factory boxed reel strips

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factory boxed reel strips

Postby JHSS-1944 » Thu Feb 16, 2017 2:32 am

Hello to all;
my recent buy via e-ban .... 7 boxes of reel strips , 6 are from Mills , other 1940's era Bally. a total of 54 complete strips , some partials & as seen , some parts & pieces. no doubt ,I'll never use them.
very nice to find them in the Original 1940's era Mills factory boxes. the Bally box is unmarked / no mailing stamps. interesting / odd stuff due turn up every once in awhile.
still looking for any photos of the Mills tools & tool box they offered for sale to "operators".
hope you find these photos interesting.
jeff H.
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boxed reel strips 1.JPG
boxed reel strips 2.JPG
boxed reel strips 3.JPG
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Re: factory boxed reel strips

Postby Anglobritish » Thu Feb 16, 2017 7:26 am

Mills Tool Kit.jpg
Mills & Nennings Tool Kit by Ssaco.jpg
Hi Jeff,
Interesting stuff, these are the kind of things I find very interesting, actual items sent from the Mills factories, in the late 1950's when Mills started to crumble, Tony Mills did a deal with Service Games (Sega) of Japan to manufacture and supply all of the spare parts to the operators of Mills machines, they also appointed Service Games as the official Mills distributor for Nevada. Apart from me having the original flyers and catalogs of Service Games, Dick Stewart (President of Service Games of Japan, and my late dear friend Marty Bromley (Founder of Sega) confirmed this, also one of their service engineers Find attached some information on the tools as well as a dolly to move their machines around.

Freddy Bailey
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Mills Novelty Hand Truck.jpg
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Re: factory boxed reel strips

Postby SLOT DYNASTY » Thu Feb 16, 2017 3:53 pm

JHSS-1944 wrote:Hello to all;
my recent buy via e-ban .... 7 boxes of reel strips , 6 are from Mills , other 1940's era Bally. a total of 54 complete strips , some partials & as seen , some parts & pieces. no doubt ,I'll never use them.
very nice to find them in the Original 1940's era Mills factory boxes. the Bally box is unmarked / no mailing stamps. interesting / odd stuff due turn up every once in awhile.
still looking for any photos of the Mills tools & tool box they offered for sale to "operators".
hope you find these photos interesting.
jeff H.


Nice find Jeff. The small extra symbol pieces in the boxes, are layover cuts, for changing the odds.
You had best check the strip set numbers, and find out which machines they are for. You never know
just when you may need a nice original set. Better than the re-pops!
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Re: factory boxed reel strips

Postby JHSS-1944 » Fri Feb 17, 2017 12:52 am

Thank you Gentlemen for your replies ! in due time will check the strips codes ,ect. a few in there are used ,pulled of a machine. the Bally ones I might sell later. & the Mills "jumbo" strips might follow suit. just 2 I doubt I'll never need for sure.
honestly ,thought I would get out bid. lost out on a group of 60 awhile back (with No boxes). These the owner kinda screwed up on..... similar images in many photos , so I thought far fewer strips , & he only showed 2 boxes. I did ask on the strips & was told about 40 of them. never thought to ask on the boxes.
honestly had these been empty boxes ,I may have still bought them.

Thank you Freddy on the images of the tool box ad & the tools to go into it !! Now on the slot machine dolly , Not so happy to see..... I swear I saw one of these fairly recently BUT, no clue where !!! I haven't been to any antique shops for a long while but, has to be at one of them (about 80% of these shops have closed up for good around here).

Freddy , any list on tool names to go with the first image ?
jeff H.
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Re: factory boxed reel strips

Postby Lol » Fri Feb 17, 2017 2:40 am

Hi Freddy
Great information, thank you for sharing. Do you know if there were any Watling tools that Watling- operators used? I know that Watling infomation is scarce. I Know of the mechanism tool and the factory set of 12 cash box keys. Do you know of any other Watling branded items?
Best, Lol (Laurence)1
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Re: factory boxed reel strips

Postby Anglobritish » Fri Feb 17, 2017 7:11 am

Hi,
When I started converting machines as a kid of 16 in the 1950's, everything in the U.K. was Mills, my late father operated a few Jennings Bronze Chiefs and the likes, It was not until 1960 that the Jennings Tic-Tac-Toe, Club Chiefs and then the Jennings Governor took over, mainly because of the British distributor Coughtrey's Automatics Ltd, who in 1962 became the largest distributor of Jennings in the World, George Coughtry was an old time operator who was fondly known as the Governor (see attached add) the Jennings Governor was named after him.
Coughtrey-governor add Jan 22nd, 1966.jpg
George Coughtrey Jennings Award 1964.jpg


Interestingly on the south side of England the operators operated mainly a Jennings Governor and a Keeney Upright in their club locations, while in the north of England this combination was taken over by the Bally Treble Chance Upright and a Sega Mad Money models, but was quickly replaced in 1963 by a Bally Money Honey and a Bally Gold Cup upright models. eventually just like the Las Vegas casino market Bally totally dominated both the British Club Market as well as the new pub locations where the Bally Jolly Tavernor and Bally Sir Prize was the first choice for operators.

The early 1960's was a Bonanza for the British operators, today the entire industry is dominated by Scientific Games (A company that was first owned by Bally and banned from operating in the U.K. in the 1960's) who are operating FOBT (Fixed Odds Betting Terminals) in the betting shops that are on vertualy every corner in every Town in the U.K. and by either the Gauselmann Group or Novamatic two giant companies who have bought up most of the British manufacturing and operating companies and dominate the Pub market.

So to answer your question about Watling items, there were never many Watling machines of the 1930's operated in the U.K the main European market for Watling was France, in fact most of the Watling Rol-A-Top's that you see offered for sale "Brand New" and still in their crates came from France, they were discovered in a French customs warehouse by a movie company that was making the movie Borsoleno in Marseille where they were used as props, they were later bought by the Paris collector Bernard Dewitt, and sold on to several collectors in the early 1980's.

I can tell you that the original Watling tooling was sold to Bell-Fruit Manufacturing Ltd in the U.K. they produced the mechanisms for their first slot machines called "Three-A-Like" in the mid 1960's, if you go to http://www.coin-opcommunity.co.uk and in the search box type Freddy Bailey you can read the article I wrote about the connection between Watling and Bell-Fruit along with more than 25 articles about the industry that I have written for that trade Magazine.

Freddy Bailey
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Re: factory boxed reel strips

Postby Lol » Fri Feb 17, 2017 11:37 pm

Hi Freddy
Again superb information thank you.I think that in Nick Costa's book there was an illustration from the operator Bollands Amusement Machine Supply Co. They were based in London and the flyer showed new Rol-A-Tops for sale in London. Also a fellow forum member Stephane posted some photos of Rol-A-Top castings that were stamped 1d. So the Watling factory did export new Rol-A-Tops to the UK that were manufactured for the UK and not later conversions. Anything Watling is scarce in the UK and original machines would be very hard to find now.

I don't know when you crossed the pond to live in the USA. My Mum moved to California in the 70's so i am a regular visitor. I was interested in vintage Jukeboxes in the 80's. I knew an operator by the name of Jim Broderick who had a large warehouse full of amusement machines in Camden Town, London. He had plenty of slot machines but I was not particularly interested in them then. Well we all make mistakes. I would love to be back in that warehouse now. I also called in on a operator called Hendon Automatics. I don't know if you knew either of these operators?

I will start a new thread on Watling tools and promotional items as we are going off topic here. Thanks again Freddy for all the info and images of the flyers. Greatly appreciated.
Best, Lol
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Re: factory boxed reel strips

Postby automaticpleasures » Sat Feb 18, 2017 1:31 am

The man you met in Hendon would have been none other than Harry Holloway- son of Jack Holloway founder of the Samson novelty Co- at one time the most important of all the Mills distributors handling and distributing many thousands of machines in England, Europe, and worldwide.

The other guy was Jimmy Broderick, a wonderful but canny man long since dead- who in his youth had been a gun runner for the IRA. He had the foresight to buy up or rescue countless mechanical slot machines when everyone else in the business was scrapping them- they ended up being repatriated to the States by the container load.
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Re: factory boxed reel strips

Postby Lol » Sat Feb 18, 2017 5:26 am

Hi Automatic Pleasures
You are better than Wikipedia. Memories from the past. I can still picture Jimmy Broderick wearing his Russian Hat. Now that I think about it he did have piercing eyes and not a man that you would want to fall out with. Sadly I was not in to slots then. After he passed the responsibility fell to his daughter to clear the warehouse. I met his daughter at the warehouse and my friend purchased his last two Mills slot machines. I don't know where you are based but Kings Cross is almost unrecognizable now. All the old warehouses along the canal including Jimmy's have been refurbished into homes or offices. Thanks for the information. It brought back fond memories.
Best, Laurence
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Re: factory boxed reel strips

Postby JHSS-1944 » Mon Feb 27, 2017 2:37 am

another mills tool ad from 1927.
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1927 tool ad..jpg
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