I found this “ticket” inside a 1939-vintage used UK book. Any ideas what it is? Train ticket? Where and/or when? Looks like it’s post-decimalization.
I’m not in the UK, but it looks like a bet on a horse (or maybe a dog).
Looks like a bus ticket to me.
When you boarded a city bus, there was an on-board conductor who would approach you and to whom you would pay your fare. He then printed a ticket for you from a mechanical ticket machine that he carried slung from his shoulder on a leather strap. He’d press a couple of buttons to record the denomination of the ticket and rotate a handle; the machine printed a ticket that looked a lot like this. “Twenty pence” is the denomination of the ticket (and, yes, it’s post-decimalisation); the other letters and numbers encode the particular ticket machine and (possibly) the date of issue (13 July) and (often) the location where it was issued. You retained this ticket to produce it if the conductor approached you again, or if a ticket inspection occurred.
It’s a ticket for a bet on a horse or dog race. Look on the lower left side under the “7”—you’ll see the word “RACE” imprinted into the ticket.
Looks like a quinella.
The five letter code is a characteristic of betting tickets from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. I can’t find any examples from the UK, but there are tons of examples of US slips online.
Google lens came up with this
So it looks like a betting slip as others have said.
Can’t help with the question (although it looks to be answered), but I absolutely LOVE finding random stuff inside old books. ‘Bycatch’, I call it.
So… what was the book ?
I know nothing much about the betting process, so I’m not going to argue against the consensus - but I presume that a betting slip would have to contain information identifying the odds (unless maybe it’s tote betting? - again, color me ignorant); the race; the cash amount and (I thought) whether betting tax has been paid up front. So - is all of this information encoded on the slip? Yes, I know that it says 20p, but to me that looks like it is preprinted (and also debossed) in a manner that doesn’t suggest point of sale. Did there use to be standard 20p bets that you “bought”? I mean, you might run a lottery like that, but it doesn’t feel like the sort of thing that would happen at a dog track (say).
j
In the US, the odds keep changing up until post, after all the slips have been printed. I suspect back in the day, 20p was the minimum bet* in the UK, like $2 in the US.
*ETA: I just noticed @iamatractorboy’s linked slip is for only 10NP. Might as well be using matchsticks.
Likewise the UK. It’s 4 decades since I placed my last (of very few lifetime) bets. In my memory the odds were scrawled on the slip.
j
We’ll see you over there.
Don’t worry. I’m at the track about twice a week, so I’m picking up your slack.
You would have been betting with a bookie, where you can “lock in” the odds you get when you place your bet, and your purchased odds would need to be indicated on your ticket. @Elmer_J.Fudd is talking about betting on the tote, where the odds do indeed change right up until the race starts. When you bet on a parimutuel tote, you cannot “lock in” your odds; thus, they would never be printed on your ticket. Note that we can only play on a parimutuel tote here in North America, because racing bookies are outlawed in both the US and Canada.
Looking at a few losing tickets I got last weekend (like the OP found, my losing tickets will become bookmarks), each bears the following information:
Issuing agency (note I can play any track that’s running today from the local race book),
Today’s date, and the time the ticket was issued,
Race location (e.g. Woodbine, Del Mar, Saratoga, Gulfstream Park, etc.),
Race number,
Bet amount (or base wager in the case of exotics),
Type of bet (win, place, show, exactor, trifecta, etc.),
Horse number(s),
Number of bets placed (boxed and wheeled bets can place multiple bets on the ticket),
… and finally, the Total cost of the ticket.
There is also a bar code that the Amtote machines (American Totalisator, or Amtote, supplies totalisator equipment to most North American tracks) can read which contains all of the above. But nowhere on the ticket, are the odds listed.
Thank you! I might post a few of my finds
That’s the thing about the Dope - there’s always an expert at hand. 
The list of information is enlightening. I don’t suppose that, decades (I assume) ago when the mystery ticket was created, it was technologically possible to put all that information on a betting slip - but some of it would presumably be necessary. I don’t see it coded there and that’s what I find puzzling.
ETA: so do we incline more to the view that it may be a tote slip?
j
The book is a bound volume of the twelve “British Chess Magazines” issued in 1939. There are interesting stories about the 1939 International Chess Olympiad held in Buenos Aires overlapping the time that war broke out (early September). The Poles refused to play the Germans in their scheduled match; most of the Poles decided to stay in Argentina (as well as a couple of Germans) - some later becoming Argentine citizens - and representing Argentina in the chess world…
Hey, thanks! But I think I’d be more of an expert if I didn’t have quite so many losing tickets from last weekend.
I’d say it’s a tote slip. A very basic one, but some kind of tote slip.
Like anything else, the tote has developed and become more sophisticated over time. Look at the photos of old-time American parimutuel tote tickets that Elmer J. Fudd linked to upthread—you’ll see that some of them contain preprinted information, such as dollar anounts (“Two (2) Dollars”), and bet types (“Daily Double” or “Cash If Win Only”). That’s because back in the day, you bought a $2 Win ticket, for example, from a $2 Win window. Different windows offered different bets for different amounts; and the tote machines at each window were loaded with appropriate blank tickets.
As technology developed, Amtote introduced the “ABC” system, for All Betting and Cashing. You could now bet any amount and make any bet at any window, and you could similarly cash any winning ticket at any window. When I started going to the track over 40 years ago, my local track (back then, Woodbine, in Toronto) had just switched over to an ABC system, and I still remember the signs stating “ABC” over the betting windows.
In spite of the ABC system, tote tickets were still pretty primitive when I started going to the track. There was no intertrack or off-track wagering, except in a very few places. Las Vegas, for example. But generally, you were only wagering on today’s races at the track you were at. I could not bet Aqueduct or Churchill Downs from Woodbine, for example.
That came to Woodbine, and other tracks, in roughly 1990, and only in a limited way. Selected races at selected tracks, and usually major stakes races. So, Woodbine might offer wagering on the Belmont Stakes race on the appointed day, but couldn’t book wagers on other races on the Belmont card. Or on any other track, for that matter.
Eventually, full intertrack wagering came about, and today, I can wager any track, any bet, any amount, from my local track/book. Heck, I can place my own wagers, using a machine—I don’t even need a human sitting at a window.
As the technology developed, bet types developed also. In addition to the usual Win, Place, Show, Quinella, Exactor, Triactor, Daily Double; there could now be Superfectas (top 4 finishers in exact order). Some tracks are experimenting with Pentafectas (top 5 finishers, exact order), and with Swingers (pick 2 horses, if they finish in the top 3 anywhere in any order, you win). Parlay bets abounded; instead of just the Daily Double on Races 1 and 2, you could now wager a Double on any two back-to-back races. Heck, you could now bet winners of three selected races in a Triple. Or four selected races, or five, or six. Parlays sometimes now cover three (etc.) races at three different tracks—for example, the 3rd race at Woodbine, the 5th race at Saratoga, and the 7th race at Gulfstream.
All this is a long-winded way of saying that all the information on today’s tote tickets is necessary, because things have become more complicated over time. Early tote tickets were pretty basic and simple things, because they didn’t need to be more complicated. Today’s tote tickets are much more complicated and do need all kinds of information, simply because with all kinds of bets at any amount, at any track that’s running, they need to be.
And that’s why I think the OP’s photo is of a tote ticket. An early and long-ago one, given its simplicity and lack of information that is necessary today, and not from an Amtote machine, as Elmer’s examples were, but a tote ticket nonetheless.
Maybe @Spoons can answer this. Was the five letter code unique to each slip issued that day? Or was it the same for all tickets in a particular race? If my math is right, there could only be 65,780 combinations which seems a little low for the number of bets that might be laid during a busy day at the track.
Just to add that at most (probably all) UK horse race tracks, you can bet with the Tote and/or with fixed odds bookies. Personally, I prefer the latter (not that I’m any kind of expert) but both are generally available.