flipper77 wrote:Interesting thread as I also just looked at a Hans Havilchek fifty cent and dollar light-up recently. Very much like this quarter machine - they looked and were brand new gorgeous machines. I really wanted the machines but had no idea on the value of Havilchek repos - quarter fifty cent or dollar. Any one care to estimate value of the Havilchek machines?
Hey flipper, they are absolutely beautiful, I owned one of his Jennings Golden Nugget dollar machines and loved it!
Story I heard was he created these so others could enjoy owning a reproduction GN because obtaining an original was nearly impossible. My ponder is, where did the mechs come from? How about the back doors? Wood cabinets could easily be reproduced. Surely these mechanisms could not have been reproduced, that would seem quite labor intensive to recreate entire mechanisms. As far as values are concerned, I believe they are of the finest quality and as long as they are presented as being what they are should garner a good price, maybe even match the price of an original Jennings light up, sun chief standard chief etc. HH Jennings Golden Nugget machines would never be as expensive as an original nor should they be, but in my opinion, the quality of the build does make it a desirable machine. The HH machines are not typical knock off machines like so many of the Mills knockoffs that are just pure junk, Aikens front knockoffs, golden nugget knockoffs etc.
I know the HH molds for the castings still exist, they were here in Northern California but I believe they were sold to another collector. Would be interesting to get more information on Hans Havilcek, there must be some here on the forum that knew him.