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Today I'm going to take a step back and look over the collection and its status. Stand back, I might be dangerous! Looking at these pictures, I feel like the eBay Pack Rat, a woman who was obviously mentally ill who bought stuff compulsively on eBay and never even unpacked it. Honestly, we're not that bad... we just have too much stuff, and we're slowly divesting ourselves of it.
I got my first pin, Quicksilver on New Year's Eve of 1985 for $295, right before moving into my first apartment. It is the only one of my games that has been serviced professionally while in my possession, and is currently the only one that is working. It has a few minor things wrong with it, but nothing that keeps you from enjoying the game (other than the stuff on top of it).
Game #2 was Paragon, which I think I got in early 2000 for $800. I had fond memories of it from my salad days in college, we had just bought our first house, and I had just discovered that the Internet was a great way to acquire pin stuff. It works after a fashion, but my wife and daughter both claim to have been shocked by it when they touch the metal side rails when trying to pet the cat that sleeps in the bed on the upper right of the playfield. I've always been skeptical of this shocking business, but it's currently unplugged for the purposes of filial harmony. I do know that it's not 100% working electrically. You can still play it, though.
Black Knight was game 3, and the guy I bought it from sold me a project Eight Ball Deluxe at the same time. I believe they were $750 and $650 respectively, plus I spent $100 on a van to drive them down from PA. BK worked great for a while, then conked out and is waiting patiently for my baleful gaze to land on it. When you power it up the bell rings and one of the fuses blows. I fixed up EBD to the point where it is working tolerably well, with only a few switches not working. I took it apart for cleaning before my brother in law came in May and haven't put it back together yet.
My first playfield was EBD, originally bought for $50 so I could practice playfield restoration techniques. My EBD machine's playfield was touched up with what looks like White-out, then clear-coated, so I wanted to try secret techniques on a beater. With the coming of the Playfield Project (PFP), though, I am evaluating it in a new light.
Next up was Doctor Who, which as we know is the impetus for this blog. I've written about its functional status until my fingers are numb, so I won't bore you with more.
The second playfield is Black Knight, which is the first one bought specifically for the PFP. It looks like it's in really good condition, though I have yet to take it out of its shipping wrap. Since it's probably in the best condition of the three, I'll probably use it for my initial experiments.
My 
final purchase is, of course, the Firepower playfield and cabinet, shown here in its currently resting place wedged between stuff in my basement. As I mentioned, my wife threatened me with offsite storage when I told her I'd bought it, which is like threatening a house-elf with clothes. I had to put it someplace where she is unlikely to run into it on a regular basis. Putting anything big anywhere in our basement is a game of real-life Sokoban... I spent several hours moving and re-moving boxes to not only free up that little niche, but to have enough space to drive the game and cart to said niche.
So, that's where things stand right now. I have to say, my wife has a good point... I am collecting faster than I can do anything to the collection. So, I've got to actually start making some progress... it's silly to have almost $5000 worth of pinball hardware and only be able to play one game, I want to get playfields working so I can sell the real games to free up space, and I need to have some working hardware so I can buy more and continue growing the collection.
That said, here's my first goal. Tomorrow is my birthday, so I'm going to clear off Quicksilver and play a few games. Next weekend, I will do the switch work on EBD, clean it, and put it back together. Then we'll see where we are.
The York show ended up being a lot of fun. I've had some medium to poor experiences there in the past, so this was a pleasant surprise. Even the crappy machines -- and there were several -- were enjoyable.
I finally got to play the Zaccaria game Farfalla, which I've been looking for for some time. I've played some European games before and haven't been so impressed, but Farfalla was good. Also got to try out Pirates, which I enjoyed but didn't really have a chance to study. I sank the ship a couple of times but then lost the ball before I could defeat the Kraken or whatever the heck you're supposed to do. It was good, but I didn't have the visceral wow that I got when I played NASCAR for the first time (that was the first of the modern Stern games that I really liked). I played a handful of games that I either had never played before or never as an adult. I got to play the pre-production Scared Stiff that a guy brought last year, too... they definitely tightened up the game play before release, because the pre-game just isn't as much fun.
I did have some amusing run-ins with crappy games... I had a Twilight Zone reset on me, then went to play a Fish Tales and had it reset too. The FT had already been sold -- the guy who bought it was ripped... $2500 for a weak game -- and the guy who sold it noticed it reset. A few minutes later I saw him helping the buyer load it into his car; I'm guessing he was getting it out of view so the buyer wouldn't know just how ripped he'd been. I saw the same guy try to convince some people that one of this overpriced games was a good buy even thought one of the flippers wasn't working! Lame.
I bought a bunch o' stuff: A somewhat messed up lockdown bar, so Doctor Who can give the one it's using back to Black Knight. I got some new balls for when the Doctor is in shapes, a bottom and side rail for the backglass (now it's covered on all sides), a connector so I can attach the new coin door to the game (did I mention I bought a coin door on eBay for $25 shipping incl? I should have). And best of all (heh) I bought a Firepower playfield and cabinet for $75 for the playfield project. When my wife heard about that she threatened me with offsite storage. For the next week, my brain would randomly say "FIRE POWER" and then make the game start sound. I can't remember what I had for breakfast but I can remember how pinball games sound that I haven't played in years. Sheesh.
I didn't get the mini playfield from eBay. I stopped for dinner at a diner outside of York and called my wife and walked her through the eBayage. It sold for more than I was willing to pay, and in retrospect I probably should have bid more, but oh well. My wife was more disappointed than I was... since I didn't do the actual bidding, I was removed from the process and didn't feel the post-auction let down.
I can't really think of anything else at York that I need to say. Next up, we're going to talk about my collector's frenzy and what I'm going to do with all these busted games I've acquired.
Thank goodness I've hardly done anything!
I've been busy with my daughter off to college, a business trip, stuff like that. The one thing I did to is make a fake backbox stuff for Doctor Who!
Hey, that doesn't look so bad, does it? Except for the translite, it's all fake. The glass is a piece of lexan that I bought for $9 at Home Depot and cut down... what you can't see are all the cracks and scratches in it because I don't have the tools to properly cut plastic. O_O; The translite is held on by two plastic clips on the top and bottom that I got from Bay Area Amusements.
The grill was a little more work. I probably mentioned that I took pictures of DW at the Allentown show in May. I photoshopped the best images together into a passable life-sized pic and printed it out on three pages. Then I cut a piece of wood leftover from our remodeling and cut out the DMD and speaker holes. Then I taped the image to the board.
You'll have to go for an extreme close-up, but in the pic on the left you can see the lines from the different pieces of tape (it really isn't that noticable). If you notice around the DMD the tape isn't behaving. You can also see the speaker grill, which is just part of the picture. The real speaker is behind that attached over a hole.
On the back, I just cut up the leftovers from the holes into strips and positioned them where I needed to screw things in. The piece on the corner was intended to hold the board into the backbox (it rotates into place) but when I put the translite in I can't get to the corners to lock them in, so I just trust that gravity will do the work for me. This is a slightly older picture... I added a few pieces of wood at the top to stabilize where the fake grill meets the plastic I-beam thing under the translite. Before it would bow out because the I-beam thing wouldn't sit straight, but now it sits properly. I was worried about vibrations harming the DMD, so I splurged and bought some rubber washers to cushion it. Overall, I think the grill and backglass look pretty good for the $12 I spent.
Tomorrow is the York PA pinball show. I used to go on Saturday, but now I go on Friday because you get an extra hour to play and there's a better selection of stuff to buy. I've been training all week with a squeeze ball so my wrists aren't completely destroyed by flipping all day. Tonight, though I noticed a DW mini playfield on eBay with the motor and cam assembly...! The trouble is it goes off at 9PM EST, which will be about an hour into my drive home. Choices: Leave early (urk!), drive from York to Gettysburg where my daughter is at school (slightly more than a one hour drive and she'll be in her dorm on Friday night? Don't think so), or try to talk my wife through it on the phone from the road while she's at her sister's house in California. Although I'm a little leery -- she did panic and bid too much on that terrible DMD driver -- it should be OK since I'll be on the phone with her and it won't be too late at night. Ganbatte!!!! \/ ^_^ \/
Holy cheese, I almost forgot... the playfield project continues with the purchase of an almost entirely intact Black Knight playfield off eBay from... the guy I bought Doctor Who from. I'll detail that folly in a future posting.
Game #2 was Paragon, which I think I got in early 2000 for $800. I had fond memories of it from my salad days in college, we had just bought our first house, and I had just discovered that the Internet was a great way to acquire pin stuff. It works after a fashion, but my wife and daughter both claim to have been shocked by it when they touch the metal side rails when trying to pet the cat that sleeps in the bed on the upper right of the playfield. I've always been skeptical of this shocking business, but it's currently unplugged for the purposes of filial harmony. I do know that it's not 100% working electrically. You can still play it, though.
Black Knight was game 3, and the guy I bought it from sold me a project Eight Ball Deluxe at the same time. I believe they were $750 and $650 respectively, plus I spent $100 on a van to drive them down from PA. BK worked great for a while, then conked out and is waiting patiently for my baleful gaze to land on it. When you power it up the bell rings and one of the fuses blows. I fixed up EBD to the point where it is working tolerably well, with only a few switches not working. I took it apart for cleaning before my brother in law came in May and haven't put it back together yet.
My first playfield was EBD, originally bought for $50 so I could practice playfield restoration techniques. My EBD machine's playfield was touched up with what looks like White-out, then clear-coated, so I wanted to try secret techniques on a beater. With the coming of the Playfield Project (PFP), though, I am evaluating it in a new light.
Next up was Doctor Who, which as we know is the impetus for this blog. I've written about its functional status until my fingers are numb, so I won't bore you with more.
The second playfield is Black Knight, which is the first one bought specifically for the PFP. It looks like it's in really good condition, though I have yet to take it out of its shipping wrap. Since it's probably in the best condition of the three, I'll probably use it for my initial experiments.
final purchase is, of course, the Firepower playfield and cabinet, shown here in its currently resting place wedged between stuff in my basement. As I mentioned, my wife threatened me with offsite storage when I told her I'd bought it, which is like threatening a house-elf with clothes. I had to put it someplace where she is unlikely to run into it on a regular basis. Putting anything big anywhere in our basement is a game of real-life Sokoban... I spent several hours moving and re-moving boxes to not only free up that little niche, but to have enough space to drive the game and cart to said niche.
