Aristocrat Clubman & Clubmaster

[andydotp]

Topic split - site admin.

...he wanted £180 for chroming the handle, badges and a couple of pieces of trim off my Aristocrat Clubman.

Which model of the Aristocrat Clubman do you have, any chance of a pic please?
Regards,
Andy.

[special when lit]

This one. Ended up painting them in the end, not as good as chrome, but look OK.

[pennymachines]

Round-up of two Clubmasters posted previously by tree-frog:

[treefrog]

edited this post due to moderator advise that the same thing had been mentioned twice in 5 years. Will promise not to post any single thing relating to Australian machines again, write 500 times

[badpenny]

Curious as they seem to lose their coin flap so easily, whilst the three I've had were all complete.

[andydotp]

Nice bunch of Clubmasters there,
Hey, 'Special' did you mean -master or -man in your first post? I've only ever discovered one ClubMAN here in Oz (not surprizingly) but the seller wanted stupid dollars for it.
Cheers,
Andy.

[special when lit]

Definitely Clubmaster. I believe the Clubman was an earlier version, I've seen a few pics of one and they are a very nice looking bandit, never found one for sale though.

[pennymachines]

The 1953 Ainsworth Clubman was the first of the Aristocrat line. I can only find two pictures online, both at Arcade History, and both taken from old advertising flyers:
1953 Clubman
1954 Clubman

I guess it's as rare a bird as the Middlehust Coronet.
They have divider posts between the reels, a feature which must have been carried over to the early Clubmasters.

[andydotp]

Me again,
Actually there was a machine prior to the ClubMan - called The Aristocrat which prompted Ainsworth Dental Supplies to change its company name to Aristocrat.
I know of the whereabouts of extremely rare models of every early Ainsworth/Aristocrat machines in a lock-up out here in Oz. Piled up on shelves with about forty other machines - collecting dust... but sadly the seller wants too much money.
There's early Mills, Pace, Fey, Watling & Caille machines plus numerous Ballys, trade stims, one-off Australian machines from every 50s manufacturer that Ainsworth bought out.. all those beauties in a flippin' warehouse. SO close yet just out of my price range.
Anyone got a spare hundred grand??

Andy. .

[pennymachines]

Actually there was a machine prior to the ClubMan - called The Aristocrat which prompted Ainsworth Dental Supplies to change its company name to Aristocrat...

Ah ha - that's intriguing... With the recent surge in Australasian contributors to this forum, plus knowledge gained from some of our long standing Aussie members, I was starting to fancy myself as something of an expert...

I have a small collection of rare vintage Australian bandit pictures on my hard drive, saved from Dola.com.au (now defunct Australian online auction). I might be infringing copyright by posting them here. In fact, I've probably done so already by saving them...