted me through this very website (!) and said she had some collar button machines she'd like to sell and would I be interested? From her description I thought she had some Price collar button vendors, and told her yes, I'd be interested. "Where do you live?" I asked. Well, it turned out she didn't live near me but she did live near a friend who knows collar button vendors and might be interested. He was, so I put him in touch with the woman and he went up soon after that to see her and her husband and the machines. He told me later that they'd one intact machine and several partial machines, and he'd bought everything they had. I was happy it'd worked out well for everyone, and thought that was the end of it.

  Now forward to the two of us at the November 2024 Chicagoland show, talking in front of his table about this machine, and he says "Do you remember the lead on collar button machines you sent me a few years ago? I told you there was one complete machine and a couple of partials?" I say "I remember," and he says "This was the complete machine." I knew then that I was destined to own this machine, and who am I to disobey destiny?