The Musée Mécanique is a San Francisco treasure, a private collection of arcade games, folk art animatronic dioramas, fortune telling machines and photo booths. Don’t miss the world’s only steam powered motorcycle! We are proud to be the printer for the fortune cards that come out of some of the fortune telling machines. These historic designs came with the machines, and we replicated the artwork from scans of past printings.
The antique vending machines require cards of a specific thickness in order to vend properly, which means they have to be printed with a letterpress. The biggest logistical challenge to printing these fortunes is collating the thousands of cards so that the same fortune doesn’t ever get delivered twice in a row.
Dan Zelinsky, proprietor of the Musee, milled us some fortune-sized blocks to mount the plates on in the MM machine shop. We form a Useful Machine Admiration Society, new members are welcome.
Notes: Two-sided printing on poster board.