This issue features (and I really mean features) a section saluting H. Betti Industries (aka Betson) on its 90th year in the coin machine business. Beginning when an Italian immigrant named Humbert Betti installed his first jukebox in a North Jersey bar, and then tracing its growth and metamorphosis into America’s largest chain of machine distributors, the story is as much about family as it is about selling and fixing machines and providing the support parts that go with that.
There are many people named Betti working for this organization right now, just like many other families in this business who’ve put food on their tables, gas in their cars and kids through colleges in years gone by with the incomes earned via the coin slide. And, there’s respect: it isn’t unusual to chat with a third generation guy or gal and hear nothing but admiration when they reminisce about dads and grandads.
Spin the globe and stop at Pennsylvania, for example, and you’ll think of people named Guerrini, Lazar or Shay. Then go to Ohio where names like Shaffer and Westerhaus have been coin-op royalty for decades. How about the Getlans and McCarthys in New York and the Huish clan out in California? Lastly, how about the Liebermans of Minnesota who actually celebrated a hundred years doing this thing and are already well into their second centennial?
Making, selling, operating and repairing the games and music boxes has never been easy, which is why those who’ve gone before earned the respect they have. When youngsters in a coin-op family either decide to enter, or are coaxed into it by their parents, they almost always learn the craft on-the-job and often from a father, uncle or older brother. One of the first things they learn is that machines are heavy, often fragile and can break down if you don’t treat them right. The second thing newcomers learn is that they’re expensive.
Be it a family running a small arcade or running a large route, this is a unique industry often requiring heavy lifting…literally and figuratively. It helps if the person you’re working with has also shared your dinner table on holidays or maybe even every night. Congratulations to everyone who helped bring H. Betti Industries to this marvelous moment.