Sega bandit

[margamatix]

It's not a recent discovery, and it's pretty much a base-model bandit, but I will always have a soft spot for this machine- having previously owned several electro-mechanical pinball machines, this was the first bandit I ever bought.




It's a Sega Diamond 3 Star, produced sometime in the sixties, I would say.

Sega (now a massive computer firm) started out by supplying machines to US army bases in the Far East, and the name is derived from the first two letters of the company- Service Games.

I bought this machine as scrap, around 1992. I knew nothing at all about bandits, but spent many a happy hour getting it to work properly. It uses an almost exact copy of the mechanism used in the Mills Hi-Top, and I was told that Sega simply "ripped off" the design, as gambling machines cannot be copyrighted.

In 1971 it was converted from 1d play to 2p play, and unfortunately this resulted in the loss of the escalator, which was replaced by a rolling coin system. It should light up, but the electrics are in poor condition, so I don't risk it!

Incidentally, although I don't hold myself up as an expert, I'm always willing to give help or advice to anyone trying to repair or restore old machines.

Margamatix


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