How many cherries?

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quadibloc
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Re: How many cherries?

Post by quadibloc »

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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coppinpr
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Re: How many cherries?

Post by coppinpr »

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
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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:

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quadibloc
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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:
quadibloc
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Re: How many cherries?

Post by quadibloc »

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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coppinpr
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Re: How many cherries?

Post by coppinpr »

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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coppinpr
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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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coppinpr
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Re: How many cherries?

Post by 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.
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Re: How many cherries?

Post by 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.
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coppinpr
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Re: How many cherries?

Post by 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. :lol:
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Re: How many cherries?

Post by 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.
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Re: How many cherries?

Post by 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.
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highfield
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Re: How many cherries?

Post by 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.
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Re: How many cherries?

Post by 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. :shock:
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Re: How many cherries?

Post by grains »

I have a Brown Front that is 2 Cherry Payout.
Did the Single Cherry Payout option become available later in the production run?
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coppinpr
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Re: How many cherries?

Post by coppinpr »

According to Mills own advertising the first machine to use a 1 cherry payout was the "Chrome Bell", 1939.
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coppinpr
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Re: How many cherries?

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