Oh brother! I was just gonna pull mine apart same as John to see if I could see the missing spring for you.
Glad I checked here again before doing it..
It reminds me of when I worked at Stop and Shop as a cashier when I was a teenager. It was a common thing to hold up an item with no price sticker on it and say for example "rice a roni" and anothe cashier would shout out the price (before bar coding). one time I held up a box and said "Mrs Pauls Fish Sticks" and one of the cashiers yelled out " sticks to what?"