Questions About Mills Dice

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This area created on 2/7/17

Re: Questions About Mills Dice

Postby JHSS-1944 » Tue Mar 28, 2017 2:12 am

If anyone is interested , Jerry lowered the price. he told me No one has contacted him on this one. dealt with him in the past on parts ,ect. But , I ALWAYS read the details or lack of.... on every listing He puts up.
neat for sure , price out of my reach & where to put it ???
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Re: Questions About Mills Dice

Postby marsonion » Thu Aug 31, 2017 1:52 pm

Thought it would be a good idea to update this thread, if only to rectify some upside-down and backwards comments and speculations appearing in my previous posts. As the images indicate, I have stripped and repainted the castings on my Mills Dice to something like the original factory color scheme; but before embarking on that chore, I was determined to turn up as much reference material and guidance on the machine as I could. I paid for a download of an operator’s manual for the Mills Dice which is offered at this website:

http://www.coinslots.com/manuals/mills/

The manual comprises ten typewritten pages plus five pages of indexed illustrations from the Mills factory, which are prefaced with a twelve-page, illustrated article outlining a comprehensive history of the Mills Dice project. Strangely, there is no byline appearing on this article; however, the brilliantly engaging style in which it is written is distinctly Bueschel’s, and I am 99.9% certain that he authored it. I suspect that this introductory article is actually an excerpt from his Payout Dice Machines book (though I’ve never had a copy of that book, nor ever even seen one). Also, at least two illustrations accompanying the article are credited to one Bill Whelan, who, I’m sure, will kindly ring in on this thread to confirm or deny my suspicions. Here are the paragraphs which I found the most interesting, informative and pertinent:


Gordon B. Mills, cousin to Fred, had moved to California at the end of the 1920s in order to be his own boss and not serve under the theoretical “Head of the family.” He established his own highly successful distributorship in Oakland as the Mills Sales Company, Ltd., with his annuity the fact that he exclusively carried the Mills line for that area, with particular concentration on payout slot machines. Led down the garden path by the unbounded enthusiasm of the Mills plant, Gordon Mills loyally sold the DICE machine in quantity to his local operators starting in early 1936. When the machines started coming back for maintenance and repairs, he faced the problem head on. Gordon Mills was also a mechanical genius, and was well on his way to solving the problems of the machines just as the DICE debacle was becoming nationwide. Bill Gersh was on top of that story, too: “Suddenly all of the automatic DICE machines around the country were being bought up for peanuts by Gordon Mills out in California. Gordon had found out how to make them work, and he was cleaning up. It was a marvelous machine.”

The Mills Sales Company patch job on the delicate Mills DICE wasn’t foolproof, but it went a long way toward making the machine a viable and reliable money maker. But more than anything it was the fact that the Mills Sales Company, Ltd. was willing to back the machine and keep it running that put it over. The changes were simple enough. Mills Sales rounded the corners of the square notches on the payout disk with a file to make it easier for the stops to slip into place. They dropped the top glass that kept the dice from turning over another 1/8 of an inch to restrict the double throws. They also loosened the wire collars, took out a few unnecessary parts and lifts that got in the way of the wires, and completely removed the tilt feature to open up the jammed cabinet. As a final touch they removed the 25c “Round Plug” denominator and replaced it with a square one, making the “Square Plug” model instantly recognizable as the revamped and workable Mills Sales IMPROVED DICE machine. Mills Sales also substituted white dice for the red dice of the production Mills machines to further tell the models apart. With that, and with the family connection strong, the changes and refinements were brought back to the Mills factory in Chicago where future “Square Plug” models were created out of the existing inventory of “Round Plug” examples, to be reintroduced as DICE once again in January 1938 and advertised and promoted as late as the end of 1939, although by that time they were selling for half the cost of the original 1936 model. In spite of the model changes the manuals remained the same. And why not? The revamping was only a matter of minor internal details, with the only visible physical differences on the outside of the machine with the square plug and white dice.



So, with that, I can surmise that my machine is one of those that went through Gordon Mills’ outfit in Oakland, given that mine 1) has the square denomination badge; 2) features (now dirty) white dice; and 3) has had the tilt-lockout gizmo removed. How and why the castings were repainted in such a funky color scheme so many years ago remains a mystery, and I was a little frightened of what I might find being covered-up by those layers of added paint, but it turned out the castings were in very good condition and the aluminum polished up fine in all the areas that the factory color scheme indicates that they should be. All the same, it’s no surprise to me that Bueschel—once again— had already supplied practically all of the answers to nearly all of my questions, decades ago.
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Re: Questions About Mills Dice

Postby quadibloc » Tue Feb 04, 2020 10:22 am

It is interesting, and surprising, that the version of the Mills Dice without the updates is the one more commonly seen today. I suspect this could be explained by California having very strict laws against slot machines for a period of time.

From the video on YouTube, I see that the two dice that are "thrown" have one die between them, and they are in a circle of thirty dice. So I have a question. Is the rotating wheel of dice a 30-stop mechanism, or does it have 15 stops, shifting between one set of 15 dice for the come-out roll, and the other set for the remaining ones? (Since one can play Pass/Come on any roll, it seems like it should be 30 stop, but I can't be sure.)

I found the GameRoomRepair web site, and from there I found the Part 2 video on YouTube - only Part 1 turned up in YouTube's own search - and from that one I see it's 30 stop.
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Re: Questions About Mills Dice

Postby marsonion » Tue Feb 04, 2020 7:39 pm

quadibloc wrote:It is interesting, and surprising, that the version of the Mills Dice without the updates is the one more commonly seen today. I suspect this could be explained by California having very strict laws against slot machines for a period of time.

From the video on YouTube, I see that the two dice that are "thrown" have one die between them, and they are in a circle of thirty dice. So I have a question. Is the rotating wheel of dice a 30-stop mechanism, or does it have 15 stops, shifting between one set of 15 dice for the come-out roll, and the other set for the remaining ones? (Since one can play Pass/Come on any roll, it seems like it should be 30 stop, but I can't be sure.)

I found the GameRoomRepair web site, and from there I found the Part 2 video on YouTube - only Part 1 turned up in YouTube's own search - and from that one I see it's 30 stop.


My own collection of DICE images scrummed from various parts of the internet has the "square plugs" (the improved versions) outnumbering the "round plugs" (the first-run, "buggy" machines) by about three-to-one; however, I find very few examples of either variety featuring the ivory dice, which, according to Bueschel, were indicative of Gordon Mills' California refurb. Bueschel's rundown of the history is complicated, but it looks sort of like this:

DICE Demos/Prototypes... Chicago... Round Plug... Ivory Dice
DICE First Run Production... Chicago... Round Plug... Red Dice
Improved DICE Refurbs... Oakland... Square Plug... Ivory Dice
Improved DICE Production... Chicago... Square Plug... Red Dice

If the original Mills advertising art for the DICE is to be taken seriously at all, the first prototypes not only featured ivories, they also paid out on dice rolls of "3" as a Field bet... I doubt that would've left the operators much of a "take." In any event, I think you make a good point that the dearth of surviving DICE machines with ivories in them may indeed reflect the effectiveness of California interdiction efforts: Earl Warren, CA AG and Gov too (who of course went on to fry even bigger fish) should also be remembered as the Carrie Nation of slot machines. He even looked like her!

Yes, the dice carousel functions as a single, big, heavy, horizontal, 30-stop reel, but you apparently already answered your own question on that. Because this big, heavy carousel could easily fall into a mechanical habit of repeatedly traveling the same arc of rotation with each pull and pitching the same sequence of dice pairs over and over, there is a built-in spring-tension randomizer on the kicker; temporarily disabling that randomizer proved to me that it was a good idea for mixing-up the pairs, but it unfortunately can also make some of the handle-pulls a little rough.

Glad to hear some shared interest in this history. The November 2018 issue of COCA Times contains an article on the "Mills Dicer[sic]" that is so FOS, I called Dave several days ago to discuss posting a corrective article somewhere on this forum as a sort of antidote. Since I'm no longer a member of COCA, I don't know whether their magazine has already published any retraction, correction or apology for that article... can anyone here tell me--?
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Re: Questions About Mills Dice

Postby quadibloc » Sat Feb 08, 2020 2:24 pm

Based on the videos of the Mills Dice, I tried to calculate its percentages.

The percentage on the 16 coin bet on 11 is pretty high, as there's only one chance in 30 of getting one.

But the even-money field bet... is fair, with no house advantage! That's surprising, and leads me to suspect I may have made a mistake in my calculations.

The Come bet, as expected, has a higher percentage than in Craps. My calculation puts it at 21.06%.
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Re: Questions About Mills Dice

Postby marsonion » Sat Feb 08, 2020 6:06 pm

quadibloc wrote:Based on the videos of the Mills Dice, I tried to calculate its percentages.

The percentage on the 16 coin bet on 11 is pretty high, as there's only one chance in 30 of getting one.

But the even-money field bet... is fair, with no house advantage! That's surprising, and leads me to suspect I may have made a mistake in my calculations.

The Come bet, as expected, has a higher percentage than in Craps. My calculation puts it at 21.06%.


Dave's calculations appear to differ from yours on the Field bet, but on the Come, looks to me like you're in perfect agreement:

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=13

I'm a little out of my depth on all that, so I'll leave the math to you computer science/IT guys. 8)
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Re: Questions About Mills Dice

Postby quadibloc » Sat Feb 22, 2020 11:21 pm

I see he says the Field won under these conditions:

"The field wins if the player hits 2, 5, 9, 10, 11, or 12."

For some reason, I thought it won on 2, 3, 5, 8, 10, 11, or 12. I may have used an inaccurate drawing of the Mills Dice that did not reflect how the Field was actually laid out on production models as my reference.
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Re: Questions About Mills Dice

Postby Dave » Sat Feb 22, 2020 11:33 pm

I have owned several Mills Dice and there are two different Field Payout schemes out there. Off hand, I don't recall the difference though.
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Re: Questions About Mills Dice

Postby marsonion » Sun Feb 23, 2020 12:00 am

marsonion wrote:If the original Mills advertising art for the DICE is to be taken seriously at all, the first prototypes not only featured ivories, they also paid out on dice rolls of "3" as a Field bet... I doubt that would've left the operators much of a "take."


Dave wrote:I have owned several Mills Dice and there are two different Field Payout schemes out there. Off hand, I don't recall the difference though.


by quadibloc » Sat Feb 22, 2020 10:21 pm
I see he says the Field won under these conditions:

"The field wins if the player hits 2, 5, 9, 10, 11, or 12."

For some reason, I thought it won on 2, 3, 5, 8, 10, 11, or 12. I may have used an inaccurate drawing of the Mills Dice that did not reflect how the Field was actually laid out on production models as my reference.
quadibloc


On pg. 118 of Bueschel's "Lemons, Cherries and Bell Fruit Gum" book you can find a clear reproduction of some ad art for the DICE that does indeed show the field paying "2 for 1" on "2 - 3 5 -8-10 11-12" rolls. It is obviously a painted or airbrush illustration rather than a photograph, and takes plenty of license with the subject matter, so I never took it seriously. I'm very surprised that any machines would ever have been produced with such an irrational payout schedule for the field bet... #-o
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Re: Questions About Mills Dice

Postby quadibloc » Sun Feb 23, 2020 6:53 pm

marsonion wrote:On pg. 118 of Bueschel's "Lemons, Cherries and Bell Fruit Gum" book you can find a clear reproduction of some ad art for the DICE that does indeed show the field paying "2 for 1" on "2 - 3 5 -8-10 11-12" rolls. It is obviously a painted or airbrush illustration rather than a photograph, and takes plenty of license with the subject matter, so I never took it seriously. I'm very surprised that any machines would ever have been produced with such an irrational payout schedule for the field bet... #-o


That's true enough. I saw the same illustration in an advertisement in Automatic Age at arcade-history.com, before my copy of that book recently arrived. I didn't expect there to be inaccuracies in the image, so I didn't think to check on the payout schedule on the machine from the video on YouTube from which I learned the sequence of the circle of dice on the inside.

That advertisement can be found here: https://aa.arcade-museum.com/Automatic-Age-1936-01/125/

Dave wrote:I have owned several Mills Dice and there are two different Field Payout schemes out there. Off hand, I don't recall the difference though.


Then, just maybe, some machines did have the schedule I saw from the advertisement - but with a different internal sequence of dice, so that the bet would still have a house edge. However, if that were the case, those must be rare indeed; I have now searched for images of the Mills Dice, and all the actual specimens pictured on the Web show that there are only six winning numbers for the field.
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