Buckingham saved from the grave

[coppinpr]

Bought this 'Buckingham' on an Ebay 'make me an offer'. I didn't expect to get it for what I offered but the guy had never even looked at it, had it sitting at the back of a shed and wanted rid of it. Must say I enjoyed bringing it back from the dead.
The wiring was totally burnt out but, when I replaced it, the coin op and one light worked fine so I took out the other lights and moved the one good light to the middle, put in a bigger tube and it looks great. I had to respray the door and I've still got the coin tray to do, (not worth re-chroming it). It was working on the old 5p and it seems to work fine on a new 10p.
The mech is an old Mills with an unusual (to me anyway) wide tube, hand fed jackpot added to the front of the mech, uses the same jackpot slide as standard Mills jackpot to operate. All the coin detection parts have of course been removed from the mech as it uses an electric powered handle lock system almost the same as the Bally 'Money honey' series. No transformer! All mains!
The two glass panels were in a bad way, scratched and with large areas opened up to take faded brown bits of card stuck in with crisp brown sticky tape put in when some operator changed the payouts. Much re-painting from the inside and it looks great now. The machine was made by IA Ltd, Slough. Anyone know anything about them?

I know the big guns on the site will turn up there noses at this poor relation, but it still has a place in slot machine history and perhaps it will now survive another 50 years.


Ebay link: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/160650108849? ... 720wt_1396

[scottie]

Wow GREAT JOB bring it back to life... looks good !!!
I will not turn my nose up at it, because I own one too,
Scottie.

[treefrog]

These were made by Sega, similar to the Continental and Lord Sega except they are a lot heavier. If you look at the rear clamps you will se the letters "SG" for Sega. If you were not aware, always be wary of a Mills machine claiming to be a Mills, when the components are all Sega. I recently saw a Hi Top with a Buckingham mech in. I believe you need to shave the mechanism base plate to fit these in older machines.

The Buckingham was also available in a full height floor standing machine. I have a few and a couple of Wild Man versions with a great motorcycle theme as below.

[scottie]

Hi,
Here's a shot of mine.
I know it takes 2P, but I always wondered what the hand fed jackpot took??
I'm sure you know...
Scottie.

[treefrog]

I am sure this varies. As you can see, my jackpot is £9. The jackpot tube takes 50p pieces and the section that slides across at the bottom (the jackpot) on mine measures 18 coins, so £9... The first machine has a £5 jackpot, but the jackpot tube looks a similar in height to mine, so either used tokens or another smaller denomination. You would need to look at the diameter of the coin tube in your machine to see what it takes and measure the height of the lower jackpot tube. Being 2p, I would have thought it would be smaller.

[scottie]

I just filled my jackpot tube with the large old pennys. When I hit the jackpot, it dumps 6 of the pennys. A large (silver in color) 10 new pence coin also fits in the jackpot tube. I am not sure how many drop because I only have two... Any ideas?
Scottie.

[coppinpr]

Interesting that the last photo shows the jackpot mech through the window. This makes more sense than the clearly later added cards, that get stuck over the window, with the amount on, because the jackpot is chromed so was clearly made to be seen. My jackpot tube is very wide and the machine set to take first issue 5p, so I guess the tube took 50ps which, on mine, pays correct jackpot. Glad I saw that photo; I'm opening up the window, much better.

[scottie]

When I got this machine, it did have a hand made sign in the jackpot window. I couldn't figure out what coins it held. If I remember right, it said 4 pounds... I didn't know if that was just the jackpot coins or both the 2p coins and the jackpot coins total when you hit the BAR BAR BAR.
I ask a few people about the old coins... very confusing lol....
Scottie.

[coppinpr]

Of course, it's hard to be sure about 50p pieces as the original 50p's were larger than those of today and the old ones are hard to come by. As the tube was hand filled and is quite tall it would have held a lot of money for its day, I guess at least £20 if 50p's. On a 5p or 2p machine this would have been a lot of tied up cash.

[malcymal]

They look very similar to the Sega Windsor. Is it an electro mechanical handle pull, e.g. coin in slot actuates the motorised kicker at the bottom right rear side? Out of interest, what primer did you use on it? Did it not have a chrome finish originally on front door? I found with a Continental they are swines to paint, primer and paint just don't stick to the metal.

[coppinpr]

It had been painted all over a long time ago and it needed taking off with Nitromors, so I painted the lot. I use Plasticoat white metal primer spray and it works great. I did the Sega you sold me with the same (see photos of the primed parts on that post). It has the electro-coin system as you say. I've opened up the jackpot window and it looks really nice now, with the chromed jackpot showing through and the lights highlighting it.

[malcymal]

Cool. I know these Windors, Buckinghams, Lord Sega type machines aren't to everybody's liking but personally I think they are really neat machines. Out of all my bandits, my Windsor (Victory) is the smallest of the lot and it runs all day long without grumbling. The chrome work on them is a swine, as is the poor quality metal they are made from, making rechroming difficult. However, with a bit of spit and polish, they come up nice, don't they? Malc.