Punch boards relegated to museums
By MATT NEWHOUSE
News Editor
A set of punch boards from the 1940s, held at Marion County Sheriff's Department, have been distributed for display.
Some will be set up in the courthouse while others went to Florence Historical Society and Marion Historical Museum.
Sheriff Lee Becker said the punch boards, which were gambling devices, were too interesting to throw away but too bulky to keep.
"Lulu-Belle" punch boards featured 2,000 foil-covered holes. For a nickel, a customer used a metal key to break the foil, poking a tiny bit of paper out the back. The tickets have random numbers on different-colored paper.
Boards promised an 80 percent payback, usually 40 cents or a dollar, based on the color of ticket and ending numbers.
The final punch on the board earned $5.
Cynthia Blount, curator at Marion Historical Museum, said the tightly folded tickets, less than two inches long, indicate they may have been manufactured overseas.
"It's such tedious work, folding those," she said. "That makes me think it was from a foreign country."
Jack Swain, Blount's father, remembered the punch boards as popular items in his youth.
"It was very democratic," he said. "If you were old enough to hand your nickel over the counter, you could have a punch."
Restaurants, bars, drugstores, and other businesses would have the boards available to customers. A couple of the boards indicate they were used at Riverside Café.
Jack Beaston of Marion, who happened to be in the museum during the presentation, said punch boards were popular entertainment.
"They were mostly in restaurants and the beer joints," he recalled.
Swain said he had heard that punch boards sometimes were manufactured and sold to businesses by con artists. After the first con sold the board, a partner would follow up, pay a few nickels, and punch out all the big-ticket winners, he said.
The boards Becker found declare that "all awards paid in trade," indicating cash prizes weren't offered.
All the boards include official tags on the back, though some are unreadable. They may have been cleared by local law officers, or possibly marked by unscrupulous sellers to lead businesses to think they were legitimate, Swain speculated.
Each card is partially used, though it isn't clear if they were punched out by customers, or during the intervening years by bored deputies.
Becker said the boards may have been seized by local law officers in a gambling investigation or were turned in due to changes in the law.
