Identification Label Vending Machine

Quite a few years ago I helped move these two monsters out of the basement of Rath Art into the basement of the tattoo shop. Good times, let me tell you. They’ve sat there for years, escaping the best intentions to get them up and running.

They dispense metal identification tags. Like a big, floor mounted Dymo machine in essence. The tags are actually really cool and very useful. I think that if I saw one of these and it was a functioning unit, I’d immediately think of a bunch of uses and pop out a slew of  labels.

Big dial on the front.

Nice lettering and everything.

And these are the labels. No choice of typeface, but, whatever.

Instruction panel.

Where you insert your dime and where the finished label is spat out.

Crank on the side.

According to Sandra Kiemele from the Dundas Museum, the company was in business from 1955-1960. The address on the name plate is the address for Dundas Town Hall, which has been on the same site since 1847. Her guess is that there were post boxes in the Town Hall which Canadian Vending Machines used. This points more in the direction of  CVM being in the distribution of the machines rather than the manufacturer. Typing this into a search engine is futile. It just brings up every modern company that sells or leases or fixes or services vending machines in Canada. Not very helpful.

Instructions.

A mere 10¢ for 6". Step right up for the finest bargoon to be found anywhere!

And all those suggestions are still just valid today.

I’ll spin the wheel Pat!

Turn it to “start”, pull down on the handle on the side, then the first letter, pull the handle, etc., and finally, turn to “finish”, pull the handle and that cuts it.

And some shots of the interior.

You can see the spool of feed stock here.

Closer view.

 And a view into the top.

Very cool machine, that would be really great to get going. I can’t be the only person who could think of a few things to label with these tags. My friend is thinking of selling them, maybe for scrap, but that seems a shame.

Sadly, I can’t find out the first bloody thing about them. Hours of searching on the internet have turned up nothing. Not who made them, what era they’re from, etc.

If anyone knows anything about these, we’d love to know. A Mr. Ken Durham of GameRoomAntiques was kind enough to send me this article with some information. Thank you sir.
http://gameroomantiques.com/Feature/MetalStamping.htm

Well, they’ve been sold. An antique dealer friend bought them. I hope he’ll fix them up and someone, somewhere can get some use out of them.