The Mystery N. Y. Machine
A few weeks back, I received in the post a mysterious, large brown envelope. Little
did I know that I was about to open a monumental can of worms!
Glen Dodsworth had sent a number of A4 sized pictures which he had received from a
collector in New York, asking for help in identifying a machine. The New York collector
(who I now know is called Alan), owns an allwin with the top flash missing, and was keen
to know it's name and manufacturer. In addition to what was to become known as the
'Mystery New York' machine, Glen also enclosed pictures of his own Jackpot allwin, and
pointed out the similarities between the two machines. Glen btl-lieved the Jackpot to be an
O.Whales machine and asked ifI could confirm this, as it's listed in Carters' book as such.
So, there were two questions to be answered: the name- of the mystery New York
machine, and was it a Whales? Well, I couldn't recall ever seeing a machine like this; I'm
sure I would have remembered such a distinctive backflash. But the second question was
easy: No, it's definitely not a Whales. At the time, I would have said Jackpot is a Kraft
machine; not through any expert knowledge, rather it's what I've been told in the past, and
I also know other collectors who share this view.
By coincidence, a little later that day, I received a 'phone call from Dave Lavender.
During the course of our conversation, I raised the question of the mystery New York
machine, which is where things started to go wrong! I described the backflash and Dave
said it sounded vaguely familiar but didn't know the machine; he'd try to find out.
However, on the question of the manufacturer, his view was that Jackpot is a Parker's
machine, not Kraft. This rather spoilt things, as I had always regarded Jackpot as one of a
' set of three' (Jackpot, Extrawin, Crackerjack) but the knowledge of Mr Lavender is not to
be doubted, so Parker's was good enough for me! I emailed Glen with what I knew so far
and said I'd keep him informed.
A couple of days past, and would you believe it? Another one cropped up on ebay,
called Safari, in exactly the same style case as Jackpot and the mystery New York
machine. Then, about a week later, I received an email from Dave with the information
we'd been waiting for. The mystery New York machine is called Plentywin, and
accompanied with this information was a picture of such a machine, in all it's splendour,
complete with topflash (see front cover).
Now, this might have been where the story of the mystery New York machine ended,
but Dave also enclosed two more pictures in his email: Double your Money and Double
your Win. So we now had five machines in exactly the same style cases, and more
importantly, with the same mechanisms. Doubts were now beginning to creep into my
mind. We had now identified five allwins whose cases and mechanisms were completely
alien to anything with which I was familiar. Were these machines Parker's product?
Left, the mystery New York machine, with it's backjlash proudly displaying a bounty of
coins outpouring from the horn of plenty. Inspired by the Watling Ro/atop perhaps?
Page 7