Comic Book Vending Machines

Todd Franklin posted a picture of a pretty gorgeous comic book vending machine (I'm not gonna swipe his photo... click through to check it out) today at his blog, Neato Coolville, and this prompted me to go hunting to see what else I could learn about it. A bit of poking around turned up this:

The drawing shows a smaller cabinet than Franklin's specimen; I'd be curious as to whether it was offered in multiple sizes for different venues. My investigation found only one other US patent for a vending machine that specified comics as opposed to just magazines in general, that being one issued in 1964 to a Ronald William Searle (no, not that Ronald William Searle, though I have no idea if there's any relation) of Christchurch, New Zealand. Here, for the record, are all the magazine vending machine patents.