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O Pee Chee

National Novelty Co., London, Ontario, Canada, 32". This is a 3-column wood L-vendor made presumably for Canadian customers in Canada, since it takes Canadian pennies. For some reason this model has always attracted me more than most other L-vendors, although I don't recall ever seeing one in person before this one. Actually, it wasn't this one I saw, it was the one that took this one's place---more about that below. Don't get me wrong---I like all L-vendors but some grab me more than others, and it's hard to have, like, 2 dozen L-vendors unless you have more space than I do. So, I have to be selective. When the day comes that I have to trim down to a few L-vendors, I hope this one makes the cut. My wife likes it, so Mr. O'Peachy will have that in his favor.

Now here's an interesting fact disguised as an anecdote:

A long time ago I bought an O Pee Chee front door on eBay. I remember who I bought it from and what I paid, and it was too much (as usual, for the coin-op eBay auctions I won back then) but as I said above I've always liked the O Pee Chee and I thought well golly, if someone sells one someday and it's missing the front door then I'll be all set! The O Pee Chee is considered rare, so I figured I wasn't gonna get too many chances to get one. I displayed the door because I like the graphics, and over the years that front door has hung on walls or has been set on the floor propped up against the wall or other things, always on display. When I got the machine above I thought, okay, I can sell that front door now since I have the whole machine. So I fetched it and held it up beside the machine above to see if the graphics differed any, and was gobsmacked to see a difference I'd never even considered---which is here. Can you friggin' believe that? The front door that I'd had for years was taller than the entire machine I'd just bought. This model is rare in Silent Salesmen Too yet National Novelty Company made 2 sizes? Wow. I still have the bigger front door, by the way, if you want it for the same reasons I did---but now you know the chance of ever finding a O Pee Chee to fit it is even slimmer than you thought it was. But hey---email me if you wanna talk about it.

The example pictured above is 100% original. I don't have a key, but the lock is open so I can remove and reinstall the front door at will. Here's the story of how I came to adopt it:

I was at the Chicagoland show in November 2018 and a dealer had an O Pee Chee, but not the way dealers usually have things at that show. This was laying on its back on a shelf in a locked case with a sign on it that said "NFS, but if you're interested then ask." The dealer was standing there and I said "So not for sale, but for $10,000 it's mine, right?" He didn't seem to think that was funny. He said "No, that's not it. I have one already, and I think this one might be a little nicer but I'm not sure. I'm going to take it home and compare, and I'll keep the better one and sell the other. It's possible that the one I have now is the better one, but I just don't know until I see 'em side by side. If this one's better than the one I have then it's barely better; they're both really nice." He was taking names of anyone interested in buying his castoff, so I put my name down. I was the first contestant.

About a month later he called and we talked. The one that I'd seen at the show was a little nicer---but barely!---so he was gonna keep that one and sell the one he'd had hanging in his house for, like, 20 years. He sent lots of pictures. He named his price and I very nicely said thanks, but I'll pass. It was quite a bit higher than I thought it was worth and more than I was willing to pay for it. He said no problem, and after a couple more minutes of conversation he asked me the highest price I'd be willing to pay for it. That caught me off-guard, and I told him that, but after thinking about it for a minute I named a price that was my ceiling, the absolute most I'd be willing to pay. L-vendor prices were soft at the time and I thought my offer was more than the machine was worth, but I wanted to close the gap between his price and my price as much as I could rationalize (and I'm a proficient rationalizer when it comes to buying old, useless vending machines). He said okay, he had others on the list he was gonna call but if nothing panned out he'd call me back.

I didn't expect to hear from him again, but true to his word he called me a couple of weeks later, said he'd come to realize that his original price was probably aiming a little high, and named a price that was more than the ceiling I'd named earlier, which I still thought was more than fair. We talked for awhile but I stuck to my max (a lesson I'd once learned the hard way, as described here), and he finally agreed to my offer. The funny result of this process was that I'd gone to my utter maximum and he'd gone down to his absolute low, to the extent that neither of us was willing to pay for shipping. We'd both stretched as far as we were going to, and we weren't gonna close that shipping gap. He offered to bring it to the April 2019 Chicagoland show and give it to me there, which was fine with me. I sent him a check, he delivered it to the show, and it all worked out.

Along the way he told me that the 2 machines were basically identical except for 2 things: 1) The lock on the one he had (which is the one I bought) works but he didn't have a key for it so it's "stuck" in the open position; and 2) The only reason he kept the one he did (which is the one I saw at the show) was that the porcelain color was a little brighter. His "brighter color" comment and the difference I noticed when I compared the machine to the O Pee Chee front door I had made me wonder whether the front of this one was faded. I don't think so, though; I see no unevenness in the color, and see no damage or dryness to the wood that would suggest sun damage. Even more convincing is this: As I was writing this page I saw an online picture of an O Pee Chee in the November 2019 Morphy Coin-op and Advertising auction and it looked like the one on the machine above. Maybe National Novelty Company made different colors and/or shades, or maybe the shorter and taller front panels were different colors by design. I don't know, but based on the match with the Morphy machine I don't think the lighter color is wrong. I think I prefer the less-strong color on the machine---it's softer and more pastel---although I like the brighter color on the tall door just fine, too.