Low Value Slot Symbols explained

Whilst slot machine gambling has only really been a thing for the last century or so, the amount of gamblers who love spinning the reels of their favourite slots these days is second to none. In fact, the slots industry is by far the biggest offshoot of the overall gambling market in the 21st century, and it is funny to think that without a particularly savvy Californian engineer called Charles D. Fey they may not have ever been invented.

He made some crucial alterations to the rudimentary slot machines that were dotted around California in the 19th century, ending up with the Liberty Bell slot, the first of its kind. The main thing that Mr Fey succeeded in changing was the prize mechanism, with prize money actually coming out of the slot machine itself, instead of having to be collected at the bar. This also resulted in the formation of low and high value slot symbols, read on to find out about low value slot symbols from Rainbow Riches Megaways. 

A brief history of slot symbols in general 

Back in the day before Charles D. Fey had created the Liberty Bell machine slot machines didn’t really have high or low value symbols in the same way as we do now. This is mainly down to the fact that there was only a few different icons on the reels back in the 1800s, and so any winning combination tended to have roughly the same value. 

Of course, this all changed when Charles D. Fey first created the Liberty Bell machine, a slot that had a tiered system of symbols for the first time. The Liberty Bell icons that it derived its name from were the high paying icons, whereas a selection of poker inspired symbols were the low paying symbols. 

The first low value symbols 

So, as we mentioned, the first clear low value symbols continued in the poker style icon tradition that was a defining characteristic of the primordial slot machines from back in the day. As the slot machine industry slowly started to grow the low value symbols tended to stick by the same formula, with the poker style icons continuing to be used heavily well into the 20th century. 

In fact, slot symbols in general didn’t really change much throughout the 20th century, mainly because they still had to be painted on to a set of reels by hand, and there was therefore little scope for what developers could do. This all changed in the 1980s with the arrival of video slots, however the low paying icons still centred on playing card symbols. 

Typical attributes of low value slot symbols 

What do low value slot symbols tend to look like these days? Well, one of the main hallmarks of these icons is that they tend to be designed round playing card symbols. Most developers will try and give their own spin on these, with the playing card symbols usually being intertwined with the slot theme in some way, however this isn’t always the case.