All tokens for the Bally Safe Cracker pinball machine

As you can already read on my game review, Bally's Safe Cracker is a very special pinball machine. Not only is it much smaller than a normal pinball machine and do you play against the time instead of playing a set number of pinballs. What makes this even more special is that it's a 'token-pin' : one of the custom parts of this game is that it accepts and distributes 'magic tokens'.

The pinball machine has a coin distributor in the backbox. Two tubes hold tokens. During the game (if you play well enough) the game can distribute tokens.
They come out from a slot in the center of the speaker panel and come rolling down the playfield glass towards the player !
When you win a token and put it back in the game, you get a credit to start a different type of game: an timed multiball in which you try to score as many jackpots as possible.

 
 

As you can see on the flyer of the game, Safe Cracker came with a set of tokens which players could collect.
New Safe Cracker pinball machines shipped from the factory with a set of 300 tokens included : 15 pieces of each design.
19 types of token are gold colored, and the bank token is silver. Supposedly this bank token contains real silver.

Apart from the standard tokens, more versions were originally minted, mostly for promotional use. They were not distributed with new games. 6 of the tokens also exist in an antiqued (bronze) version, and there's also a bronze colored prototype token.

Later more promotional / special tokens have been created, and around 2007 the tokens were minted again. See below for more details..

 
 

Domestic or international

Because of restrictions to the coin size in each country, two different sets of tokens were created. A domestic and an international set. The sets had the same type of designs, but the size was different.
(1.175" diameter). Domestic tokens measure 1.175", international tokens are a bit larger at 1.190" (30mm) diameter.

Original tokens

Each token has the same backside: the SafeCracker logo.

 
 

ACME truck

Bank (silver)

Candy 2000

Cop eating donut

Safe dial

Dice

Getaway truck

Exploding logo

Sleeping guard

Hand on dial

Hand with money

Manhole cover

Bag of money

Face with money

PLD logo

Robodog

Burgler on rope

Satellite dish

Stopwatch

Token Pin

The above 20 different tokens are the tokens which were included with each new SafeCracker pinball machine.
15 pieces of each of the 20 designs, making a total of 300. That is what is considered a 'full' set of tokens.
These sets exist in both domestic and international size.

For promotional use there were also 7 other tokens minted. They were the 6 designs above (which are also available in the regular set) and one prototype token. They were created as an antiqued (bronze colored) version instead of the regular shiny gold color.
As far as I know these were not distributed together with new games.
It's possible these originally only existed in domestic size.

Token reruns and special versions

In 2006 Mr Pinball Australia (then license holder to create spare Bally/Williams pinball parts) had the SafeCracker tokens minted again.
Only the international size was minted.
Two sets were available for sale:

• A set of 300 original shiny tokens (15x the 20 designs), for $250
• An antiqued set: 15 pieces of each of the 6 antiqued tokens + 1 prototype token. These 91 tokens cost around $115.

Below is an overview of the antiqued reproduction set by Mr Pinball Australia.

The antiqued prototype token, as reproduced by Mr Pinball Australia.

So, time to play a game. Can you spot the difference ?
Take a good look at the antiqued sets..
It seems Mr Pinball Australia made a mistake when deciding what tokens to run in an antiqued version.
In the original set the getaway truck was antiqued (where you see it in 3D). In the reminted antiqued set, they used the ACME truck token (where you see the truck from its side).
So because of this mistake, the number of antiqued tokens set has increased (and antiqued sets can be easily identified as original or reproduction).

Other SafeCracker tokens

The original 20 designs are not the only SafeCracker tokens to exist. The Texas Pinball Festival has also created two new (officially licensed) SafeCracker tokens.
At the show there's a SC machine. Visitors can try to win a token. The tokens have (in very limited quantity) also been available for sale, for $2 each.

2016 TPF token

2020 TPF token