Questions About Mills Dice

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Re: Questions About Mills Dice

Postby JHSS-1944 » Sat Mar 18, 2017 9:36 pm

looks like the one Jerry had up for sale. was a lot of people interested in it at the time.
very nice looking machine !!!
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Re: Questions About Mills Dice

Postby marsonion » Sat Mar 18, 2017 9:56 pm

JHSS-1944 wrote:looks like the one Jerry had up for sale. was a lot of people interested in it at the time.
very nice looking machine !!!
jeff H.


Thanks! Yeah, Jerry's the Man: offered me a price I could live with, and like a true gentleman, a deal's a deal with him! I've wanted one of these for a long time and would have taken one in just about any condition; a little tinkering with shipping disruptions is all I had by way of trouble, yanking out wedged quarters and pushing a few parts back to where they oughta be, then off it went! Looks like I've got some cosmetic chores to look forward to, putting the paint back to stock colors, etc. but I sort-of "enjoy" that stuff. I'm very pleased with my new MD36 Computer. 8)
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Re: Questions About Mills Dice

Postby JHSS-1944 » Tue Mar 21, 2017 2:00 am

Did you see the other 1 he just put up ??? by the looks of the photos , he has many of these !!!!! (look in the back round areas of the photos. Guess not that rare ......
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Re: Questions About Mills Dice

Postby Dave » Tue Mar 21, 2017 10:19 am

The Mills Dice is not what I would call a rare machine but rather one that is somewhat hard to find. Especially in good working order.

It is funny that he says the machine is rare and has another one in the background :oops:
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Re: Questions About Mills Dice

Postby marsonion » Tue Mar 21, 2017 11:30 am

JHSS-1944 wrote:Did you see the other 1 he just put up ??? by the looks of the photos , he has many of these !!!!! (look in the back round areas of the photos. Guess not that rare ......
jeff H.


Jerry told me at the outset that he had gotten hold of two machines, and was using the nicer, more complete one as a guide to getting the uglier one with a few missing parts (mine) up and running. As indicated by the date stamps, those are weeks-old pictures, and what you're seeing is the nice one in the foreground and mine being worked on in the background. I never claimed these machines are "rare" (which is a word that can provoke a nuclear strike and get you incinerated on this forum) and couldn't care less anyway, since I'm not a real collector... but good luck bargaining down the prices on Mills Dice machines by informing the sellers that they're "not that rare."

The pretty Dice that's on eBay right now is so complete it even features the mysterious anti-tilt lockout gizmo in all its glory. I say "mysterious" because, as Dave pointed out, it could only serve to interrupt the cycle, not block a cheater's payout... so what's the point of this thing? And why would anyone risk a hernia trying to tilt a Dice anyhow? Where would that offer a punter any advantage at all anyway? Sounds like a real mug's game. Now I'm speculating that the tilt lockout was added to prevent the game from being played on an un-level surface, such as that typical bar room table with one leg too short; I'm thinking that some of the on-site malfunctions that gave the Dice a bad name back in the day may have resulted from machines that were just not sitting plumb. After all, when you have all of those coins which absolutely must gravity-feed perfectly into position after dropping past little gates and rolling down little ramps, etc., keeping the game "on the level" may be absolutely critical to its proper function.
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Re: Questions About Mills Dice

Postby Dave » Tue Mar 21, 2017 2:51 pm

marsonion wrote:
JHSS-1944 wrote:Did you see the other 1 he just put up ??? by the looks of the photos , he has many of these !!!!! (look in the back round areas of the photos. Guess not that rare ......
jeff H.


Jerry told me at the outset that he had gotten hold of two machines, and was using the nicer, more complete one as a guide to getting the uglier one with a few missing parts (mine) up and running. As indicated by the date stamps, those are weeks-old pictures, and what you're seeing is the nice one in the foreground and mine being worked on in the background. I never claimed these machines are "rare" (which is a word that can provoke a nuclear strike and get you incinerated on this forum) and couldn't care less anyway, since I'm not a real collector... but good luck bargaining down the prices on Mills Dice machines by informing the sellers that they're "not that rare."

The pretty Dice that's on eBay right now is so complete it even features the mysterious anti-tilt lockout gizmo in all its glory. I say "mysterious" because, as Dave pointed out, it could only serve to interrupt the cycle, not block a cheater's payout... so what's the point of this thing? And why would anyone risk a hernia trying to tilt a Dice anyhow? Where would that offer a punter any advantage at all anyway? Sounds like a real mug's game. Now I'm speculating that the tilt lockout was added to prevent the game from being played on an un-level surface, such as that typical bar room table with one leg too short; I'm thinking that some of the on-site malfunctions that gave the Dice a bad name back in the day may have resulted from machines that were just not sitting plumb. After all, when you have all of those coins which absolutely must gravity-feed perfectly into position after dropping past little gates and rolling down little ramps, etc., keeping the game "on the level" may be absolutely critical to its proper function.


You make an interesting point about the gizmo that stops the fan if the machine is not level. Perhaps, like you said, the point of it was to make sure the machine was level so the coins would go in the proper spot. So, not so much of an anti cheat feature but a feature to keep the machine from malfunctioning.

The machine currently listed on ebay looks really nice and I don't think his asking price is out of line. I know I wouldn't sell mine for that and I have been offered more for it a while back.

My earlier post offended someone on the board and they sent me the following PM

I think that's an another awfully negative comment from you. Shame on you. I thought this forum was to promote collecting and all of the positive things in our hobby. [-X


So, if you were also offended then I apologize. I went back and read the post and am still trying to figure out what was so horribly wrong in what I said. He said this was "another awfully negative comment from me" which also has me a bit perplexed.

Earlier in the thread I stated the Mills Dice was my favorite of the mechanical slots because it worked like no other machine out there.
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Re: Questions About Mills Dice

Postby marsonion » Tue Mar 21, 2017 3:11 pm

Dave wrote:
My earlier post offended someone on the board and they sent me the following PM

I think that's an another awfully negative comment from you. Shame on you. I thought this forum was to promote collecting and all of the positive things in our hobby. [-X


So, if you were also offended then I apologize. I went back and read the post and am still trying to figure out what was so horribly wrong in what I said. He said this was "another awfully negative comment from me" which also has me a bit perplexed.

Earlier in the thread I stated the Mills Dice was my favorite of the mechanical slots because it worked like no other machine out there.


Golly, I certainly wasn't offended by anything you posted... in fact, I was encouraged by your comment that the original-original dice were ivories like mine, prior to being officially refurbed with the red ones. Bill, on the other hand... that guy kinda gets on my nerves :P He sort-of had me rankled telling me I ought to replace my supposedly replaced ivories with red replacements. No, thanks!

Just kidding, Bill! :D
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Re: Questions About Mills Dice

Postby SLOT DYNASTY » Tue Mar 21, 2017 8:38 pm

Patrick: Sorry I got on your nerves. :P But I never suggested that you should change your Ivory dice to the Red variety.
I only stated that I had never seen anything but Red in the Mills "Dice". Now after thinking about it, I stand corrected.
I decided to go back and ransack through my restoration photo files. This is way before the computer age, so they are all
on 35mm & 4x5 print film. I discovered that two of the early round button machines that I had worked on, were indeed
different. One did have the original Ivory dice, and the other had the Red. Sadly, I was not collecting serial numbers for
all machines at that time, as it would have been interesting to see if the number range would have told me when Mills
had made this change. Wish yours had a serial, so that we could compare with Dave's machine. I also took a buzz through
Dick Bueschel's 'Serial Number Update' listings, and did not find any Mills "Dice" serials there either. Will keep digging.
Bill
Last edited by SLOT DYNASTY on Wed Mar 22, 2017 2:24 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Questions About Mills Dice

Postby Dave » Tue Mar 21, 2017 9:06 pm

There are 4 Mills Dice machines in the Coin Op Registry database (www.CoinOpRegistry.com)
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Re: Questions About Mills Dice

Postby marsonion » Wed Mar 22, 2017 10:46 am

I'd like to provide Bill and Dave a serial number for mine, but I can't find any such anywhere on the mechanism, and the inside cabinet label apparently said "bye-bye" long ago. Worse, I am finding some indication that the cabinet and mech may not have always been together... the mech is neat as a whistle and shiny as a dime (clearly never exposed to damp or outdoor conditions of any sort) while the cabinet exhibits several dark&rusty carriage bolts and the wood finish has some tiny bubbles and runs in it, as though it had been touched-up at some point with a few coats of extra urethane. Most obviously, though, the exterior hardware has been rattle-canned with silver paint, so I'll expect to find a mess of corroded metal and lifting electroplate when I strip those parts. The seller already informed me that the back door came from another Dice and he acquired it separately. Also, there is some visible remnant of the original chocolate color on the horizontal casting peeking through the overpaint, but the upper front casting must have been very thoroughly stripped before the repaint, which I'm guessing dates from about 40 years ago (I found two or three bicentennial quarters stuck in corners of the cabinet, even). The square denom tag would indicate that this machine was "recalled" for the refurb, but the mech has ivory dice instead of the refurb-red, and I don't know yet what other changes to look for to say whether the mech was updated or not. So what I'm saying here is that perhaps no particular serial number can be assigned to this machine as a whole, nor even to the cabinet or mechanism. I think it's been kicked around more than a little. :(

The nice one on eBay right now is a puzzler too. The inside cabinet label appears to have a serial# 400 written on it, but it is such a scrawl that the "4" looks almost as though someone wrote their initials over it.
Last edited by marsonion on Thu Aug 31, 2017 1:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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