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Feba

Germany, c. probably 1940s, 18". This is an interesting machine about which I know little. It's not listed in Silent Salesmen Too, so I can't plagiarize Bill's research. I'm guessing it was made in the late 1940s---I doubt it would have been made during World War II, and I'd expect a pre-war German machine to be cast iron.

The name "Feba" is stamped on the chute flap on the side; hence its moniker. It has an aluminum base and lid and takes a 10 pfennig coin. The interesting feature of this machine---and the primary reason I bought it---is that the globe is actually two globes, and each globe sits astride a vending wheel. One half-globe is in the front, and the other is in the rear. You can remove them separately so it's not one globe with a divider; they're completely individual and are made to be used together on this machine.

Under each globe is a opening to a vertical vending wheel. Put your coin in and turn the handle clockwise, and it vends from the rear compartment. Insert the coin and turn counterclockwise and it vends from the front compartment. So, as you can see above, you can put different products in the front and rear and have essentially a "single globe" 2-compartment vendor---or so it looks.

With that background, here are 2 things I can't figure out:

If the rear compartment sells faster than the front, how does the customer know there's different product in the rear? The front product would block the view of rear product when standing head-on in front of the machine, so how does he or she know there's a choice?
Assuming the customer knows there's second globe in back,, how does he or she know which way to turn for the front or rear goodies? I don't read German, but I'm not aware that those instructions are on the machine. Do the black and red dots on the mechanism tell them something, or did those match a long-gone mark on the globe to tell which direction was which globe?

I'd expect a machine like this to be split into right and left halves, not front and rear, and to be labeled to tell the customer how to operate it. Maybe the instructions were once on the machine, but if so then they're gone now.

The American I bought this from is moderately knowledgable about foreign machines and has shown this to several European collectors. They've all said they've not seen another one like it, but none of these European collectors specialized in vending. So, while I'm not prepared to call this officially 'rare,' it appears to be uncommon at the least.

This example is 100% original.

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