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Hello,

I am new to the community and just purchased my second slot machine. My machine is a Mills - Bell-O-Matic 25c JACKPOT Machine. I bought this machine on April 13th, 2021, I know very little about the machine. What I was told about the machine when I bought it. It was found under a house in Morro Bay, California around the year 2000, it had been placed under the house and sat there for around 20 years. It was under a house covered by dirt up to the coin slot and found by an HVAC tech. The owner of the machine told the tech that he had placed it under the house about 20 years prior and it sat there. The HVAC tech took it home cleaned it up, added some lights from a car turn signal indicator, and he used it as a piggy bank/toy for him and his family. He is relocating and sold the machine to me. He didn't know much about the history of the machine other than what was stated above. He told me that Bell-O-Matic was a slot brand in Europe that Mills had purchased.

If you have any questions or comments please let me know. Thank You.

More Photos Here https://shanesrantings.weebly.com/slot-machines.html

From small beginnings in 1989, Mills became the Ford Motor Company of slot machines (and other coin freed devices) for decades. The rise and fall of the Mills dynasty is an interesting (for coin-op collectors) and sometimes sad story. There is a lot of info available from a wide variety of sources; easily found with a little research.

Bell-O-Matic started in 1946 as a spin-off of the Mills marketing division and was responsible for selling the machines Mills Industries produced.
You have a Mills Bell-O-Matic Three-7-Crown machine; one of the models in their Crown series produced in the late 1950s. The cabinet resembles the Mills Extraordinary from 1933.

I found no reference to a European company named Bell-O-Matic.

There was a US company named Bell-A-Matic; no relation to Mills (I wonder if they were trying to capitalize on the Mills reputation).


Nice machine; if it was in fact buried for 20 years, it cleaned up amazingly well.
Watch out; it's hard to stop at 2 machines; before you know it, your house may be filled with coin-op!

Yeah, I have found no reference to Europe. Still trying to find more information, I ordered Coin Slot #20 guide to the Mills Bell-O-Matic Four Crown and Standard High Top.

It is clean, it does need to be cleaned up some more, I am afraid to do so right now, because I do not know its value, and don't want to take away any value that it might have by cleaning it up. I also need to find a jackpot mechanism for it and figure out how to install it.

I regards to the jackpot mechanism, many locations had the setup like yours with just a picture of a jackpot. They would pay a set amount by an attendant. One of mine was like that but the mechanism was still there. All that I had to do was remove a coin deflector that caused all of the coins to go into the coin box. Then the jackpot was functional.

-Fred-

Mine does not have the mechanism. There is a small box filled with 50 quarters for the manual payout for the jackpot. I would like for the machine to be self-contained so that I don't have to do anything except pull quarters out when I need more to play with.

The value is $800.00 to $1300.00 for your machine.

Rich

Looking at your photos it appears that a lot of the sheet metal parts are nickel plated and stamped with parts numbers. This would lead me to believe that this Mills Bell-O-Matic is of the "Service Games Inc of Nevada" ( Basically, SEGA) time period. Probably, made in the 60's.

If I clean it up really good and paint it, or even customize it is it going to lose value?

63mini wrote:Looking at your photos it appears that a lot of the sheet metal parts are nickel plated and stamped with parts numbers. This would lead me to believe that this Mills Bell-O-Matic is of the "Service Games Inc of Nevada" ( Basically, SEGA) time period. Probably, made in the 60's.

What sheet metal parts are you referring to?
How does plating or part numbers indicate SEGA or help date the machine?