How many cherries?

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brigham
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Re: How many cherries?

Post by brigham »

"...But that does definitely establish that Mills did originate single-cherry pay, and it existed before the post-war era..."
I'm satisfied that it dates from 1939, a conclusion that I have drawn from contemporary advertising.
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treefrog
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Re: How many cherries?

Post by treefrog »

Jennings had single cherry in late thirties......

Any BP back to why you raised this in the first place, there are so many other things to identify fake war eagles and the one cherry or two cherry is not a guaranteed method. It is not that tough to change to a two cherry if so committed
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Re: How many cherries?

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Come on then TF share with us please.
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Re: How many cherries?

Post by treefrog »

Share what how to convert or what Jennings......I think you know the first being a technical the wizard of our era in the art the slot machine :cool: , but I have seen the Jennings Super Chief offered as an option single cherry payout from 1939.......this became available on other chiefs after this.

One of the last repro war eagles we discussed on the forum had two cherry payout......
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=7352&p=53995&hilit=War+eagle#p53995
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Re: How many cherries?

Post by quadibloc »

badpenny wrote: Mon Mar 09, 2020 2:06 pmI think we now have enough evidence to ascertain that single cherry pay out on Mills machines didn't appear pre WWII.
Huh? I thought this thread contained proof that, contrary to what I had thought, single cherry payout did originate in 1939, shortly before World War II started.
badpenny wrote: Mon Mar 09, 2020 2:06 pmAlso it rules out War Eagles and Castle Fronts.
Now this is true. The Chrome Bell was among Mills' last pre-war machines, and the War Eagle was among the first Silent Bells from 1931, so single cherry payout wasn't around back that far.
badpenny wrote: Mon Mar 09, 2020 2:06 pmI can't imagine a profit driven operator spending time and money altering a machine so it would pay out additional combinations.
Ouch!

I certainly agree that a profit-driven operator would never alter a machine to pay out additional combinations... without also altering the reel strips and payout discs to ensure it remained profitable afterwards.

But from my reading of advertisements for reconditioned second-hand slots, altering machines to have currently fashionable payouts - no lemons on the first reel, single-cherry payout, triple-cherry payout and no lemons anywhere, mystery pay, criss-cross or tic-tac-toe style - was not only possible, but even common.

The War Eagle in Dieter Ladwig's book Slot Machines (on page 48) has a payout card which resembles the original payout cards for that machine in style, but which indicates a single-cherry payout. A fanciful but misguided collector, or a post-war alteration during the machine's service life? I'd be hesitant to say.
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brigham
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Re: How many cherries?

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I'd be hesitant to say...
...or buy.
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Re: How many cherries?

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treefrog wrote: Mon Mar 09, 2020 7:32 pmJennings had single cherry in late thirties......
Although Jennings appears to be the first to switch from lemons on the third reel to cherries on the third reel, in making an extensive search of Billboard and Automatic Age to learn about the evolution of slot machine payouts, I've seen no evidence whatever of single-cherry pay by Jennings (or Pace or Watling, for that matter) until the cessation of hostilities for World War II.
So if you are right, there is something I can learn from you. What Jennings machine had it?
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Re: How many cherries?

Post by treefrog »

quadibloc wrote: Tue Mar 10, 2020 6:20 pm
treefrog wrote: Mon Mar 09, 2020 7:32 pmJennings had single cherry in late thirties......
Although Jennings appears to be the first to switch from lemons on the third reel to cherries on the third reel, in making an extensive search of Billboard and Automatic Age to learn about the evolution of slot machine payouts, I've seen no evidence whatever of single-cherry pay by Jennings (or Pace or Watling, for that matter) until the cessation of hostilities for World War II.
So if you are right, there is something I can learn from you. What Jennings machine had it?
Machine mentioned above was offered from around August 1939, so pre war.....
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Re: How many cherries?

Post by quadibloc »

It is true that the Jennings Super Chief dates from 1939. I could only find three surviving examples pictured on the Internet, all had double-cherry payout.
It is true that single-cherry pay was offered on Jennings post-war machines. The first three of them were the Bronze Chief, the Super Deluxe Club Chief, and the Standard Chief. Are you sure you aren't confusing the Super Chief with the Super Deluxe Club Chief?
So far, I have been unable to even find an advertisement for the Jennings Super Chief.

Looking a little harder, I have found it advertised in Billboard. And I'd seen the advertisements before. Mostly, they talked about the machine's new, improved slug rejector. (It didn't have a visible escalator; this was added in a later model, so the slug rejector must not have been perfect.)

But on page 87 of the June 3, 1939 Billboard, there was a big ad for the Jennings Super Chief. And that proves you're right. The last paragraph of the ad copy is: "May be equipped with special 1 cherry on first reel payout combination or any other popular combination desired."

This wording and placement suggests to me that Mills was still first - but Jennings, at least, started imitating the popular one-cherry payout before the War, even if Watling and Pace apparently didn't.
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Re: How many cherries?

Post by treefrog »

Posting the below as referenced in Peter Bach’s book called Collectors Treasury of Antique Slot Machines from Contemporary Advertising. A wonderful reference book with almost 500 pages of machines in chronological order, produced 40 years ago. One of the few books I often reference and recommended if you don’t already have.

This machine is covered by about 4 adverts over 1939, starting in July. Not a common machine I guess.
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Re: How many cherries?

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That is basically the same advertisement as the one I found, except for being set in a different face:
jennings_super_ad3.jpg

And I later found the exact advertisement in the August 19, 1939 issue of Billboard, on page 75:
jennings_super_ad7.jpg

Incidentally, I also looked on the Web for pictures of Mills War Eagle slot machines. All those I found online had the expected double-cherry payouts, with one exception: machines on display at the Golden Gate casino, which, despite its name, is in downtown Las Vegas.
To address that issue, since I saw one book claiming that Mills Silent War Eagles were manufactured until 1944 (I would have thought slot machine manufacture in the U.S. would have ceased after 1941) I visited the serial number database of the Coin Op Registry.
Some Mills War Eagles had very low serial numbers, being conversions from gooseneck machines.
The lowest serial number that wasn't a conversion was 261435.
The lowest serial number for a Diamond Front, the model that introduced single-cherry payout, was 370112.
But there were Silent War Eagles with higher serial numbers, such as 370412 and 373996. So a Silent War Eagle given single-cherry payout in the factory by Mills is indeed a possibility.
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Re: How many cherries?

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Interestingly Jennings revamped that machine when they started to switch to their more modern range, they kept the bottom half and added the new top( that would become with some changes their standard design) to make the bronze chief (as already mentioned) and the silver club(below), Another machine that had the single cherry at the same time as the bronze and standard was the Chinese front
silver club.jpg
silver club.jpg (25.26 KiB) Viewed 3947 times

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coppinpr
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Re: How many cherries?

Post by coppinpr »

and for no other reason than Id like to own one (but without the mint vendor) I'd like to mention the console "silver Moon" which also had a single cherry payout :lol:

Jennings-Silver-Moon-Console-Glass-Original.jpg
Jennings-Silver-Moon-Console-Glass-Original.jpg (23.12 KiB) Viewed 3945 times


silver moon 4.jpg
silver moon 4.jpg (9.09 KiB) Viewed 3945 times


blue moon a.jpg

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Re: How many cherries?

Post by quadibloc »

And that was a pre-war machine too... at least by American standards, as it dated from 1941.
So owning one in the UK might be difficult, unless some were sold to operators in the UK after the end of the war. Otherwise, one would have to buy one in the U.S. and have it shipped across the Atlantic!
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Re: How many cherries?

Post by badpenny »

I don't intend to lower my expectations or standards knowingly. Although it appears to be practice (common or not in USA).
This advert has just popped up on FaceCloth ....

repro.jpg

$650

Very Nice 70's Repro of a 30's Mills War Eagle. Quarter machine, working condition. Asking $650. Located just off I-95 near the Delaware State line.

It's nice looking, but I'd never be content with it. I fear there are Herberts out there who would rub there hands at the thought of buying in order to bamboozle the unaware.

BP :didact:
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Re: How many cherries?

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badpenny wrote: Wed Mar 11, 2020 5:35 pmIt's nice looking, but I'd never be content with it. I fear there are Herberts out there who would rub there hands at the thought of buying in order to bamboozle the unaware.
It's nice to encounter a fellow Star Trek fan.

Just because an authentic War Eagle could possibly exist with single-cherry payout does not mean that it's likely.

I've been unable to pin down the date for the first Jennings slot machine which paid out on 1, 2, or 3 cherries. Since the Jennings Buckaroo four-reeler from 1955 did this, I would be inclined to assume that this had been done on three-reelers either simultaneously or some time before.

However (ignoring the unconventional Mills QT) I've found that someone did beat Jennings to putting a cherry on the third reel in a conventional slot machine payout structure. In 1946, the Keeney Bonus Super Bell console had cherries on all three reels, and paid out on two cherries or three cherries.

I'm so used to the modern slot machine payout structure that I wonder why this wasn't what was done all along: why didn't Charles Fey put a horseshoe on the third reel, instead of coming up with the star? However, I presume that, at the time, when slot machines were very new, it was felt that if two horseshoes paid out, it would be confusing to have it possible to extend the sequence with the same symbol, and a special symbol on the third reel would be easier to understand.

As well, Charles Fey's machine with horseshoes, bells, stars, and card suit symbols was not actually his first automatic payout three-reeler, first it had reel strips with playing cards on them - and the need to make sensible poker-style hands on that machine may have suggested this pattern on the later version.

In the realm of large flashy console slots, although Evans' Lucky Lucre from 1939 had a traditional payout structure, paying a small prize for two cherries, and a larger prize for two cherries and a bell... they didn't want to have any nasty old lemons on their machine, to dampen player enthusiasm. (Or, at least, they didn't want to admit to them; a photo of the reel bundle shows it had plenty of lemons on both the first and third reels, so apparently the change was to allow more lemons on the third reel.) But like other slot machines, they wanted two possibilities for the bigger cherry prize.

So for the other possibility, they paid the higher prize for two cherries and a bar - so now I even have a historical example of that (not counting the Mills QT) even if it didn't catch on.
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Re: How many cherries?

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quadibloc wrote: Sat Mar 14, 2020 10:34 pmHowever, I presume that, at the time, when slot machines were very new, it was felt that if two horseshoes paid out, it would be confusing to have it possible to extend the sequence with the same symbol, and a special symbol on the third reel would be easier to understand.
Personally I think that is only partly true. My guess is the third reel re using bells (and sometimes BARS) (which were already winners in other combinations) with two cherries has to do with the fact that you would need to remove a symbol from the 20 stop strip to find room for just one cherry, thus changing the number of other winners. True, you would have, let's say, lost a three plum winner and gained a three cheery winner by changing one plum to a cherry, whereas the very early machines actually increased the total number of payouts by NOT adding a cherry. By keeping the original reel strip and adding the bell and bar to the two cherry payout you increased the total number of winning lines by two, whereas adding a cherry at the cost of a plum would keep the number of payouts the same.

Having said all that, Jennings muddied the waters as early as 1920 by having a lemon on the third reel which, to all intents, could well have been a cherry, for it was only in use as the cherry-cherry-Lemon winner (but did have the added bonus of removing one higher paying winning line), but these machines also had the C-C-Bell winner, so it could be said that keeping that third symbol an odd one might look better than introducing a cherry rather than a lemon.
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Re: How many cherries?

Post by quadibloc »

coppinpr wrote: Sun Mar 15, 2020 9:57 am Having said all that, Jennings muddied the waters as early as 1920 by having a lemon on the third reel which, to all intents, could well have been a cherry, for it was only in use as the cherry-cherry-Lemon winner
I don't quite understand you here, because wasn't that nearly always the case on the older slot machines, right back to the first Mills machine to feature the modern fruit symbols?

That is, just like that Jennings machine, the 1910 Mills Operators Bell paid on cherry-cherry-lemon and cherry-cherry-bell, and the lemon didn't figure in any other prize combinations - and earlier in 1910, the Mills Liberty Bell Gum Fruit paid on spearmint-spearmint-lemon and spearmint-spearmint-bell with the lemon not in any other prize combinations.

Except for a few rare and unusual machines, like the Caille Grand Award, the lemon never did figure in any other prize combinations.
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Re: How many cherries?

Post by coppinpr »

what I was inferring was not that Jennings were unique in this but rather an example that the Lemon when used in this way could just as easily been a cherry but for some reason was not,hence the use of a different symbol other than a cherry adds weight to not wanting to confuse the player.

I wonder if they had not used C-C-BAR and C-C-Bell and had looked for a payout as an increase on C-C-any they might have simply used C-C-C which is in fact what they did when they dropped C-C-BAR and BELL as without those two C-C-C is ,supposedly, less confusing without the other two :!?!:
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Re: How many cherries?

Post by quadibloc »

I've seen an advertisement on FaceBook for a slot machine described as 40% restored, but with original payout card and reel strips.
It is a 1947 Jennings Standard Chief.
Its payout schedule includes pays on 1, 2 and 3 cherries, so it has cherries on the third reel.
If that is even possible, it means that the advertisements I've been looking at didn't show all the posible payout schedules that Jennings had.
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