Very Strange Castle Front
Posted: Sat Jul 15, 2017 11:15 am
I am hoping the collective knowledge of this group can help me figure out what kind of strange machine I have. It appears at first glance to be an early Mystery Golden Bell with dark cabinet, but the internals are something I have never seen before. The person I acquired it from said that in his 40+ years in the business he has never seen one like it before. He told me that the modifications are factory installed and original. What it does is play normally on coins or checks but then routes all coins to cash box and uses only checks for jackpot and coin tube, i. e. it only pays out checks. That would mean it is a Mystery Vender with Gold Award per Mills advertising. It has the vender cutout in the cabinet with the metal insert installed. The serial number is 337236 on both the casting and the paper slip inside the cabinet.The strange part is that the internals have no anti-check payout parts at all and the escalator only has a coin sensing arm with the top front casting having a built in set of icon raceways to route all money to cash box. In operation when a coin gets to the next to last position and the handle is started down and the escalator starts to move it has a check seeking tooth push the coin into the cash box race way as the windup phase just starts and if it is a check the tooth enters the center of the check and advances it until the handle pull releases the escalator at which time it drops the coin into the coin tube/ jackpot routing. I am baffled. If this was intended to be a vendor it would not work as it takes five "coins" to get to the point where check separation actually occurs.The only small clue is that the machine may be from Louisiana area as a few of the checks are from a "Bayou Novelty Company"
If any one can tell me anything I would be grateful.