My Story as an Operator, Reseller & Technician part II

I worked as a busboy for the Viking Village buffet in St.Paul and soon was promoted to dishwasher. This came with a raise of .05 to 3.40 per hour! I continued to operate games in the restaurant and they did well. Maybe 100.00 or more per week. I had 5 games at one point in the restaurant. Soon I wanted more locations. I maybe owned 10 games at this point between home and the restaurant. I wanted to have room for more games and not pass up a deal due to space.

I soon started looking for more locations. I learned quickly that places which already had games were off limits. They either had contracts or had operators in them that I was familiar with. I didn't want to tick off operators that supplied me parts or possibly games by soliciting their locations. I was starting to familiarize myself with local operators. I spent lots of time chatting with Todd Erickson at Summit Amusements.He has a wealth of knowledge. He had a location at the fairgrounds and I would go their regularly to buy parts and chat with the techs. So I had to be creative and find locations no one else had. For every 20 locations I stopped in maybe 1 would consider a game. Keep in mind I was 16 at the time so sometimes people didn't take me seriously due to age. I would go after movie rental stores and small convenience stores. In addition I came across an apartment complex 300+ units with a pool table. I was able to place a couple of games at that location. It was a secure game room in the complex. Residents liked to play pinball and pac man. Soon I had maybe 6 locations including the restaurant I worked at. I regularly used taxi cabs to move pins and hired friends from school to help me move the games. Cab fare was maybe $4-6 total and I would tip another couple dollars. The trick was always to tell the dispatcher I had some large packages to transport so a station wagon was sent. My manager at Viking Village had a pick up and I would hire him to help me move as well. The worst experiences were an occasional break in or in one instance a Karate Champ stolen. Injury wise I had a Centaur and set the soldering iron on the endrail holder and forgot about it . This was one of those irons that got too hot- almost glowing red due to a fault. I proceeded to lean in the game and placed all of my weight on the iron when reaching in . Worst pain I ever had for 2 weeks.

In the spring of 86 I ditched high school to go play pinball at the nearby bowling alley. A new pinball arrived and it was called High Speed. I was totally captivated by this new game. I knew I wanted to own one. It was like nothing I have played before. In the coming weeks I found an operator that would be willing to sell a High Speed. The price was 2800.00.It was slightly used and seemed like a good price. I didn't have the money as everything was invested in equipment. So I approached the owner (my boss) and asked for a loan. We wrote up a contract and I agreed to pay back within a year at 10% interest. I purchased the High Speed and I remember the operator was totally puzzled as to why a teenager would want to buy a new pinball. Keep in kind home sales were a rare occurrence in the 80's new titles in particular. Many games were thrown away and not resold. I brought High Speed home and took it apart. I disconnected connectors and learned what they controlled. I eventually placed the game at my work and it did very well.

As fellow high school students learned I had a almost new and popular High Speed in my basement I got known as the "pinball wizard" in school. This was beneficial business wise as if students knew of someone who had a game for sale they would let me know. This stigma opened doors for me. In casual conversation with a student I formed a relationship with his mother who ran a foster home for abused kids. She bought several games from me during my years in starting out. For the next 6+ years I sold her over 40 games. She networked with other centers and she sold and traded games with other facilities. It was a great relationship. She would make payments on the games to me and this allowed me to move alot of inventory.

In 1986 I got my license and started using my parent's car for moves and service. It was 1986 Renault Encore hatchback. The car had transmission issues throughout its life. We knew the service department's personnel on a first name basis as the car was always in for service. The service people were at their wits end as to why the transmission was failing every 3 months. I could fit a table top in with the seats folded with a pinball hanging out the back . This generated a lot of looks. I was able to fit a Mr do. Cocktail inside with a Banzai Run hanging out the back with head folded in years ahead. gravity would hold the pinball in place.

I was still working for the Village but was looking for something else. I did get a raise to 4.00 per hour and was a cook.Lots of history at that place. Once had a customer tell me to look at the jello because it had "issues" To my surprise 2 roaches were in the red jello suspended in the middle frozen.. I told the owner and he pulled the jello removing the roaches with a small spoon and put the jello out again for consumption. More often than not you would hear a women scream in the restaurant and 2 minutes later she would be bringing a bulging napkin with food up to the cashier in disgust. It was cake with roaches. The exterminator would come once a month at closing and spend some time in the basement after closing time. A half hour later staggering roaches would be climbing the walls in the dining area and the owner would be hitting the wall with his shoe.It was time for something else workwise. I had been working there for over 2 years. I was 17 at the time. Little did I know the fall of 1986 was going to bring more opportunities and changes.

Ever since I was 9 years old a mall called Har Mar Mall had an arcade. It was called Circus Pizza. They maybe had 60+ games including 5 pinballs. I spent lots of time there when I was a kid. I decided to fill out an application. It was in October and I just turned 17. They had a policy that they could not hire anyone unless they were 18. I spoke with the manager and proceeded to tell him some of my knowledge and he was very impressed. I could check fuses measure voltages and knew how to solder on boards at this time. He decided to hire me but wanted to keep the age thing confidential as anyone who was under 18 could not work on games.

I proceeded to give 2 week notice at Viking Village and still had a good relationship with the owner after that. He paid me cash for replacing ballasts and other electrical work on his building. He eventually sold the business and we parted ways.

I started my first week at Circus and had access to all of the games. I pretty much went nuts fixing things and working on the pinballs.So much needed to be done. They had Eight ball Deluxe, Pinbot, High Speed , Comet and Sorcerer. They had a list in back of nuisance things that others didn't want or couldn't fix. I remember one was Spy Hunter arcade. Only the sounds worked no background sound. They swapped boards and power supply to no avail. I screwed around with the wiring and swapped speaker wires and got the sounds all working. The game had 2 channels and somehow the wiring was switched. The manager was impressed. The pinballs all needed flipper rebuilds and ALL of the high intensity flash lamps were out on all the games. The district manager was happy with my work and soon became employee of the month. I was in heaven because this job enabled me to learn the new games as they came out. In coming months I unboxed F-14, Jokerz and Escape From the Lost World to name a few. Videos such as Operation Wolf and Quarterback were a HUGE hit. I learned a lot like what happens if one makes mistakes such as mixing up 12volts and 5 volts when installing a power supply, what happens if you reverse the plug on a Chexx Hockey scoreboard or install a coil wrong.

This was a dream job. I would work sometimes from 2-close on the weekends. I would fix games and redeem people's tickets for redemption prizes as they had skeeball and Wack-A-Mole. People would be at the redemption counter wanting to cash in tickets and I would be working on a game. I didnt like the prize counter. The arcade was close in the mall to some movie theaters and did very well. Five figures per week were common esp. around holiday time. Employees could play games for free so I spent a lot of my off time playing games. At 12pm when the arcade was closed it was time to punch out. I had to exit by 12:30 or alarm issues would arise. The manager was flexible if I wanted to play games or stay later he would call the alarm co and give me an extension. It was truly an awesome felling to have a complete arcade at the age of 17 to myself!! I remember playing Roadblasters for hours. If you completed level 50 you could get a free t-shirt. I still have it somewhere.

I met an employee his name was Bob. At first I didn't like him very much because he was always critiquing my work.I would be replacing transistors and he would make comments that I should heat sink them etc. He made a comment to me that really got under my skin. He mentioned that I should look people in the eyes when I speak to them. I was miffed it was like F/U dude! He explained that people gain trust and are comfortable in general if they can look you in the eyes when speaking. I thought about this for a while and figured maybe I should change the way I interact with people. Hey I was slightly introverted at the time. I Just focused on playing and repairing pinball. Upon returning to work in the next few days I changed this and Bob noticed. I thought that he was right and a good key to communicating with people is eye contact. To this day this was one of the best pieces of advice anyone has given me. That advice was priceless. We became good friends. And we went to Expo 88 a year or so later.

Bob made me aware of the annual auction that is held at the fairgrounds of used arcade equipment. This was coming up. I had never been to an auction and didn't know what to expect. He had the idea of passing out my phone number for service. So I acquired some paper and cut the paper in 16 squares with my name/number on it and pinball repair. When I arrived at the auction I asked the auctioneer if it was ok to place the paper with my contact info on the machines. He was very willing and happy about this. He went a step further and announced my services prior to the auction starting. I got my bidder number and started to interact with people. Since this was my first auction I was a little nervous. They maybe had 150+ machines and 70% were pinball. Most games went for 100-300. Some were kiss, Firepower and others . A LOT of system 1 Gottliebs. I went for the non-working games. I bought a Firepower mint for 45.00 which wouldn't boot up ., a working Vulgus for 100 and a Mario Bros for 75. The auction ended around 3 in the afternoon and I went home. It was nice because I live only 6 blocks from the fairgrounds. I had the games delivered for 40.00 to my parents basement.

I arrived home and the phone would not stop ringing. My dad was getting tired of answering the phone. I maybe received 20 calls over the next few days all requiring service. This was the start of home service for me. I decided to charge 25.00 plus parts at the time. This was good I figured most calls will only take a few minutes. The service calls were pretty easy. People got these games home and were in the dark as far as operation . Some calls were: Bally games with roll tilt stuck closed, plugs not plugged in or wrong, boot up issues which reseating ic chips fixed. The games were only a few years old so major issues were not common. I made out pretty good at the time and started to build clients for future work. One bad experience in home service was a customer that called me . he had a Space Invaders pinball and told me on the phone if I couldnt fix it right he was going to kill me. Im like OK? He says Oh chill Im just playing. I take his contact info and let my parents know. Called back and left him a message to call someone else. He called back and apologized to me for using the "K" word.

Things were good. I was going to high school. I passed history by doing electrical work for the teacher. I would install ceiling fans for 30.00. teachers utilized my services. I really enjoyed electrical work as it paid better than 6 per hour at Circus. Other teachers hired me for small electrical tasks as well. I also had about 10 locations. None did super well as the high income spots were already taken. But it was something. Free storage if nothing else. I am starting to list games in the classifieds as well and selling games from my basement . Typically a old game like Kiss could be found for 100-150. After clean up I could sell for 350ish. I learned a lot about bally systems on school nights. I sold dozens of games at my parents' house back in the day. My parents were supportive of this but weeknights and weekends were getting crazy as lots of people were coming out to look at games. I got good at negotiating with clients and people I bought games from. Customers would like to haggle for 25-50.00 off and I didnt mind. I would usually offer to split the difference with their offer. In coming years I would always have a loss leader . A game with a trashed PF and BG to get people in. Maybe a Trident for example for 225.00. The people would gravitate towards a better game such as Firepower or Black Knight . FP was a 375.00 game in the day . Haunted House was maybe 450.00. When listing a classifieds ad I would list it as follows: Pinball 225,talker 475, double level 650, video 300 This way if I sold a game in one of the categories I could get another ready and the ad would still be fresh. If I list the names Im telling customers that things are sold.

One time as Im driving home I notice a HUGE grocery store called Midwestern Asian Foods. The place is paced with kids and people shopping . Maybe a 20K square feet building. So I went in to ask for the manager. Im directed to the back office and introduce myself. We can barley communicate with each other as he is Asian and has limited English. I do my best to see if he wants a couple of arcade games in his store. He seems interested but wants a picture. I return with a picture a few days later of a Time Pilot 84. I use hand gestures to explain 50/50 down the middle. He seems interested and directs me to the front of the sore. Maybe room for 4 games. He instructs me to bring them in (3). Im very happy as I see the traffic in this location and it seems to have potential. It should be better than an apartment complex.

I start out the location with Time Pilot, Vulgus, Mario Bros and Eight ball Deluxe.

I tell him I will return 1 week later to collect. Not sure if he understood me or not. During the week before the collection Im very anxious. I drive by the location several times and every time 5-6 bikes are in front of the entrance interlocked on top of each other. I can see 2 people at each game. I know this will be good.

I arrive at the location to collect after 1 week and am pretty amazed. We went back to his office to count quarters. We would put them in stacks of 5.00. When all was said and done the total came in at 620.00 for a week. We split the money and I felt like I committed a crime upon leaving. I never had a location do this good . I stumbled on a gem. The one location made more than I did in a week working with other locations combined. The amount invested in equipment was minimal. The most expensive game was EBD which I paid 1K for. This was short lived however and I will explain more later as I did not have an operators license and a high caliber location such as this cannot last forever under these circumstances.

I hope you enjoy the history . I have lots more to tell J Part 3 in the fall. (I would like to write a book sometime) This includes working for an operator, more home sales and opening a retail store. I have several smaller stories to tell as well but wanted to keep it basic . Thanks for reading!