Bollands "Miniature Billiards"

[gameswat]

This as yet only known example machine was originally found in Australia by Bob Klepner many years ago in an old arcade somewhere north of Melbourne. He'd always believed it was by Ell circa 1910 as that was the consensus of several UK collectors back then. Much later Bob sold the machine to a collector in the USA around 2003, and in 2005 I got to work on it. I was able to remove the later brass strengthening add-ons to the cabinet, and discover it once used billiard cloth as backing in the case. I was also was able to figure out the game once paid back your coin for getting the ball into certain holes. Though all this mech had been long removed. I had a feeling it was likely by BMCo and late 1920's. Then weeks later while searching through old scrapbooks that were put together and belonged to Freddie Bolland himself I accidently spotted a photo of the game! And on close inspection it wasn't just similar, it was the same example! The oak grain is identical. The photo in the scrapbook is far better than this copy of it I just found in the Costa archive, which was a small negative that i enlarged and turned into a positive image. In the original photo you can actually read all the wordy instructions on that giant marquee which explain what holes will return your coin. Sadly I never kept a copy of the original photo in my collection and the owner of the scrapbook can't seem to find the photo to copy for me!? The books are very confusing though as there was no order to any of it. Those scrapbooks went from Bolland to John Gresham and then to the USA. Obviously Nic got to photograph them at some time.

[treefrog]

Probably unique, shame as with so many the top marque went, looks a cool game