As Coppinpr rightly states the Bally Jumbo is an earlier version of the later Super Jumbo which had the Panascope/Digital Readout unit. Three of these types of machines were amongst the very first machines I obtained when I started collecting coin op machines and these are indeed great fun machines to play.
Since my writings seem of interest to readers here I will rabbit on and relate how I obtained these machines.
As a Xmas present for my two sons at the end of 1980 I bought a pinball machine from an operator of coin operated machines. Both of my kids had “inherited” my interest in playing such machines and at this time relatively new pin ball machines were being sold to the public for the first time. These were electro mechanical machines which had been replaced by the new electronic machines making the older machines obsolete and of relatively little value. After looking around, I went to a warehouse of such machines located in an abandoned flour mill in Melbourne and bought a Captain Fantastic pinball for $150. For another $50 I bought a second Captain Fantastic pinball machine “for spares” in case of trouble.
- Captain Fantastic.jpg (33.23 KiB) Viewed 6491 times
The warehouse also had an old upright console type, non payout, gambling machine which was not working, which they threw in on the deal. This was the Jumbo that Coppinpr illustrates above. I was never to get this working as I could not find a glass for this and eventually used some of its parts in restoring other machines.
I rented a small flatbed truck and picked up these machines and very excitedly could hardly wait to get them home. I secured them with rope without removing the legs which made the load rather top heavy. I avoided a main road Junction as one cannot do a right hand turn there and turning the corner from a side street the load slipped and crashed into the side of a car that I was passing. The glass broke on one of the machines and I damaged the wing mirror of a parked car. Traffic piled up and trams were held up and I drove off home. Shortly afterwards the police arrived having obtained my address from the truck rental company, and threatened to prosecute me for having an insecure load on the truck.
When I plugged in the machines and tried to get them to work, neither would even light up let alone start to play. Not an auspicious start to what was to become the first of a collection of a whole variety of coin operated machines. Fortunately the police did not prosecute and the damage to the other car was minimal. The firm that had sold me the pinball machine promised to come and fix the machine, and every day during the Xmas holidays I waited for them to come only to be disappointed. My wife was working during this time and so we did not go anywhere over these Xmas holidays. I had bought a book about the mechanics of such machines and started to learn how they worked. I mixed and matched the major components in an effort to get them to work and nothing helped. I checked every solenoid, relay and switch, you name it, and I checked it.
Finally after a couple of weeks, I looked in the one place I had not looked, the coin micro switch on the door, and found that I had connected the plugs connecting the top of the machine incorrectly and this had burnt out the micro switch. When I replaced the micro switch, not only did the machine work, I had learnt to repair electro mechanical coin operated machines, learnt to read schematic circuit drawings, and become hooked on these. One of the boys suggested I get some really old coin operated machines and I went to Luna Park asking if they had any old coin op machines to sell. I bought a burnt out wreck of an English wall machine, a Conveyor and a similarly derelict 3D stereoscopic viewer machine for $2 and $5 respectively.
- Conveyor 1 No 17.jpg (26.41 KiB) Viewed 6491 times
Not long after I got three more of the non working, upright, console gambling machines from the place where I had bought the pinballs, for $50 the lot, as well as some non working electro mechanical pinball machines.
- Super Jumbo.jpg (17.58 KiB) Viewed 6491 times
- Super Treble Chance.jpg (19.78 KiB) Viewed 6491 times
- Mazooma Bell.jpg (20.02 KiB) Viewed 6491 times
I then began to search out old operators of such machines to see what obsolete machines they had that they might sell cheaply. Thus, an addiction, indeed an obsession, to collect, restore and research coin operated machines of all types took hold of me.
In my job I found time in my lunchtime and after work, to search out more coin operated machines for my growing collection and managed to find a new machine every couple of weeks to feed my addiction. As well as this, I found sources for the parts and materials that I needed for their repair and restoration. I also searched out tradesmen of various sorts to do the work required that I could not do myself. This included welding, polishing, plating, metal hardening, casting ferrous and non ferrous metals, French polishing, sandblasting, sign writing, machining parts, glassmaking, sheet metal work, lock smithing, rewinding transformers and coils, and so on. Finding sources for some of the more obsolete parts and paint colours and tradesmen willing to do my small jobs at a reasonable cost was quite difficult at first, and building up a stock of the necessary parts and tools took some time.
I obtained enormous satisfaction not only from finding the machines, many of which were in appalling condition when I obtained them, but in the work of repairing and restoring them to their former condition. I obtained much pleasure from learning how to go about these skills and also to learn the history of these machines. I obtained this knowledge from the older operators of these machines that I met, the tradesmen that I worked with, and through magazines and books that were being published about this interest which had taken hold just a few years before in the United States and Britain. I also searched out old British, Australian and American patents, both in the State Library and in the National Archive’s store in the Melbourne suburb of Brighton and the Patent Office in the city. I made contact with a few other collectors in Australia with similar interests to mine, some of whom also collected other interesting mechanical antiques. I also made friends in Britain and the United States with people with similar interests with whom I began to correspond.
The Panascope Digital Readout machines that I obtained were Bally's Super Jumbo, Mazooma Bell and Super Treble Chance. These were missing parts including the coin payout hopper on the Super Jumbo which was being used by an operator as a coin counter. The machines needed about 40 hours work on each machine to restore mechanically and cosmetically. But they gave me an immense amount of pleasure to repair using my newly learnt skill on the Bally Captain Fantastic pinballs and to play as they are indeed really fun machines to play and a great achievement to get working again. The skills in working with electro mechanical machines were such that I was later able to repair Bally inline Bingo machines.
The Super Jumbo machine had been converted to a gun machine in an attempt to fool the police and/or make this machine legal under the prevailing State laws relating to gambling coin op machines. Special glasses were made to enable this and a gun replaced the “handle” on the front of the machine that starts the play. I’ll include a picture of the gun version Jumbo glass that was on the machine when I got it.
It took a few years to get all the Panascope/Digital Readout machines working properly as I was missing many parts from the Panascope units as well as a coin hopper and other parts and it was many years until I got the schematic and manual for the Mazooma Bell from someone in the UK who had the British distributors manual and service hand book. This finally enabled me to understand the full mysteries of its workings. They differed in their payout methods as the earlier machines had payouts from tubes and coin slides whilst the later Super Jumbo had Bally’s newly invented coin hopper unit. The resurrection of these machines and playing them provided me with a great deal of fun and satisfaction.