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I met a man in a pub who said his mate told him he knows some council tax inspector down in Cornwall who was checking the wheelie bins round the back of some bloke's house and spotted this illegal gambling device in the kitchen. He rushed off to inform the local plods but for some reason he never got there, and when they found his car there was no sign of him, only the footprints of a gigantic hound. But never mind that, it turns out it was a rare, never seen before Allwin. I wonder if anyone knows who's stable it sprang from?

It is a rare Cresta Run by BM Co. In fact one is for sale on Sunday, lot 177, in much better nick!

Operator Bell wrote:............ only the footprints of a gigantic hound...........

Ah! ....... that'll be The Hound of The Basket Cases, he's often been seen sniffing around my collection.

Lot 177 used to be a bathroom cabinet .....the top one is the real thing. You can always spot quality

Topic moved & merged - Site Admin.

Just noticed this battered old allwin on EBay

Looking at the thickness of the track, was it made by BMCo?

Also there seems to me an extra cut out on the front of the machine. Anybody know what this may be for?

Alan, appears this was originally an Auto-payout mech, but was later converted to manual pay as many others were, presumably because those Auto-Pay mechs were complicated and prone to breaking down easily. You can read about it here:

Question for the experts, on automatic payout allwin

Good luck

There is one person on this site who has done amazing jobs restoring a pile of rusty allwin bits into stunning machines. It's already £155.

Maybe was a token a ciggie vendor once as behind the paycup there is a rectangle hole plated up, maybe for ciggies and maybe the other hole for coin return or token... Who knows?


Edited as Gameswat knows the answer

Just looked up the listing, and just goes to show how much the operators must've hated these things because of all the effort (poorly at that) they went to converting it into a manual payout! The internal alloy coin chute appears to be the original and bent much straighter. I wouldn't want to try and bend it back after all these years as alloy tends to become harder and more brittle over time.

It started life as an automatic payout BMco. Cresta Run

I collected the battered BM Co Cresta Run today. The chap told me he had it for 30 years. 10 of those years it was on an outside wall . Of course the case has had it. I knew I would have to make a new one. This I will do and I will try to be as close to original as I can. Suprisingly, the mech looks all intact and although packed with hard grease does work. The main coin slide is set for 1d but the payout slide is on half penny. I have now stripped out the mech and all the bits have been soaked in degreaser. When I set about stripping out the playfield I was suprised to find behind the cardboard name plaque was the original Cresta Run in perfect condition. I will post photos when I figure out how to do it on my phone.
Derek