Like the other contributors have said, consoles are not that collectable, YET. I love these machines more than any other slot machine, they were the first machines to have features similar to todays slot machines that you see in the casino's today, they had features where a player could win thousands of credits (Cash) Keeney was the forerunner of this style of machine, Bally virtually took over as the leader in the console market, after they had made the pinball style of gambling games known as one-ball games in the mid 1940's, there is a great history to these games.
I think because collectors have a hard time referencing this type of game, they tend to stay away from them, I am at this time writing a book about the history of the Console gambling games.
In Europe many operators made there fortunes operating consoles and upright gambling machines as well as the Bally bingo games, even today in Belgium the operators still operate bingo pinball games, in fact they have officially been deemed a National pastime by the Belgium Government.
Bally brought out the Reserve Bell in 1947, (See attachments) the mechanism was later modified and used in the first modern day Bally slot machines (See attachment), known as electro-mechanical machines. The Bally Money Honey revolutionized the casino business in Nevada, and who knows without these hopper payout models, I am sure Las Vegas would not be what it is today, without the introduction of the Bally Money Honey, the earning power of the Bally models of the early 1960's could never be matched by the old mechanical models from the likes of Jennings and Mills as their models was very limited in their payouts.
Although the current day values of these machines are very weak, I feel that collectors should look more closely at adding these remarkable machines to their collections, after all they are a big part of coin operated machine history.
Freddy Bailey