Who Remembers Punch Boards..........The term punchboard (or in some cases punch board, push board, punchcard, or pushcard) refers to a gambling device popular in the United States from roughly 1910 until 1970. Punchboards could be used for fundraising, sales promotion and gambling - sometimes all at once. Punchboards were typically found in places where men gathered socially, such as bars, pool halls, barber shops and mens clubs. Punchboards also could be found in beauty parlors, drug stores and other small retail establishments. With their promise of easy money, punchboards enjoyed great success during the Depression, and continued to enjoy popularity during and after World War II. According to Scarnes Complete Guide to Gambling (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1961), approximately 30 million punchboards were sold between 1910 and 1915. Scarne estimated that 50 million punchboards were sold in 1939 alone, at the peak of their popularity. Punchboard sales declined significantly after WWII, and by the mid-1970s the boards had been outlawed in most states.A modern punchboard typically consists of a square or rectangular piece of pressed wood or cardboard (from ½ inch to one inch in thickness) in which hundreds or thousands of holes have been drilled in a regular pattern, then loaded with tiny slips of rolled or folded paper. Each slip of paper had a number or symbol printed on it. Both front and back of the board were covered with a foil or paper seal. The front of the board typically featured some form of attention-getting commercial imagery and a chart listing the winning number or combination of numbers and symbols, along with the prizes or cash amounts to be awarded to the winners. The boards were sold with a metal stylus or punch for the players to use. A player paid the punchboards operator a set amount of money (typically a nickel, dime or quarter) for a chance to use a metal stylus to break the seal on the hole of his choice, and punch one of the slips of paper out of the board. If the number or symbols found on the slip of paper matched one of the pre-determined winning combinations, the player was awarded the corresponding prize. Punchboard manufacturers sold the boards blank or preprinted. Blank boards were sold to jobbers or salesmen who then added their own imagery or advertisement, and many surviving punchboards feature advertisements for products that were inexpensive and had mass appeal, such as peanuts, candy and cigarettes. Some of these boards offered the advertised product as the prize; these came to be known as prizeboards. Some prizeboards were constructed with a shadow box meant to contain prizes such as rhinestone sunglasses, wristwatches, Bowie knives or even handguns. Punchboard manufacturers also sold the board pre-printed with various kinds of commercial imagery - sports, gambling, and patriotic imagery were well-represented, as were folk figures, racial and ethnic stereotypes, and the ubiquitous pin-up girls. Most of these boards were played for cash.
Posted on: Mon, 26 May 2014 22:18:39 +0000
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