Victoria Australia Official Rep Badge

to the Community!

Exactly what it is

I used to have fun making them when I was a kid and it only cost a quarter instead of this machine needing a Canadian twoonie to work! Times change (yeah - a pun, I know)!

Zoom and look in the shiny part under the top of the machine and you can see the guy taking the picture as well as some other people.

That machine Earle posted looks pretty much the same as the one I recall using in Toronto railway station in 1983. I've always described it as "looking like a cross between a one-arm-bandit slot machine and an old-fashioned Dymo labeller". Though the example in Earle's photo actually has two "arms", I see. Each letter on the OP's medal would have had to be meticulously selected and punched onto the medallion, one letter at a time.

I have seen other such personalised medallions with an Australian location stated on them, so I know that such machines were also used here in Australia at one time, though I've never encountered an actual machine here. I suspect these machines are quite high-maintenance (compared to other numismatic-related souvenir presses, like elongated-cent-rollers), as the commonly-used letters like "E" will tend to crack or wear down much quicker than the less-common letters like "Q" or "Z". And if nobody local was manufacturing spare letter-punches that fit into these machines, they'd have had to order replacement letter-punches and other spare parts from America.