Dumbass or Dumbf**k: You decide

See, the thing you have to remember about me buying playfields is that I'm not addicted to it... I can quit buying them any time. I just choose not to quit. That totally makes all the difference.

That flimsy rationalization means, of course, that despite my assertion a couple of posts ago, I've made another playfield purchase. And what a purchase. Even Roger is surprised, and he's used to real men. There are seven (7!) in all that I bought from eBay for a little over $330. This will either be the canniest deal I've ever made or be the ruin of my family.

So, I was done buying playfields, but kept my eBay search on. About two weeks ago, a Six Million Dollar Man shows up for some amount of money that was inside my price range down in Bethesda. I ask the guy if pickup is OK, and he says yes and he's also selling a bunch of other playfields. So I look at his other auctions and he's got this 7 mostly populated Bally playfield lot which didn't show up in my search because the title didn't contain the word "playfield". It was $100, so I kept a watch on it. It had two games on my short list, three on my long list, and a two that weren't on my list at all. The auction ended on Friday afternoon.

Of course, that was a turbulent week for us, with our cat Reoki's cancer diagnosis. Thursday was her ultrasound, and we were going to put her to sleep the next day. We even got our daughter from college. I took Friday off work, expecting an ordeal. In the night we thought and had a change of heart (thanks in part to an email from my friend Vicki), and the next morning we decided not to put her to sleep. I'm not really sure if that's the right decision, but that's a subject for the pet ethics blog. Suffice to say, I was feeling a lot better Friday afternoon than I had expected to.

This left me feeling a little frisky just in time for the auction's end. It had gone up to $200 or so, beyond my initial $25/playfield preferred price. I decided to research a little more and found that a non-populated version of one of the playfields, Fathom, had sold a week before for about $250 -- and this was one that wasn't in demonstrably good condition. That upped the ante slightly, since it was possible that I could finance the entire purchase by parting out the two playfields that I didn't want. At this point, I was serious enough to escalate the purchase to my wife.

This was a bold move for me. I didn't think I could pull off hiding 7 playfields from her, and she has threatened me with storage in the past... AND she doesn't even know about two of the playfields, since I bought Middle Earth and Mr. & Mrs. Pac-Man while she was taking care of her dad. I made my case, showed her the closed Fathom auction, and she grudgingly agreed... I am spending my money, after all, so despite my aside in the second paragraph I'm not seriously endangering our financial stability. I did promise that they would not significantly inconvenience anyone but myself any more than her leaving fabric dye and felting supplies on the dining room table, he wrote snarkily.

So bid away I did, mentally raising my minimum bid every few seconds. It helped that I had tax refunds and my bonus from work coming. I did have some kind of self-imposed bidding glitch (I forget what it was), which meant I got my winning bid in at the two second mark. *whew* I PayPal-ed him the money and after some quick negotiating we arrived at a narrow pick-up window (between 6 and 6:30 that evening).

Now Bethesda, as anyone in the Washington area knows, is like saying "The Valley" in my old stomping grounds Los Angeles. "Bethesda" refers to an area that's about 30% of the area of the state of Maryland (Silver Spring and Baltimore are another 30% each, and the remaining 10% is everywhere else). This Bethesda was about two blocks from the District line, about as far away as it could possibly be and still be in Bethesda. I left around 5:30, thinking the traffic would be mostly going upstream to spawn... I was sadly mistaken. After some initial zooming, traffic came to a stop on the 270 and I was worried about making it by 6:30 when the guy said he was leaving for the weekend... and I wanted to goof with my playfields over the long weekend! Thank goodness for that GPS that I bought my wife for Christmas. It allowed me to start driving down random roads in the general direction of the guy's house and be assured of a path there. In the past, I would have been stuck with Yahoo or Google map instructions, which are hard to diverge from if you don't know your way around.

I arrived, somewhat frazzled, at 6:20. The guy had to go, but he did mention that he had planned on doing something similar to what I was doing, only he was going to use the Bally boards + cabinet and plug in compatible playfields. It's an interesting idea, but for me the boards and displays are the part I want to remove the most. He showed me where they were and left, and I managed to load all 7 into my Honda CR-V (five on end in the back, one laid on top of them, and one on the passenger side front seat). I drove home very carefully, and I thought every creak was plastics breaking or something. I took streets home to reduce the bouncing. The next day I unloaded them into the entry way and dining room and started shuttling them downstairs. By the end of the day, they were all snug inside the downstairs bedroom, which no one but me goes in anyway.

And you may ask myself, well, what did I get here? And you may tell myself, My God, what have you done? Behold, the Seven Playfields!

The aforementioned Fathom: Mostly unpopulated on top, fully populated on the bottom, lower left corner of the under playfield apparently had a fire (urk!), playfield a little more worn than I would have liked.

Silverball Mania: On the short list of computer controlled playfield games mostly because of the low number of coils (no drop targets) and I like it a lot. Typically worn, missing some parts, and the kicker is dangling by two wires.

Black Jack: Low number of coils, and I do like it, just not as much as SBM. In really good shape, a few wear spots, but the playfield is all solid colors that will be easy to touch up.

Star Trek: Also on the short list, typically worn and typically touched up as well (the stars in the center of the playfield seems to draw bad touch-up artists like moths to a flame). A bunch of broken plastics, too.

Flash Gordon: Sing along with Queen! "Doot doot doot doot doot, FLASH! Emperor Ming awaits!" What can I say... I can remember things I heard 30 years ago on a pinball machine, but I can't remember what my wife told me five minutes ago. Like M&M Pac-Man, Flash G. is a game I like a lot more than the rest of the world, and in spite of the crappy movie that inspired it, too. Playfield in awesome condition with some minor wear, a broken plastic or two. One of the better playfields in the lot... I wish I could sell this, because I think it would yield the most money.

Eight Ball: This one's in the worst shape of all. The paint on the playfield is flaking, and there are a couple of missing plastics. This is definitely second runner up of the ones I would sell, so it kinda sucks that it's not better off. But if nothing else, you gotta love the Fonz! 'eyyyy!!!

Skateball: This one's in pretty good condition, though it has a scratch in the center playfield that looks like it drew blood. Otherwise it's in pretty good shape. I was thinking about using Skateball for the pin project my wife and I are planning to do, but the more I've thought about it, the more I think it's in too good condition. For that, I'd like to find one that's got more wood... no, not this kind. Like serious wear that can't be fixed without an overlay or something. I'm going to keep looking.

Anyway, we'll do more on the playfields individually and have pictures & stuff soon.

These final notes... I picked up another PinballChuck purchase on eBay, a supposedly working Bally 6 digit display. $25 w/shipping. Paragon needs a new one... I need to try it out soon.

Also I tried out the NASCAR at Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theater yesterday, and it kind of sucked. On the plus side, it's only a quarter a game, but on the minus the right flipper was weak, the switch was bad on the left hole so every time you got it in there you'd have to wait for the ball search to continue the game. And this little kid kept asking me if he could have a go. That's what you get for playing pinball in a Chuck E. Cheese.

And Doctor Who is going up on its legs this weekend! More on that later, too!

This just in: I am not a complete loser

Things have been kind of down in our household... we're on a deathwatch for one of our cats, who has a pretty bad abdominal tumor. The mood isn't conducive to a chatty blog about pinball, but I figured I'd get this post in while I'm thinking about it.

There was an eBay auction last weekend for a Doctor Who in similar condition to mine when I bought it. Of course, I'm always worried that I'm spending too much money for this or that, so I was watching it to see if it sold for more than mine did. Also, if it had gone for cheap I would have bid on it myself just to resell the parts. The final price was $517, almost exactly twice what I paid for mine. It always helps when the market confirms that you're not a complete dumbass. Well, OK, the next post may indicate that I am, but we'll just have to wait for that. It will be a long one.

Also, apropos to my last post, I discovered a new pinball machine near my house! Last Monday -- Washington's Birthday -- I was buying dinner for my wife and I to buoy our spirits (this is going to be a huge parenthetical aside, sorry... not only were we upset about our cat, but my daughter had just gone back to school -- she was coming down for an Anime convention, but came down a day early because we almost put the cat to sleep and she wanted to be there, but once down she came down with stomach flu, missed the con, and spent the whole weekend with us. My wife then came down with said stomach flu this week, but, to quote the Weird Al Show theme song, that's really not important to the story). I was getting Chipotle for me and Boston Market for her, and in the same shopping center there is a Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theater (yes, I am old school, so I use the complete name whenever feasible despite the fact that none of them have those animatronic freak shows in them any more). I poked my head in, not expecting much -- during a fruitless portion of my world tour that I didn't chronicle, I'd looked into one in Bethesda -- and lo and behold, there was a NASCAR right by the door! I didn't play because I really needed to get dinner home, but I'm hoping to give it a go this weekend. Later that night, I proudly entered it into the FSPA pinball list, though I kind of fudged the rating since I didn't actually play it. NASCAR is one of the few newer Stern games I really enjoy, I think mainly because it has nice clear shots and a clean design around the center playfield, which appeals to my late 70's Bally aesthetic.

Next time, for sure: I will really, really embarrass myself for your benefit with my latest lunatic purchase.

Pinball World Tour

I am catching up... this only happened about three weeks ago.

Before my wife got back from her dad's house, I decided to take advantage of the unseasonably warm DC weather and find all the pinball games in my area. Using the extremely convenient Free State Pinball Association guide, I planned a route and took off.

My first stop was Jerry's Subs where they had a Simpsons Pinball Party. Unfortunately, a couple was playing it, and after waiting a while I took off. Jerry's used to have two games (MM and something else), but the legs were sawed off so kids could play and it ruined my back.

Next was the infamous Crab Towne USA, a seedy crab cake restaurant with a 70's style arcade attached to it. 24 pinball machines, a few dozen arcade games, and all of them filthy and in serious need of repair. The first thing I noticed when I walked in is that Anne Arundel County allows smoking in restaurants, which Montgomery banned a few years ago (and good riddance). They're mostly newer games, but there are some odd chestnuts like Eight Ball Deluxe and KISS... honestly, when was the last time you played KISS in an arcade? All of the games I played had something wrong with them, but it was still fun. I had a good Twilight Zone game. Of course, I always love my Fish Tales and Pinbot. Whirlwind was broken so that a ball would lodge in one of the holes and score you points, so you couldn't miss getting a free game.

Then I went to Beltway Chevron, which inexplicably has a Funhouse and Lethal Weapon 3. A guy in a wheelchair was parked in front of Funhouse so I left without playing.

It was getting late, so I cut the next few short. I went up to a Hard Times Cafe where they were supposed to have a Harley Davidson, but I think they'd gotten rid of it. I ate dinner there... I can only handle their chili about once a year. My final stop was pretty close to my house at Buffalo Wings and Beer, which was supposed to have a Scared Stiff, but it had been replaced with Lord of the Rings... kind of disappointing, butwhat can you do. This was a working one -- the last one I played had a broken Balrog -- so it was fun. Here's an interesting tidbit... when trolling for the LOTR link, I found a pic of the German poster, and apparently its name in German is The Man of the Ring... kind of like the Man of the House, but he has a ring that can enslave the world.

A few days later I headed back to Beltway Chevron after work and played Funhouse (I'm not a big LE3 fan... Data East == barf). It was in surprisingly good condition... Rudy's eyes were permanently shut, and I think the second step switch was broken, but that was it. Also, during my most awesome game of the night the ball got stuck under the playfield and I had to tilt to get it out. But I loves the Funhouse.

I guess I'm kind of Pat Lawlor heavy on this post... not sure why that is. Here, I'll round it out with the full set: the Addams Family at Crab Towne had weak left flippers, so that kind of sucked.

Next up: You will believe what I did, because it follows the pattern of my behavior perfectly!