Greaves Amusements Story PT2
Posted: Sun Sep 05, 2021 9:15 pm
Some time ago I provided some historical information regarding the Leicester company Greaves Amusements. I've known the Greaves family since I was about 10 years old when they were re-manufacturing Bally bandits (actually they weren't officially endorsed by the Bally Corporation and Bally didn't take too kindly to their name being used on the new revamped artwork and flyers which is why Greaves used the name 'Ballymagic' later on). Greaves still had a number of Mills machines and Jennings Governor console club machines sited at clubs and casino's in the city, plus a few Mills/Sega vest pocket machines. Most of these were replaced with the shiny new Bally's in the late 70's and anything mechanical was considered junk. However I'd always wanted a mechanical bandit but I guess I should have been born earlier! Mark described how they smashed the wooden console cases and took the mechanisms and castings to Frank Berry's scrapyard to weigh-in. Frank was quite shrewd and had realised their potential and hung onto them for years, and he probably made a killing from them! Mark told me whereabouts they had dumped the remainder of the carcasses at Whetstone tip. Most of it was buried under tonnes of land-fill, but I do remember finding remnants of some side panels and some relays there once...
When the demand for Bally's dried they found sub-contract jobs for the big distributors such as electronic AWP/SWP 'conversions' (ie fitting new glass, reels and game roms to re-vamp older games) for Leicester based distributor CTL Leisure. Later on they took on some pinball restoration contracts for Associated Leisure (AL) in Burton on Trent. Basically AL had a huge warehouse full of pinballs which were a couple of years old in various states of repair, but for which they had neither the time or the manpower to restore, and they would off-load a truck full of them to Greave's mansion. Mark already had quite a few pinballs sited around Leicester, but the days of overflowing cashboxes had long since passed and he decided they were too much trouble and he needed the space to house the AL machines for which would earn him a lot more. He was also building /refurbishing small video game cabinets to feed the (dying) demand for JAMMA type games. He sold me his last remaining pinball machines: 'Centaur', 'Elekra', 'Pac-Man', 'Roller-Games', 'Apollo', 'Kings & Queens' and a Jupiter Jukebox. I took on a couple of his old sites for a while. In hindsight (I'm talking 20-25 years later) some of these machines would have been real gems if I'd had the space to keep them all, but at the time they weren't considered 'hip' by the average person like they are now.
Besides the Bally's Greaves also came up with another machine called 'Beat the Dealer'. The first machines were based on recycled Bally cabinets, using a tube/solenoid payout and were purely electromechanical based on a continuously revolving cam-timer. The later production machines were built into slimmer cabinets and called 'Find the Lady', these used TTL based electronics designed by Marks technician/inventor Keith, who also did all the wiring and electronics on the Bally conversions.
I happened to get hold of the original Beat the Dealer prototype. Unfortunately I considered it 'too far gone' to keep in my collection, but I did get it running. I've just found some photos of it!
There are rumours flying around the internet that Mark had sold me a shed full of Bally bandit parts. This is not entirely true and it probably came about after someone had phoned him mistaking the conversation to be about Bally pinball parts, I dunno but I',m sure he'd chucked big piles of them away years ago, along with all the original glasses from the donor machines (as the conversions used perspex). What is true is that he would readily throw stuff away....stuff which would be deemed junk to the dwindling slot industry, but which would be potential treasure to a slot enthusiast like me who likes to make things better. I'm not into finding things to sell on for a profit, but the little treasures you find and want to keep, because no-one else has one, that's how I like it to be.
When he cleared out the storeroom he offered me the remnants of pinball spares, glasses, award cards and such. The roof had been leaking for years and there was that familiar smell of damp chipboard under Formica, which you either love or hate. What was left was a selection of 80's-90's games, mainly video cabinets.
I recall giving George Goby a tip-off, and I think him and Tony cleared out the last of the machines.......
When the demand for Bally's dried they found sub-contract jobs for the big distributors such as electronic AWP/SWP 'conversions' (ie fitting new glass, reels and game roms to re-vamp older games) for Leicester based distributor CTL Leisure. Later on they took on some pinball restoration contracts for Associated Leisure (AL) in Burton on Trent. Basically AL had a huge warehouse full of pinballs which were a couple of years old in various states of repair, but for which they had neither the time or the manpower to restore, and they would off-load a truck full of them to Greave's mansion. Mark already had quite a few pinballs sited around Leicester, but the days of overflowing cashboxes had long since passed and he decided they were too much trouble and he needed the space to house the AL machines for which would earn him a lot more. He was also building /refurbishing small video game cabinets to feed the (dying) demand for JAMMA type games. He sold me his last remaining pinball machines: 'Centaur', 'Elekra', 'Pac-Man', 'Roller-Games', 'Apollo', 'Kings & Queens' and a Jupiter Jukebox. I took on a couple of his old sites for a while. In hindsight (I'm talking 20-25 years later) some of these machines would have been real gems if I'd had the space to keep them all, but at the time they weren't considered 'hip' by the average person like they are now.
Besides the Bally's Greaves also came up with another machine called 'Beat the Dealer'. The first machines were based on recycled Bally cabinets, using a tube/solenoid payout and were purely electromechanical based on a continuously revolving cam-timer. The later production machines were built into slimmer cabinets and called 'Find the Lady', these used TTL based electronics designed by Marks technician/inventor Keith, who also did all the wiring and electronics on the Bally conversions.
I happened to get hold of the original Beat the Dealer prototype. Unfortunately I considered it 'too far gone' to keep in my collection, but I did get it running. I've just found some photos of it!
There are rumours flying around the internet that Mark had sold me a shed full of Bally bandit parts. This is not entirely true and it probably came about after someone had phoned him mistaking the conversation to be about Bally pinball parts, I dunno but I',m sure he'd chucked big piles of them away years ago, along with all the original glasses from the donor machines (as the conversions used perspex). What is true is that he would readily throw stuff away....stuff which would be deemed junk to the dwindling slot industry, but which would be potential treasure to a slot enthusiast like me who likes to make things better. I'm not into finding things to sell on for a profit, but the little treasures you find and want to keep, because no-one else has one, that's how I like it to be.
When he cleared out the storeroom he offered me the remnants of pinball spares, glasses, award cards and such. The roof had been leaking for years and there was that familiar smell of damp chipboard under Formica, which you either love or hate. What was left was a selection of 80's-90's games, mainly video cabinets.
I recall giving George Goby a tip-off, and I think him and Tony cleared out the last of the machines.......
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