FORUM

Topic split - site admin.

special when lit wrote:...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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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. .

andydotp wrote: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...

Somewhere in the back files of this site I am on record as saying something along the lines ......... "I firmly believe waffle waffle that the Clubmaster pompous pompous dribble is the finest looking humpf humpf......"

I'd like to thank everyone, who at the time didn't respond by saying....
"Shut up you pontificating pillock, you obviously know sweet sod all about Ozzie Pokies, haven't you seen the earlier Clubman in all of its guises?"

Guess what I wan't now? Immediately after the Coronet which I still firmly believe waffle waffle is the most pompous pompous dribble finest looking humpf humpf ?

Well Badpenny,
I rang the chap last week who I bought it off years ago coz we agreed he'd always have first & last option if I were to put it on the market. Sure, he'd love it back but isn't in the financial position.
I definitely don't want to part with it but when times must........
Perhaps I should put it on UK ebay? See what true & genuine collectors feel?
Regards,
Andy.

Well you could do that Andy, but I read very recently somewhere that selling items through an ebay auction is now considered old hat and really not the thing to do. The new way is to just use it as a shop window, invite questions through your advertised phone number then close it just before it ends. A positive advantage to one and all I hear.

is actually quite clever and works very well for both sellers and buyers... the 'clue' as someone here quite rightly pointed out, was his addition of a telephone number for people to call and make offers 'before' the end of the auction, the seller then being in a prime position to accept the highest bid and make second offers as necessary...

....that although perhaps irritating from a strictly ebayer's pov somewhat tired of being fecked about by both sides, it's actually pretty smart from a 'genuine' sellers and buyers pov

However I am a silver haired old fart who knows nothing and constantly needs others to put me right so how about initially you just humour this daft old fart and PM me with the figure that the previous owner decided was beyond him.
No need to worry, the gas oven is far too cluttered and filthy for me to get my doddery old head in.

A phottie on the thread would be lovely and would also rub tubes of salt into the already festering open wounds that I once called ambition.

First off I have to stand corrected. As Pennymachines said, 1953 Clubman was the first Ainsworth machine so pardon my stupidity.
'New Clubman' of '54 was next then the 'Clubmasters' and 'Aristocrat'.... Thousands were made yet so few have survived..

See Badpenny, I'll go out on a limb here, (can someone make an emoticon for that?) - you're definitely not the only one on this forum with 'buffonic tendancies'
And stop puttin' yerself down man.... you're an integral part of this whole scene and I for one look forward to your posts - as I'm sure most do!

Not sure about using ebay as a shop front...reckon I'd be a bit pee'd off if a seller pulled an item I was ahead on. Then again, that's how I bought my 1910 Mills Ops Bell - I rang the guy in America, and we did the deal live on line..

Laters,
Andy.

Hilarious, nice work..
Cheers,
Andy.

Post split & merged - Site Admin.

I finally got around to looking at the material that Mr Pennymachines has put together on Australian pokies (see links above). It's an absolutely fantastic collection of material and includes much that I had never seen before and illustrations of and information about Australian pokies that I never even knew existed. Thank you Mr Pennymachines, it's a fantastic resource to have.

I am attaching a photo that I have of an Ainsworth Aristocrat Clubman and some early Ainsworth Design patents which show that the two Clubman machines illustrated in the Ainsworth section of the Australian pokies feature as Clubman 1953 and Clubman 1954 are in the wrong order ie the sequence is 33,556, 33,722, 37,259 as shown below. I think that these design patents were originally found by Gameswat who was kind enough to pass on a copy to me.

Also to add to Mr Pennymachines photos of Clubman machines, here's a photo of another one also, an unrestored one.

On reading some of the material in Mr Pennymachines Pokies from Down under section I followed a link at the top of the Ainsworth section: Former Sil-Ora Dental Products factory - PDF This provides a link to a Sydney City Council PDF Document concerning the premises of the Ainsworth Aristocrat factory. Halfway down the PDF Document is a section that includes the following information: “On the night of 19 November 1954, a home-made bomb containing sticks of gelignite ignited electrically was thrown onto the roof of Sil-ora Dental Products at Birmingham Street. The bomb only partly exploded according to newspaper reports of the time, causing major damage to the roof. The proprietor then valued the factory and contents at £70,000 (SMH, 20 Nov 1952, p 1).”

This reminded me of the story behind this incident that I was told when I was in Sydney in the early eighties searching for leads on coin op machines. I was told of a man who had a small tobacconists shop in a Sydney suburb who may have some pokies or trade stimulators. He had been connected to the industry in its early days and I spent some time yarning to him whilst he told me some stories of the colourful characters involved in the industry. Amongst these was the story behind this incident. This was at the time in the early fifties when Ainsworth was starting production of the early Aristocrat Clubman machines.

Some of the people that were importing or manufacturing poker machines did not want this upstart rival taking business away from them and so plotted a way to eliminate this competition. The plan was to place two bombs with detonating mechanisms on the roof of the Ainsworth factory in order to destroy the competition before they really got under way with manufacturing the Aristocrat Clubman machines in quantity.

A bomb with a timer detonating mechanism was to blast a hole in the roof of the Ainsworth factory. A second bomb would then drop through this hole and another timer would detonate it and this bomb would destroy the contents of the factory consisting of finished poker machines as well as all the manufacturing equipment.

For whatever reason the first bomb did not detonate and when the second bomb went off it destroyed the roof and shattered every window for “miles around” but did not harm the contents of the factory itself. No further attempt was made as security at the Ainsworth factory was enhanced after this incident. Thus Ainsworth’s whole history may have been very different if that first detonator mechanism had worked as intended.

Blimey. Who would have thought it: Organised Crime in Paradise. Well, half-organised, at least!

Great story Bob and gives us some idea of what cut throat times there were back in the '50s and '60s and the criminal element involved in gambling, who of course ran in in US, UK and obviously Aus.

I remember having a long chat with an old slot machine engineer long retired and working in London for the various gangs who had underground clubs and venues where high payout machines were based. He mentioned many occasions having to move machines due to not just the law, but rival group threats.