1932 Gottlieb "Five Star Final" Pinball

This is our Five Star Final Pinball machine. It was named after a very popular movie from the early 1930's. **UPDATE! ** The game pattern underneath is from "Play the Joker" by the Sterling Novelty Manufacturing Company. How on Earth Gottlieb got their hands on an unfinished playfield from another company that same year is another mystery. Total restore time approximately 15 hrs. Glass was removed for video.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Bally
• Williams
• Pinball
• Stern
• Antique
• Bagatelle
• Pin
• Ball
• Gottlieb
• prewar
• anime
• five
• star
• final
• play
• the
• joker
• vintage
• rockola
• seeburg
• wurlitzer

[justincasekazoo]

How would the design be copied? Wasn't it copyrighted or something?

[animecrash2]

Apparently David Gottlieb did not take out a patent on this game.

[lukethegreat29]

it must be from play the joker

[animecrash2]

Funny you should say that!! We just saw Play the Joker on Ebay yesterday and was shocked to recognize it as the underside of our game. We are looking into why Gottlieb would have used a Play the Jokers playfield when it was not a Gottlieb game. Play the Joker was made by Sterling Manufacturing in the same year as Five Star Final. Weird.

[animecrash2]

Interesting. Did you get the one that was just on ebay?

[holopin]

five star final was manufactured by gottlieb, and the only other game that they made that sounds cardish/vegas like is

chuck-o-luck but there is no pictures on the internet so I'm not sure

[animecrash2]

Yes, we were suspicious of chuck-o-luck too but like you said, there are no pics.

[WhiskasIII]

shooting curve is awesome!

[newfagscanttrif0rce]

Love the videos!

[MrHitchcockFan]

Great piece of history there. I checked on wiki's pinball page and it says "During World War II all of the major manufacturing companies in coin-operated games were put into use manufacturing equipment for the American war effort. Some companies like Williams bought old games from operators and refurbished them, adding new artwork with a patriotic theme." So that's probably why the other game was underneath. Thanks for putting the video up.

[holopin]

you mean the one that went off for $91.00? yup its fun and really hard.

[holopin]

I just got a home version of this game and there is nothing on the other side.