MANY elderly residents at Wintringham's aged care hostels will remember days spent testing their luck - and skill - at the local penny arcade.
Now lucky residents at the specialist aged care provider's Gilgunya hostel in Coburg have all the fun of the fair close to home.
The hostel has been donated a rare vintage arcade game, thanks to Melbourne's Luna Park.
The Ahrens Skill Rotary Merchandiser - one of the world's finest skill-tester machines - was housed in Luna Park's Penny Arcade from 1937.
Now it has a new home.
"This is probably one of the last of its type in the world, let alone a working model," said Gilgunya site manager Kate Rice.
The slot machine is a glass-topped wooden cabinet divided into an upper and lower compartment. In the top part, articles are placed on to a revolving platform with a hole in the centre leading to a chute.
Once activated (by putting a coin in the slot) a rod passes across the platform and will push (if the player is lucky) an object down the chute.
"The residents love playing with it. We put in chocolate bars, compact mirrors, notebooks and other small prizes," Mrs Rice said.
"And what is even more special is that the man who used to fix the machine when it was at Luna Park (Bob Klepner) came and installed it for us."
The merchandiser was the work of Charles Ahrens, a famous British machine manufacturer early last century. In 1936, he started making large four- and six-player rotary devices in ornate cabinets.
These were a great success and were featured in the biggest and best British amusement arcades.
Unfortunately, Ahrens had copied the mechanism from the far less attractive and less reliable Waltonian Merchandiser, patented by Waltons of Blackpool. Ahrens was sued and died a pauper.
"Luna Park was lucky to secure this handsome model and Wintringham Gilgunya is even luckier to have been gifted it," Mrs Rice said. "We hope it will entertain and test the skills of residents for decades to come."
Wintringham is a Victorian-based not-for-profit welfare company specialising in the housing and care of older people who are homeless or vulnerable to homelessness.
