Vintage poker machine, $1620

Aspiring to be a model is a mug’s game. To be a model you have to stand out from thousands of other equally beautiful girls from every corner of the globe. If you fall short you don’t even have the option of working at it, as it isn’t a skill but a confluence of God-given attributes and fortuitous timing, as decided by designers and magazine editors. And yet teenage girls the world over will set their hearts on becoming models, making them vulnerable to an aimless existence at best and exploitation at worst. If only the whole phenomenon could be consigned to the scrap heap, like this early version of that other game of chance that rewards one in a million while 999,999 others hope and wait in vain.