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I recently purchased a Mills penny slot machine, and am trying to find some information about it.
I would like to know the year it was produced, and anything else you can tell me about it. I can't seem to find similar photos of it.
Here are a few pictures. A few of the parts have part numbers or serial numbers. One is MLB127B with a sideways 5 on it. The base also shows numbers in the image.
Any advice?

Later,
Ray

Hello and welcome,

I am not sure why your post has been missed as I use the “recently listed posts” view and your post did not appear until today, second time this has happened with new members and maybe is part of some moderator approval process.

Anyway, not seen your machine in its exact form, but is one of many “Operator” made items from bits of other machines back in the day, probably some time in the 60’s by the style. It has a Mills mechanism as well as Mills Hi Top glass and top badge. Looks like a Aristocrate sheerline award plate as well and maybe cash tray. It would be great to get all these into a single thread as another one was listed recently again with parts.

Exactly who made them, we may never know....

Hi rayklann

Welcome on board and to the hobby.
I too confirm the mixed pedigree of your machine.
It was quite common 60 years ago for small arcades and fairground operators to embellish/modernise their machines for the new season by sticking all sorts of alien badges and signs on the front. A common addition was car bonnet badges Victor, Velox, Zephyr etc.
Another practice was, just before the season started any old mech was chucked back into the nearest case to hand. Invariably the last two to be introduced to each other were far from related.
I've mentioned before on here the time I turned up for my Summer stint at my Uncle's arcade in Paignton, and found him putting the finishing touches to forcing a Sega mech (I believe) into some form of Australian (I believe) case. Rubber mallets and tyre levers were in abundance.

Also apologies for any delays in your post appearing.
I deal with all new member posts and requests for Resource downloads the day they appear in my inbox.
Of course I don't know how long they take to get that far nor the time between my actioning them and their arrival back in the real world. I guess we need to investigate a bit.

Regards
BP

treefrog wrote: ↑Tue Apr 13, 2021 12:15 pm I am not sure why your post has been missed as I use the “recently listed posts” view and your post did not appear until today. Second time this has happened with new members and maybe is part of some moderator approval process.

That's odd. I wonder if it might be a caching issue. Checking the log, I approved the post on Wed Apr 07, 2021 4:31 pm. It should then have been visible to all. Its position in the Active topics list (which shows the latest/most recent posts) is ordered by posting date (not approval date), so it probably didn't appear at the top, but should have been there with the little red "unread posts" icon. The New posts link only shows posts that arrived since your last login, so if you logged in previously and missed a post, it wouldn't be in that list. I guess the fail-safe check therefore would be Unread posts.

I don’t know, but the only reason I saw it was because I went to unanswered posts which I do every few weeks, but it is rare for regular contributors to ignore a new poster post so that it drifts onto the next page. As I say it happened to another a week or so back.....in both cases they were new member posts, which I assumed were delayed for an approval element, but maybe not......

I will check unanswered more regularly

Next time there's a newly approved member's post, I'll pop a note in Feedback, so we can see if there's an issue.

I always go to unanswered posts. It is always my first port of call. If it helps investigation pm, this is first time this message has appeared.

Excellent, thanks for the information. Now that makes a lot of sense that it has been assembled from a variety of parts.

It seemed odd to me, because the mechanism appears to be much older than the case. And the front seemed much more modern (like 60s). It is also fairly plain overall, compared to many other machines, which would be consistent with use in an arcade.

Any idea on how old is the mechanism?

Later,
Ray

I would hazard a guess it is a early Mills mechanism (’20s/’30s) with a later 20 stop mechanism in it, but I could be talking twaddle as usual.... Seeing it from the back may help.