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- description
- A merchant-paid award is a reward in which the machine identifies a winner but pays nothing itself. The award is handed over at the location — by the merchant, operator or storekeeper on whose counter the game stands — so the payment happens across the counter rather than through a coin hopper.[1] What the machine supplies is the verdict: a score, a lit winning number, a marquee naming what that score is worth.
The arrangement was the trade's answer to territory where a payout machine was illegal. A game that dispensed no coins was not a payout machine in the eyes of the law, yet the operator could still offer the pull of winnings. Bally sold its non-payout *[[model:harvest-moon-2]]* on exactly that promise, offering operators "a crack at 'payout profits' in NON-PAYOUT TERRITORY".[2]
The award was often credit at the counter rather than cash. Score cards mounted on the backbox told the player how much money "in trade" a given score returned,[3] and some were printed on both sides so one game could be presented as a trade-award machine or an amusement-only one as local conditions demanded.[4] Other makers put the goods in front of the player instead of naming a sum, displaying the prizes themselves beneath the playfield glass.[5]
The mode outlasted the pre-war payout bans it was built for. Keeney was still building it into machines in the 1960s, where a player who chose to cash out was paid by the location at a dime a point.[6]
2. Billboard — March 7, 1936 — 1936 (p. 78) World Radio History scan gives you a crack at "payout profits" in NON-PAYOUT TERRITORY
6. Internet Pinball Database (IPDB) — Internet Pinball Database (IPDB) #3400 If the player chooses to cash out, the location would subtract the Sub-Total from the Total Score and pay the difference, one dime for each point.
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- display_order
- 6
- name
- Merchant-Paid Award
- slug
- merchant-paid
- status
- active