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It's true, the value of a Jennings Governor has depreciated considerably in real terms since I started collecting. You could buy one for £750 back in 1991 and they were around that price for years, with the occasional £1000+ made at auction. Of course, in the '90s you could also find them for £50, if you did the hunting yourself. A couple of years ago there seemed to be a glut of them on the market which must have kept prices down.

Overall I feel that vintage amusement machines sale prices are at a new high but, as others have commented, some of the early wall machines have also depreciated in real terms.

Ah, I know of a similar one; the late owner's wife thinks it's worth "thousands". 6p play: all chrome: not pristine... hmmmm... I offered £1000 via a contact; no reply!!

You do know there will be at least two at the Coventry auction in March? Why not at least wait and see what you can get one of those for? I'm sure you will be there, the bacon butties are to die for (or is that die from ) and you have to pay a £2000 fine if you don't attend.

As Mazak is such a problem to rechrome, has anyone made any ‘new’ castings for Jennings machines or would that be too costly? I’m sure I saw copies were made a few years back.

cheeky wrote: ↑Fri Apr 03, 2020 3:31 pm As Mazak is such a problem to rechrome, has anyone made any ‘new’ castings for Jennings machines or would that be too costly? I’m sure I saw copies were made a few years back.

Jennings' castings Mazak? .... I don't think so.
Aluminium surely, maybe not good quality, but the weight alone rules out pot metal.

Also the reason the chrome plating is carp is more down to the way the yanks chrome, back street platers over here also.
American chroming was decent after WW2rd and up through the 50s. Then it went down hill, ask any Harley or Indian owner. Over here once H&S started closing down small chrome shops, it became rubbish as well. It became common practice to cut down on how many times you pass it through and what prep you do first.
Rolls Royce have always done their own in house and their work is durable 100 years later.
The metal work is cleaned and polished before acid cleaned and neutralised.
The bare metal is dull nickel plated, polished and bright nickel plated, then polished and brass plated before more polishing and finally chrome plating. The final stage repeated as many as 5 times.
When I was Training Manager for BR in Crewe I had an agreement with RR Training Department, our apprentices and theirs worked together on projects between the Royal Train based at Wolverton and RR Carriage works. Their standards were higher than ours, obviously. But even ours went through polishing and nickel/brass stages before three coats of chrome.
I once sent Jennings castings to a company in Nottingham 30 years ago, they quoted me £85 and after a month they admitted defeat blaming the quality of aluminium used in manufacture. I took the same castings to a platers in Derby, they told me the cowboys had poorly polished my castings and tried to plate chrome directly without any other base plating. They charged me £30 to remove the mess, and then about £200 to do it properly. I sold it 5 years later for about £1200. He still has it, and after 25 years it is still immaculate.

I'm no expert at the witchcraft involved but it's like everything in the world, pay peanuts and you'll be dealing with monkeys.

BP

Thought provoking BadPenny. I always thought the castings were aluminium but several posts refer it to being mazak.

I am not worldly wise in such matters but your adventures in chroming seem to be similar to many others. I had no idea of your previous experience with BR.

I did have the name of the company that Bentley use. They outsourced some of the smaller components but I’ve deleted their details. Very annoyed with myself but they were brilliant.

I want to buy a beaten up old Jennings and find someone who can actually do a first-class job. I hear that even those stateside are struggling to find such a person.

Any recommendations from the experts above on where to go to get a decent re-plate nowadays?
Mine is starting to flake on the top, so needs re-plating before I end up with chrome in my fingers...

Finding a good plater is not straight forward.
The ones involved in car and motorbike restoration tend to know what they're doing and their reputations are hard earned (advertising in glossy vintage car magazines ain't cheap)
Be blunt when talking to them, ask them if they want the job. Some of them are geared up for long thin straight items like bumpers/wheel spokes/rims/door handles etc. They view curves and indentations as timely and difficult to get into. It's not that they can't get in there or it's tricky to plate it's more the attention and time involved. They don't want to tell you that, so they try to put you off in other ways, price is one. When it's fiddly often they can't give it to the junior and they don't want to do it themselves. As one once said to me "Look at the grooves in those columns and the concave casting above the pay out. I can't give that to the lad, his mind would wander and he'd polish it all off again trying to get in there."

Plain talking can save time and money. It's a bit like choosing the place you go for your MOT.

BP