Sir,
You recently joined this forum, and are lucky to have found it because it as probably the most knowlegable exports of the coin machine industry in the World.
I am 74 years old, I have been active in the industry for more than 65 years, I bought my first machine when I was 9 years old while helping to run the family business, that of a traveling showman in England, where we operated amusement arcades, I was converting Mills machines in 1958 that were sent over to England by the New York mob characters, a mob controlled company called Las Vegas Coin Ltd in London was the official Mills distributor, I bought or converted 100's of Blue Fronts, both the models with the square award card and with the round award card, but I never saw one with a single cherry payout, that is because the Mills Blue Fronts was made in the mid to late 1930's, and the single cherry feature did not come out until the early 1940's.
The Mills Blue front was rated as the 5th best seller of all time by the Mills company, the first Blue fronts with round award cards was on the model known as the Hand Held model, that was fazed out at the end of the 1930's, in the Mills trade publication of "Spinning Reels" the first model with the new feature of a single cherry paying two coins as to the previous models paying three coins for two cherries on the first two reels. was the Chrome Bell this model was first advertised in the "Spinning Reels" publication in September 1941. (See attachments)
Sir, these are the facts, and like a previous collector who said the story is good, but there is no getting away from the fact that your machine was certainly "Interfeared" with to say the least, as a body of experts, we are here to help keep the new people to the hobby aware that there are many out there that do reproduce these great machines, and should be prosecuted for doing so. I welcome you to this great forum, something that was created by Dave purely out of love of the hobby, this forum as attracted so many of the real experts gathered together under one forum than any other both past and present.