What do you do when you have a couple of undesirable, enormous and basically worthless Vendo 144 soda machines? You turn them into restroom doors. These are photos of the restrooms that were in our retail store in Salem, NH. We took two Vendo 144 doors and restored them to like new condition and bolted [...]

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1950’s Esso Tiger Advertising Statue “Put a Tiger In Your Tank”
These pictures and video are of the Esso Tiger we restored a few years back and that still guards the Retroplanet.com world headquarters. The pictures show the ‘before’, ‘during’ and ‘after’ stages. At Vintage Vending we restored 3 of these over the years. This [...]

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Auto-Lite Spark Plug Automotive Parts Store Counter Display
This was a great little Auto-Lite spark plug counter display we restored. It looked a little rough on the outside, but inside the case was pretty clean. Most importantly, it had all the original spark plugs and the curved glass was not broken.

It was a pretty basic restoration: [...]

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Service Manuals for Coca-Cola Vendo 81, 44 & 39 Soda Machines
At the Retroplanet.com site we are offering free downloads of PDFs of service manuals for three models of Coca-Cola soda machines from the 1950’s. They are the Vendo 81, 44 and 39. These PDFs can be found at the Retroplanet PDF Library.

It is important [...]

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“Coca-Cola Truck and Car Paint Schemes” at Retroplanet.com
Standardization of the Coca-Cola identity is discussed at the Retroplanet.com blog, “Coca-Cola Truck and Car Paint Schemes”. Click on http://www.retroplanet.com/blog/category/vintage-vending-archives/ to see the Standardization Bulletins issued by the Standardization Committee of Bottlers of Coca-Cola in 1948 and 1957. They’re very interesting!

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Shell Oil “Clamshell” Sign Restoration: Before and After
There are a lot of collectors who think that signs should never be restored or touched up in any way. Personally, I have never had a problem with it depending on the sign, where it would be used and how bad the condition was. You should be careful, [...]

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