Expert: Rodger Knutson - 11/19/2009

Question
Hi,

I recently rebuild a Mills Machine.
The diamond 3 star, made the jackpot- AND the award card glass.
It works on old dutch 25 cent coins, it has the 25 cent denomination and it works perfectly.
It just to belong to my grandfather who owned a bar in the Netherlands.

Only problem is: I can't seem to find any of these machines on the Internet.
I'm always redirected to sega machines.

Can you tell me anything about the mills machine?
- year, - how many were made, - value?

As I am always redirected to sega machines, I took an interest in them as well.
I love to restore these things, so I bought a crappy but complete sega machine.
As it turn out, it used to be a mad money machine.
I've made a new jackpot window for it and also a new award card.

But the problem now is making the new reels.
I have all the symbols (including Alfred E. Neuman) but I can't seem to figure out the positions of the symbols on the reels.

Could you help me out here?

Thanks a million

Answer
Hi Rudolf,

Good to hear from you, from across the pond. First, lets take you Mills diamond three star machine. Could you be wrong about the machines name? Attached to this answer, is a photo of a Mills Diamond front along with history information, is this the machine? If not, could you email me a photo of it? please email to: Jackpot7@q.com

Now the Sega Mad Money, Mills had three set of stamping dies, one set was never used. When they were about to close the doors forever, Sega bought this new set of machine dies from Mills and when home, and started making Sega machines. These Sega mechanisms are very nice, instead of anodizing there parts like mills did, they plated them like chrome plating, so if a Mills mechanism looks like rough chrome, it's not a mills mechanism, but it's a Sega Mechanism. Sega was making the Mad Money intending to export them to the U.S.A. Mad Magazine got word of this and with there Alford E. Newman copyright, they told Sega that if even one Sega Mad Money slot machine shows up here in the U.S.A., that they would sue Sega. So, Sega just made them for the overseas marked and they stayed there. I have had a couple of these machines in the past, but don't have any now. I have seen reel bundles for the mad money and reel strips on ebay over here, but rarely, search under slot machine parts and just keep watching. If I run into a set of Mad Money reel strips I'll drop you a note, OK?

Thank You
Sincerely
Rodger Knutson

http://www.coinslots.com