UnclearHermit
User
- Credits
- 66CR
I remember the older one, used to see it on holidays growing up. Long time since I've seen one, so thanks for the memory
Anyone have or collect fruit machines and good or bad memories
- Thread starter Body pop
- Start date
Quite a nice nostalgic thread, very cool
If you went into an Arcade you couldn't not notice the Fruits and have a go or two. The two that impacted me the most were ' Smash n Grab ' but especially the ' Zenitone Deal 'ems ' - rows of these guys especially in the Arcade by the Sea in Weymouth. One of my Arcade buddies was like a magnet to 10p's that had either dropped from the pushers or somebody's pocket. If there was a ' lost ' 10p he found it, every singe time without fail.
We even drilled a 10p out in my Dad's workshop, it took ages, blunting many of Dad's drill bits along the way and loads of burned fingers. We threaded it with fishing line and tried to get free credits but the effing line got hooked up and we couldn't get the 10p back out so we dropped it and legged it. I'd love to know who found it! Funny times, the stuff we got up to back then. They really were the coolest days!
I ended up with two Deal ems, I'm not sure why I had two but sold them on to a guy in Dorset a few years ago. I also had a Maygay Donkey Kong with the £15 Jackpot but sold that in around 2003
If you went into an Arcade you couldn't not notice the Fruits and have a go or two. The two that impacted me the most were ' Smash n Grab ' but especially the ' Zenitone Deal 'ems ' - rows of these guys especially in the Arcade by the Sea in Weymouth. One of my Arcade buddies was like a magnet to 10p's that had either dropped from the pushers or somebody's pocket. If there was a ' lost ' 10p he found it, every singe time without fail.
We even drilled a 10p out in my Dad's workshop, it took ages, blunting many of Dad's drill bits along the way and loads of burned fingers. We threaded it with fishing line and tried to get free credits but the effing line got hooked up and we couldn't get the 10p back out so we dropped it and legged it. I'd love to know who found it! Funny times, the stuff we got up to back then. They really were the coolest days!
I ended up with two Deal ems, I'm not sure why I had two but sold them on to a guy in Dorset a few years ago. I also had a Maygay Donkey Kong with the £15 Jackpot but sold that in around 2003
Bad memories, when I was new to J+ I arranged a little meet and someone local asked to come. Can’t remember his name, but the cheeky mother drained £80 out of my Reno Reels fruity. Being deaf, of course I didn’t hear any coins coming out of it. I had to give myself away to a stranger in order to get the £80 back (not true) and got rid of the fruity pronto!
The working Deal'em was converted to a TFT monitor unfortunately. My plan was to convert it back and restore it but I had too much stuff in the end and had to free up some space. Yep, what an addictive, cool game it was
Great days!
Deal'em brings back memories. Red Hot Poker a few years later was another video classic.
I grew up on fruit machines. Favourite era were the JPMs in Vogue cabinets. Awesome designs with great audio, lots of skill features and lots of secrets. The number reel would signal if they could pay and you were well rewarded if you could hit Stop'n'Steps.
I grew up on fruit machines. Favourite era were the JPMs in Vogue cabinets. Awesome designs with great audio, lots of skill features and lots of secrets. The number reel would signal if they could pay and you were well rewarded if you could hit Stop'n'Steps.
They're difficult to value in my opinion as they are hard to find and don't come up often.
If its working and in nice condition I would expect around £600? I may be well off mind you but I wouldn't pay any more personally.
I guess they are only worth what somebody is prepared to pay?
Just a quickie thread revival - I was just sorting a filing cab drawer full of credit boards and a few old 80s ROM cards and what should be in there? I never knew , but,
A ZENITONE/MPU4 DEAL ‘EM CARD..
seemed weird one should just surface soon after conversation about these old 80s classics . spooky!
Just an accident as my pin punches had fallen over the back of the top tool drawer into next one down …spurred on to search after ExZX came to visit a couple of days ago with a small 5 hour tech repair request.( probably 2 hours fiddly Atari joysticks job with 3 hours of talking about other things along the way?) .. always happy to help out 🙂
At least I found my missing roll pin tools😁
A ZENITONE/MPU4 DEAL ‘EM CARD..
seemed weird one should just surface soon after conversation about these old 80s classics . spooky!
Just an accident as my pin punches had fallen over the back of the top tool drawer into next one down …spurred on to search after ExZX came to visit a couple of days ago with a small 5 hour tech repair request.( probably 2 hours fiddly Atari joysticks job with 3 hours of talking about other things along the way?) .. always happy to help out 🙂
At least I found my missing roll pin tools😁
Attachments
Last edited:
Flyback2021
Active member
Nice thread !
I am a friend of all automatics so more than happy to read about people’s nostalgia for them or even look at their collections but probably not something I feel strongly enough about to collect.
I can imagine the loss of Fruit machine habitat was epic, when you think of everywhere they were sited . If I come across fruit machine bits again I would offer up on the forum.
I am a friend of all automatics so more than happy to read about people’s nostalgia for them or even look at their collections but probably not something I feel strongly enough about to collect.
I can imagine the loss of Fruit machine habitat was epic, when you think of everywhere they were sited . If I come across fruit machine bits again I would offer up on the forum.
Have you tested that theory yet 🤣I usually find things I was looking for 1 month previous when I'm looking for something else
Talking of Gambling stuff the good lady tells me today that all the numbers on Roulette wheel just happen to add up to 666
It’s a strange hobby to get into
Not like this lol
You would think you would be better with the later fruit machines .more features ,more reliable
No one wants them though ,it’s always the same era for most
The AWP fruit machines came to a horrific fate. A twenty year plague of Noel Edmonds' face spread quickly until he was attached to just about every machine. They spent the last fifteen years slowly dying with this disease.
It's rare but very occasionally you might still spot one twitching next to the toilets in an old pub. Noel squinting out at passersby, flashing his neglected mystery box feature.
It's a tragic end but maybe not undeserved. I hope their suffering brings comfort to some.
It's rare but very occasionally you might still spot one twitching next to the toilets in an old pub. Noel squinting out at passersby, flashing his neglected mystery box feature.
It's a tragic end but maybe not undeserved. I hope their suffering brings comfort to some.
Last edited:
Measuring 10p units it wasn’t ususual for fruit machine meters in clubs and places like motorway services and busy pubs for the meters to go ‘round the clock’ and were accurate, aside from a few where I replaced faulty or runaway meters due to processor errors (especially on maygay) due to power supply issues or scammers entering a coat hanger wire through the speaker grill in the pay tray to try and activate the payout triacs on the M1 board without its protective cover and just visible through the reel window…
However should these have actually gone around twice in the 30+ years of its life that would be (2)87164.4. In and (2)17384.6 which roughly equates to 75% , well in the range of 72% legal minimum and 78% typical pub ‘green key’ setting normal pay rate …. Actually set to 90-92% nowadays in the £500 jackpot machines in adult only zones of arcades and gaming arcades in town high streets.
That only £60,000 income in 30 years rated to £2,000 a year average …… Bank Note accepting machines now take that in a week .
In its early years brewery pubs would be paying around £45 per week to hire these from like leisure link or rank leisure which was about £2,000 to pay out and expected a good profit on that ( often the case ) so they probably took in the region of 5-7,000 pound a year in the first couple of years while popular….that profit only represents a quarter of the total coins in on the meter.
It’s certainly a lot of coins, I have seen early 80’s barcrest crackpot and similar 1990s £100 jackpot machines take 10 times that. see
There were club sites and works canteens with 24 our access and people would queue to play BlackJack or Club Pontoon barcrest games with Mars mech entries, where the vertical slot wore away until round in shape from the slight serrated edge of pound coins till it developed 3 slots , one small one each side of the main entry almost big enough to let a 5p through
I serviced the LaPorte chemical factory canteen/entertainment room within the factory at Widnes , during a spell of working for associated leisure hire and the club steward went skiing for a weekend around Xmas late 80s and I have quoted this memorable instance a few times….
Access to play 22hrs a day only prohibited while cleaner did the room 4am-6am soon as breakfast was on so were the machines…7 days a week.
A Ace Club Sovereign stopped taking coins. The slot was jammed and you could see coins mainly pounds in the slot just near touchable .. I pulled out the machine from its anti theft cage about 9.30 on Saturday night while irate customers had only one other machine to also fill nearby..
Bear in mind this place paid about £32 a week each for 2 machines here
I took off the back door and was immediately soul deep of my Doc Martens boots in coins. The cash box, emptied mid week was full to the top the tubes were full and the square 2” tube down to the cash box was full the mech was also full to the entry slot it couldn’t even reject the jammed coins.. I completely filled 2 cloth 500 pound bank bags with approx 700 in each just from the floor and tube overflow, I didn’t have the front cash box key so it sat full to jammed in state, I had undone the square overflow tube to drain it then rigged it to a slop bucket from the bar wedged it in with the bags of coins and put it back in action by about 11 pm
I went back on the Wednesday to fix the diverted tube back when the steward was due to return with a cash box key. By this time the approx 2gallon bucket had 3/4 filled with pounds and started to fill the square tube again …. Also by now the overflow for 50p20p10p coins was also beginning to fill as the adjacent silver box was also full in less than a week.
I didn’t wait around but estimated the total to be around £5,000 plus and on return for a broken button a couple of weeks later there had been £7,300 in excess coins above the full payout tubes of another 300. Good job the other machine was a bit less popular & older. They paid out several jackpots every week often a couple of times or maybe more in one evening.
Obviously couldn’t trust his bar manager with fruity keys ??? And those bar tills filled
so quick they had to take money to the safe we’ll before last orders…
Nowadays it’s not unusual for pub machines on 25p 50p £1 per spin and note accepter/recycling payouts at £100 jackpot to take up to £3000 a week on busy locations easier to count now in notes tho’
Note acceptors are quite good at returning crumpled notes but do jam up from time to time … some of the rough pubs round Rhyl and Llandudno you don’t want be taking too long to turn up and refund the irate players before they rip open the machine . Luckily the pub sites we supplied were quite reasonable refunding the players instantly… But you still need to get there to get the machine back on and earning as many pay their staff from machine takings.
The pound hoppers hold up to £250 before diverting to the cash box..
Under new rules . They don’t pay rent on free trade sites but VAT has to be paid on total profit a machine takes. (Share takings. Operator usually pays vat on both portions) So you have to be vat registered, as well as licenced.
Last edited: