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Hosted by Jack Freund
This "Tale", sent in by Sal Mazzeo from Cincinna-
ti, starts and ends with the 1946 Bally Draw Bell slot
machine .... But the last Bally Draw Bell is not the first
Bally Draw Bell. Read on.....
My main coin op inter-
est is the slot machine, es-
pecially the old mechanical
variety. My first experience
with them occurred in 1978,
when I saw a 25 cent 1946
Bally Draw Bell slot. Still
in college, I was dating a girl
in Pottsville, Penna., and this
console slot machine was
sitting on a covered back
porch of a neighbor's house.
Intrigued, I took a closer
look at it and had my girl-
friend ask if it was for sale
(thinking that they'd sell it
cheaper to a neighbor). Unfortunately, even though it
was unrestored and in poor shape, the neighbor thought
he owned the holy grail of slot machines. His bargain
sale price: $ 1000. Not surprisingly, I passed on that of-
fer, as I was a poor college student with minimal cash.
However, the interest had been created, so the seed was
planted in my mind of owning one someday.
Fast forward four years. I'd moved to Cincinnati
for a job with Procter & Gamble, met a different girl,
and got married. But I still had the bug for buying an
old slot machine. Other coin ops also caught my inter-
est, but not like old slot machines did. What could be
cooler than to have one in your basement gameroom?
After trolling through local antique shops, I found one
establishment specializing in antique coin ops. He
didn't have any affordable slots in his inventory, but
that changed a few months later. He obtained a cache
of slot machines that recently escaped the local police
in Tennessee. A bar in that southern state had been run-
ning Mills Hightops to supplement their liquor income,
but the 'heat' became too much for the owner. So the
6-8 machines made their way to Cincinnati, and one of
them, a 10 cent Mills Hightop, ultimately ended up in
my house. It took some haggling with the shop owner
to finalize the deal. We settled on a final amount by flip-
ping a coin to split the last $100 difference in price (I
lost the flip, but didn't lose sleep over it). It was painted
a garish purple, but I restored
it to a more original red color.
I later traded it for other coin
op machines, as I built my
collection.
Since then, I've had fun
buying other slots, as well as
a few other coin ops, as you
can see from the photos. The
Jennings Peacock came from
a container load of English
slots brought back to the US.
It plays the old large English
Penny. I only wish I'd had a lot more money to buy
.-=-"11:""11.-.---..-~ - - - -
more of those US machines
~~=
set on English coins when
they were available, and so
affordable, during the mid-
1980's!
One of the more unusual
purchases was my Jennings
Little Duke. I'd wanted one
of those slots for a while,
and was constantly scan-
ning the auction papers,
looking for one. Well, lo
and behold, I saw one that
was coming up for auction
in Howell, Michigan in No-
vember, 1984. The thought of driving to Michigan was
not particularly appealing to
me, especially if I wasn't the
successful bidder. So I called
the auctioneer, and asked him
if I could bid by phone. (I
thought what the heck, all he
could say was no). To my sur-
prise and delight, he agreed.
I set a time to make the call,
made my bids, and my $800
took the Little Duke! Then
came the hard part - how to
collect the machine? Luckily,
32