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Pansy Gum (London Novelty Co.)

London Novelty Co., c. 1900, 26". To say this is stunning is simultaneously accurate and insufficient. The body is tin, and the graphics would make the machine stunning even if the tin were flat, but it's not---it's embossed, so it's, like . . . stunningly stunning, or maybe super-stunning! It shares the same name---Pansy Gum---as another version but is bolder and brighter. The Roth's Pansy Gum is a great model that's coveted by a lot of collectors---and I like mine a lot---but it looks plain next to the version above. I won't show them side by side because it's not fair to the Roth's. It would be like comparing Robin Wellings to Phoebe Cates back in their prime; Robin was cute and pretty and I loved her a bunch, but she was a mere mortal whereas Phoebe Cates was Phoebe Cates! Any comparison like that is unfair to the mere mortal. Another spectacular machine is also called Pansy Gum but it differs completely from the one above and the Roth's other than also vending gum, a fortune, and a love letter.

Silent Salesmen Too cites London Novelty Co. as the manufacturer of this version, probably because London Novelty Co. is written in the graphics on the case's exterior. For those of you unfamiliar with detective novels, that's called a "clue." There's no mention of any other entity on the example above, but a friend of mine has an example of this model with paper attached to the wood backing inside the case, and it says "Machines & supplies by August M. Roth, P.O. Box 162, Baltimore, Md." I've always been intrigued by the "Roth's" part of "Roth's Pansy Gum" on the plainer version referenced above, and now here he is again, associated with this earlier version albeit less flamboyantly. Given the "London Novelty Co." on the outside and this statement on the paper inside, I'm surmising that Mr. Roth was a jobber who commissioned the machine from London Novelty Co. and then sold them and their supplies through his own company. The plainer version came a few years later according to Silent Salesmen Too, and maybe by that time Mr. Roth's ego had grown to the point that he needed top billing on the next generation of his machines.

I don't have much more to say about this that's not already said about the mere-mortal Pansy Gum here. The machine above came from the estate of Jim Pursell, a long-time collector who died in early 2019. His wife Jan sold it at the November 2019 Chicagoland show, and I was in the right place at the right time. Had I been 5 seconds removed from where I was---or slower to react---then you wouldn't be reading about this here. She called this "her baby" and I could tell that it hurt her to sell it. I promised to take good care of it, and I will. My heirs will be the ones passing this on to its next owner, hopefully not soon. It's 100% original and in outstanding condition.

This model is quite rare but apparently came in 2 colors: The dark blue shown above, and a lighter blue. I don't know if the lighter blue is actually a light blue---I've never seen one---but as I was cradling this machine in my arms at the Chicagoland show I overheard someone behind me telling someone else behind me that he has one but that it's a lighter blue. It's always intrigued me that different examples of such rare machines can differ; if very few of the machines were made then I'd have expected only one run to exist, all the same. The fact that variations exist suggests to me that once upon a time they weren't quite so rare.