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Stover Hot Nut

C. D. Stover, Waterloo, IA, c. 1933, 16". I bought this on ebay before I'd ever seen one live. Based on the picture in Silent Salesmen Too I'd expected a Chic-Mint-sized machine. Had I compared heights I'd have seen that the 11¹/₂-inch Chic-Mint is only three-quarters the size of the Stover, but I didn't. When I got the Stover package and opened the globe, I was shocked at its size---it looked like a Chic-Mint globe on steroids. Once I got the body unpacked and the globe installed, I got used to the proportions and didn't mind the larger size, but I remember that first impression.

This is a cast aluminum vendor with multi-faceted base and a coin-slide mechanism. Put your penny in, push the coin slide in and pull it out, and the vending wheel deposits a palmful of peanuts into the chute exiting at the gate on the left. A cord emanates from the rear of the base, and inside goes to a heater unit and a light inside the base. The dark circle below the "HOT" decal is a red lens that glows when the inside light is on.

I've seen only 4 of these machines, and all were painted hammertone silver/gray. Three were on ebay and the fourth was already in a collection. All 4 were in good original condition, which is a suprisingly high percentage for a peanut vendor from the 1930's or 1940's.

The example above is 100% original. The mechanism works well but the connection to the vending wheel is missing, so pushing the coin slide in and out doesn't translate to movement in the wheel. I suspect that's a moderately easy fix, which I'll get to one of these days. I think.