Roulette 21

[treefrog]

Roulette 21 on eBay at the moment for a princely sum and although similators are not my thing, I did admire a very similar one that has appeared at the elephant twice and not reached reserve also below with a great stylistic gum vendor. I love the crackle finish paint work on these. One thing that I could not make out was what LLS stood for on the gum vendor machine when seeing it, I now realise on the other one, this should say BALLS.....so was the vendor a later addition as would seem odd to leave an unknown word like LLS on a machine if designed like this

[gameswat]

I'm sure the Queen Top is by the same French maker but using three concentric discs, and it also comes with the same arrow gumball vendor. But the lettering is placed so that with or without the gumball option you could always see the name. So my guess would be the Balls 21 game came first without a gumball option and then the Queen Top came a little later with the gumball option so they tooled that one up to suit either way. Since they didn't grind off the LLS lettering before painting your pictured machine it would seem the gumballs were added later to an already running game. Richard Bueschel dates the Queen Top as 1937 but maker unknown.

[gameswat]

But of course without seeing the gumball mechanism inside it's all guess work, does anybody have one? Maybe there are brackets cast inside specially for the gumball option?

[jra]

Hello all,
I have had one of these machines in my collection for about 10 years now, I bought it very cheap but it is not working properly. I think it has some parts missing but am not sure. When you put a coin in and pull the handle the discs spin but come to an abrupt stop as though there should be a pump or clock to slow them down. I wonder if any member has one and could take some pictures of the workings so I can see what may be missing. Thank you in anticipation.
Regards JRA.