How many cherries?

[coppinpr]

It is possible... just. Jennings made only one set of reel strips with a cherry on the third reel at that time. These didn't have a set number and are known as "Casino-J" and were made only for some of their casino machines. These had three cherries on the third reel, Do you have a photo of the award card, as that would confirm if that is what is on the facebook machine? C-C-C paid eleven on these machines. The most likely reason you haven't seen an advertisement featuring these is because Jennings most likely didn't advertise their casino machines on flyers and adverts. The sales team went direct to the casinos to do multi sales deal.

[quadibloc]

I'll give you a link to the post:

https://www.facebook.com/brightsantique ... ?__tn__=-R

Thank you for letting me know about the existence of the Casino-J reel strips. After searching around for images of the Jennings Standard Chief, and seeing pictures of a few more with those payouts, I also realized that while, as I had read, one could bend a payout finger back to change a machine from two payouts on two cherries and on two cherries and a lemon or bell to two payouts on one and two cherries, three payouts on one, two, or three cherries require an addition to the mechanism.
So existing machines with those payouts are valid evidence for its having existed during the life of the Standard Chief.

With the information you've given me, I took a look inside my copy of the Handbook of Slot Machine Reel Strips, A set of strips named Casino-J in that book has a payout percentage of 64.8%. Another set, V12-70, is noted as having been used with the Standard Chief; its payout percentage is 82.4%.
As can be seen from the posting, there's a paper stuck on the inside of the machine in question saying it has a payout percentage of 85%. The V-12-80-2 set of reel strips has that percentage.
There are extensive photographs of the mechanism from front and back. The sequence cherry - orange - bar is visible on the first reel. That is consistent with V12-70, and not V-12-80-2, but that could just mean that the machine has an unknown set of patched V12-70 strips to get its 85% payout.

[coppinpr]

Thanks for the link. I'm pretty sure that machine has the standard V12-70 reel strip set which was the basic Standard Chief set. The inconsistency on the check list could be explained easily in two ways:
1. Daniel Mead got it wrong in his book (not all his % are correct, as I think you know)
2. more likely, Jennings got it wrong. Not so easy to check in those days, or more to the point, not so easy for operators to check how correct it was.

[quadibloc]

I think, though, that explaining it on the basis that another reel strip set, similar to V12-70, but not found in the Handbook of Slot Machine Reel Strips, is on that machine, so that nobody's calculations need to be wrong, is possible. That book contains all the reel strips recorded by readers who mailed in responses to a survey; so while the book is a good resource, it is far from being a listing of every set of reel strips that ever existed.
As just one example, it doesn't list the reel strips on the Jennings 7-11 (or just 711) slot machine. This was a Standard Chief, perhaps painted gold (the one example I've seen online was), that may have been a response to Mills' 21 Bell. Whether it was even a Jennings product or some casino's own idea, I don't know.
At least one lemon on the first reel is overprinted with a 7, at least one orange on the second reel is overprinted with a 1, and at least one bar on the third reel is overprinted with a 1; if 7-1-1 shows up on the pay line, there is a prize of 200 coins.
As well as the original reel strips, giving an 85% return, having been replaced by a V12-70 set that was mistaken for original - maybe it was an original set from another slot, instead of a reproduction, so there was no way of telling.
So that's possibilities 3 and 4, neither of which I can automatically discount.
As to that Jennings 711, though, listed here http://antiquecoinslotmachines.com/jenn ... utiful.htm the gold color is due to the use of Harley-Davidson orange paint, which was an arbitrary choice of the owner during restoration, and has no relation to whatever color it originally had in use.

Also, I've learned that cherries on the third reel within a conventional payout schedule weren't introduced either in the Keeny Bonus Super Bell or by Jennings after World War II; instead, that innovation dates back to 1938 and the Caille Playboy, a variant of the Caille Cadet.

[paulmills]

Good day gentlemen how many cherries indeed? I’ve recently acquired Mills Cherrybell machine, Ex funfair I was told. The machine had been rigged to never pay out and its previous state disc number one has been patched up to never pay out on cherries. Reel one had multiple lemons stuck over them. When cleaning the disks and reels, I noticed that the disc to reel one had a stamp: (J-1);
reel two has a stamp: (R-2);
and reel three also had a stamp: (R-3).
I notice the American award card only paid on two cherries as the lowest payout! Now with this machine now restored with no patches it has eight Cherry payouts on reel number one and makes the machine extremely generous and it is now impossible to lose your pennies.

[highfield]

Hi Paul
Not a good idea to have your email as your user name. {Now changed - Site Admin.] However good to have another member.

[treefrog]

Funny, I looked up this thread only a few days ago as I noticed someone selling a single cherry Bursting Cherry in the US with a single and thought, that is wrong. Then searched google and there loads with the, maybe these also used them as an option……

A very generous operator.

[grains]

I have a Brown Front that is 2 Cherry Payout.
Did the Single Cherry Payout option become available later in the production run?

[coppinpr]

According to Mills own advertising the first machine to use a 1 cherry payout was the "Chrome Bell", 1939.

[coppinpr]

Now with this machine now restored with no patches it has eight Cherry payouts on reel number one and makes the machine extremely generous and it is now impossible to lose your pennies.

The thing about the bursting cherry is it was never meant to be a bursting cherry but a bursting melon. The melon bell was the first machine to use a melon payout and did not have a single cherry payout.The melon bell was a rare failure for mills and was withdrawn within a year and revamped into the bursting cherry,,still with no single cherry payout,however, a large number were converted later in life to compete with newer machines that were designed with single cherry payouts

300.jpg (26.87 KiB) Viewed 745 times

this machine is in original factory colours for the Melon bell,no wonder it was a failure

[paulmills]

OK good info thanks. At what point do you think the CherryBell was changed to a single cherry? Would it have been when exported to the U.K., and with changed payslides / coin chutes to take 1Ds pennies (GBP) and then a funfair cherry patch up job? I found a grubby old award card underneath with one cherry scrubbed out on the bottom line. At some point recently it has been Photoshopped (please see my pic).

[coppinpr]

That would depend whether the machine came to the UK new from the factory or second-hand from a supplier. If new, then it would have arrived with no single cherry, as there were no single cherries before 1939. If second-hand, then it almost certainly couldn't have arrived in the UK till after 1946, when it COULD have arrived with a single cherry payout, but my guess is that the lemon patches lead one to think it was converted later in its life so a pre-war machine converted to single cherry after the war. As to the UK coin conversion, we know Mills exported machines from the factory to the UK, but I don't know if they came with UK coin escalators and slides, were changed when they got here, or if they used the US 50c slides and escalators as the coin size is almost exactly the same (31mm [1d], 31.6mm [50c]).

[paulmills]

Do you think this old award card would have come from the manufacturer? Or were the original ones metallic? Please see the scrubbed out cherry off the bottom line and that also hand written payout change? Thanks Paul

[coppinpr]

No, it's similar but it's a copy. It would have looked more like this one and they were not metal.