It is July 4th, 2026 and for my family that is about half of the summer gone. Come August my wife will be back to work teaching and a few weeks into August we will be moving my son back to his college campus. We've kept the roads and skies busy this summer with various trips and vacations, but I've still managed to get two gumball machine restorations in as well. Here are my two latest off of the bench - Harley-Davidson and a Coke themed Acorn gumball machines, as well as a few restorations from earlier in the year - even a Victor! All of these machines have penny coin mechanisms, and the Acorns have glass globes (acrylic for the Texaco Victor), and have been completely restored inside and out! I take EVERY pieces apart down to the tiniest spring and dog inside the coin mech to be sandblasted and polished. Then everything is properly lubricated at reassembly for years and years of service! There are no stickers on any these machines. All artwork are waterslide decals that I make and apply, kind of like how we used to out on model airplanes and cars back in the day!
I guess I have been restoring gumball machines for over 30 years now. I was in college when I did my first one - very crudely... LOL! But it has been a very satisfying hobby to be involved with over the years. I have a page on my other website that has more about my gumball machine restorations and hundreds of more photos of past machines that can be found at www.RememberTheDriveIn.com. Of course, I still restore vintage drive-in movie speakers, as well, but I found myself doing more gumball machines this year than speakers. Gumball machines have a much larger appeal to people as there is a massive part of the population that haven't a clue what a drive-in speaker even is these days! At one time I had several dozen gumball machines sitting on shelves waiting for work to be done, but they've just all sold over the years. And it seems good candidates for restorations get harder and harder to find as time goes by. But 2026 was good and I found a few good ones, as seen below with some videos and photos:
