Help Identify 192(?) Mills Poinsettia Slot Machine?

[jonathsk]

Hi everyone, need help identifying the year of my slot machine.

I acquired my first slot machine over the weekend.
It was listed by a family that had this in the family through a couple generations. The condition of the machine looked great and it looked "original."
In any case, what I noticed later was that of all the internet searches, I couldn't find a poinsettia machine that had two pay out chutes. 25 cent machines were even more rare. Most of the machines I came across were 5 cent machines and they all had a single payout chute to the right.
If you look at the image, there's a chute in the middle of the machine that clearly comes from the jackpot. Then you have a chute off the right that dispenses regular payout winnings.

From what I gather, jackpots didn't come standard until the early 1930s so I'm assuming this might be a later design. I was told it was a 1929 but I'm not quite sure.

The serial # is 132674.
- Mills Novelty Co.
- 25 cent
- Poinsettia Slot Machine

I recorded 12 plays on the machine if you wanted to see it in action:
https://youtu.be/abYXjrHuP5s?si=RIbMRfMTKMddmeQi

If anyone call help me identify the year and maybe a specific model for this, I'd greatly appreciate it. Any additional "ghee wiz" facts on this particular machine would be great as well. Thanks all!

[nvmos2]

It's not a Mills Poinsettia, at least not in the strictest sense of the model nickname.

You have a Mills revamped with a Poinsettia style JP front.

The serial number on the upper casting indicates it came from the factory as any one of a couple different models (that did not have a JP) in 1926. When machines needed to have JPs, it was revamped to change it to a JP front (probably about 1929-30).
As to who made the JP front; could have been Mills. Mills made several variations of the Poinsettia design and they supplied operators with revamp kits to upgrade their machines to JP models. (and also did in-house retro-fits).
But don't let the owl design fool you; many other smaller companies copied the poinsettia design to make JP revamp kits, even to the extent of using a "Mills owl" so the JP front may have come from one of them.

It's a really nice machine, but IMO neither the JP front nor the 25c denomination qualify for the term "rare"; I'd say "less common" or "hard to find".
For a first machine, you're off to a great start!

[jonathsk]

Sorry for delayed reply - got caught up with life stuff and a big east to west coast move!

I wanted to say thank you for taking the time and providing some history and context. It's always nice to know more of the story and even though there's a lot of mystery still, at least it gives me a general idea of its possible origins.

Unfortunately, after the cross-country move the machine is not paying out. I carefully laid it on its back on a LOT of pillows to absorb the road but I guess something jammed up or got out of place? Not sure but it'll need some tweaking. Challenge accepted.

[memphisbigdave]

Probably a quarter is stuck in the mechanism. Google how to remove mechanism and follow that. Really easy

[jonathsk]

I hope that's all it is!