The Nic Costa Archive (NCA) was established in the September of 2021 with the arrival of eighteen boxes of coin-operated and amusement arcade trade artefacts, documents, and memorabilia, which will join Dr. Meades’ smaller collection of research materials located at Canterbury Christ Church University in the UK, as a resource to support researchers and academics studying this area.

It is named after coin-operated machine historian, artist, and author of Automatic Pleasures and More Automatic Pleasures, Nic Costa, whose extensive collection makes up the majority of the archive that includes marketing materials, advertisements, flyers, photographs and slides, documents, interviews, and other artefacts that trace the development of the international (and primarily British) coin-operated and amusement arcade industry from the late 1800s to the 1970s. 

The Nic Costa Archive is currently being processed, with the intention of making key materials visible and accessible on this website. Our aim is to make in-person visits to the archive possible in the summer of 2023.