Fruite Whirle

[treefrog]

Forgot to post this one a from a few weeks back, was on ebay very briefly and almost bought, but just too far away. Fantastic colours and theme, with a nice curved facia. Bet there are not many of these around in this condition, again no maker to it, unless someone knows. Sold for £250 on but it now

[moonriver]

nice tidy looking machine, doesnt look as much of a death trap inside as usual either. Payout tube and hopper missing but I think I wouldve been tempted to buy that too

[chris roadhog]

thats a lovely machine.

[moonriver]

Dont know who made this but the artwork does remind me of Carfield ( Dransfield Novelty Company) of Leeds.

[treefrog]

It doesn’t feel like 9 years since I posted this machine, just found another in original state at the beginning of the video from Folly Farm in Wales……..

Folly Farm never been discussed on here, but host a large vintage funfair and a few arcade machines, mostly Nostalgia, but a few nice machines..

[moonriver]

The standard of machines in the video start off so well, and then go completely downhill.

[brigham]

'Baloons' at 0:21 must be a rarity.
Among the new stuff at the end, 1:13, a blurred view of the 'helicopter versus the flying saucers' game I used to play in Smith's Arcade, Butlin's Filey.
JINGLE had one, years back, but it was £400...

[JC]

Baloons' at 0:21 must be a rarity.

Yes, although its rarity has just gone down by around 33%. I owned one for a good number of years, although I no longer have it. There are two collectors up north who have each owned one for many years, and as far as I am aware still have them, so that makes three. The machine at Folly Farm isn't one of the three already known, so there are now at least four survivors of a machine that wouldn't have been made in large numbers in the first place. So once again, this proves that 'rare' machines aren't always as rare as we may think.

[slotalot]

Baloons' at 0:21 must be a rarity.

Yes, although its rarity has just gone down by around 33%. I owned one for a good number of years, although I no longer have it. There are two collectors up north who have each owned one for many years, and as far as I am aware still have them, so that makes three. The machine at Folly Farm isn't one of the three already known, so there are now at least four survivors of a machine that wouldn't have been made in large numbers in the first place. So once again, this proves that 'rare' machines aren't always as rare as we may think.

You just beat me to it Jerry, including this one I only know of 4 remaining, didn't know yours had gone to a new home though, and as you know I helped to restore the most northerly one for our mutual friend a few years ago.

[gameswat]

As far as I'm concerned, four known examples of any machine in the world would constitute great rarity!

In 1989 I got seriously interested in collecting machines for myself, though had been restoring them since 1979 for the family business. I met Bob Klepner in 1991 and we quickly became fast friends. Very early on I can remember him explaining to me that rarity was a good thing, and could be a bad thing! He pointed out that when there were only one or two known examples of a machine it tended to diminish collector interest, because what chance did anyone else have of finding and owning an example!? So they just didn't engage with the idea of possible ownership. But once you had three or more examples it then opened up the imaginations of collectors that if they looked hard enough they too could turn up an example, or actually pry one from one of the multiple owners. I've definitely found this to be true in Australia for coin-op collecting as a whole. There just weren't many machines originally operated here, and then most were eventually destroyed to protect the few operators businesses. So what idiot now wants to invest time into a hobby or business that has very few returns!?!? Hence there are very few hardcore collectors in Australia because of too extreme of rarity.

[pennymachines]

Agreed. What's more, such machines don't get onto 'must have' lists because collectors don't know they exist. However, these days so little goes under the radar,
if such a game turns up in a saleroom, and its merits are obvious, it will do well.

To assess the value of a piece with no established market price you can only compare it to similarly rare pieces with known sale prices.

Owning an 'only known example' which is incomplete or non-functional can also be frustrating. I have a few of those...

[pennymachines]

With the Examiner in mind, I'm reminded of another reason extreme rarity often doesn't equate with high value. Some are exceedingly rare because they were NBG.

[JC]

Sadly, quite a few Bryans machines fall into that category........sorry Simon