Just made it home and wanted to share my recap. Where to start....

Brought ToTAN. Got there early yesterday and set up. Dropped my CV armor off with Alex for some tasty powdercoat. Lots of interest on ToTAN, but no offers. Realized that it was priced as the most expensive machine on the floor. The MM and AFM were both not for sale...that explained it. Changed the sign to best offer today
Last night as you may have seen, the game died. This morning picked up a refurb power driver board from Mayfair, game came back to life. I was going to repair it myself, but someone made me an offer on the old board. Machine sold after lunchtime...that made me really happy. Walked over and handed the cash over to Jack and ordered a WoZ. That was actually pretty neat, I ordered and handed the cash to Jack directly, and I'm going to be able to pick the game up from the factory when it's ready.

I met a lot of great people...folks I've known before and I had a few people come up to me and introduce themselves to me. I guess everybody recognized the guy working in the ToTAN...my wife got a laugh out of people walking up to me asking if I was NJGecko! It really was fantastic to meet up with the people...this show I really felt like I was a part of a community. Last year at York wasn't the same feeling.

The bad...I don't think I will ever bring a machine to a show again. I know the game hasn't been played for hours on end like this for years so it got a workout. By the time the game sold it was throwing errors and as the buyer and I checked through it, there were broken coils, switches with the wires broken off of the leads...OK, that's fine. Wear and tear. The machine had 150+ plays on it by the time it was wrapped. But the treatment some people gave the game really sickened me.
At various times I saw:
Shaking (REALLY shaking)
Smacking (hard enough to tilt the game)
People picking up the entire machine and moving it into an empty spot (it was directly under a light so the glare was bad, I understand) but really...two people just picked it up?
And the worst was seeing someone pick up the front of the game and slam it onto the ground to try to clear a stick ball.
I was floored at the abuse that game got. I feel bad enough nudging a machine that's not mine.

Anyway...home now!

That may be the case in the wild, but at shows, I can't accept that kind of behavior...these aren't operators bringing games expecting some abuse. A nudge is fine, but lifting the front legs 6" off the ground and dropping the machine...? And knowing it's someone's personal machine? No...that's just not right! It's like if you rent a car from Hertz. It's going to be beaten to snot. But if a friend lets you borrow their restored vette, you treat it as such.

I still can't believe I saw people pick up the entire machine and move it..that took the cake!

It's like anything else...some people are different than others. I had a call to clear a stuck ball. It was nice, the guy waited for me to come clear it, thanked me, and happily played a game when I was done.

Thanks for all of the feedback...
Gnatty, maybe it was a misunderstanding...when we were there and you mentioned the glare I asked if you guys wanted to lend a hand and help me move it. When you declined, I figured it was good as it was. Turned around a minute later and see it moving...

Law...yea, these games were made to be used...but on the other hand, they are also a decade+ old and most haven't been on for more than an hour or two at a time in a long time.

I was surprised how much these games worked. When I went over to dislodge a ball at one point, the amount of heat coming off of the playfield really shocked me!

For those folks asking me how much it went for, I will just leave it at it went for a hair under $6. Sure I was hoping for more, but that's a fair price I think. Little less than I wanted, little more than the buyer wanted, and in the end neither parts was totally happy which is the sign of a good deal I think It was actually nice, the buyer was on the fence for a while and once he made his mind up and I handed him the keys he was smiling ear to ear.

I felt bad for the guy who was next to me on Friday. He was setting up an EM (not sure which it was) and said he was selling it because, among other reasons, he didn't know enough about how to fix them, so he wanted to sell it. And when he moved it to the show something broke. He had a lot of trouble trying to find help to fix it, and I'm not sure he ever got it working...

Give "the pin" ten minutes on the floor there...it would be a pile of firewood!

Speaking of toilet did anyone else find the bathroom attendant a little creepy?

Yea. It was great to see him by his tips bowl as there were no paper towels, no hand soap, and it looked like someone missed the urinal completely and he still just sat there.

Bill...you're a funny guy! But it's outta my gameroom, so if someone made road art out of it...well, you know!

Oh, and thanks for mopping up my exploding soda...I thought that was going to be a bad omen for the rest of the show.

I can definitely see both sides of this one. Yes, the games are made for some "lively" play. But this isn't an arcade and the games mostly aren't owned by ops. These are people's personal property.

Same "car" analogy I threw out before. If you go to a car show and some cars are there to be driven, do you take someone's Shelby Cobra and whip it around, dump the clutch, power slide it...? Yea, the car was made for it, but that was years ago before it became an expensive personal piece of property.

Definitely wasn't me...although that would have been an impressive trick if I could manage to fit ToTAN in that on the drive out!

I think there is a distinction to a certain point. Pins on location are like rental cars. They aren't viewed as personal possessions, they are more like objects. You don't see many ops pouring blood and sweat into restoring pins on route.
Pins at shows are people's babies. They are brought to show great examples of machines. Many people have spent a lot of time and money to make them shine. The expectation is that they are treated like that. The other side of it is the people. A pin in a bar...well, you get any tom or bob in there, throw a few drinks into them, and they walk over and beat the tar out of a machine. At a show, people are there to see the machines. They are the primary focus not an afterthought.

I'm not sure why you're so hell-bent on pushing your point that it's basically OK to beat on machines and miss specific point. I said "many" ops don't do that, not "all" and I said that for a reason. You occasionally find ops that do take care of their games. But I've seen many more games on location that are filthy, broken, or both.

I fully understand shaking and nudging. Those are all part of the game and to be expected. It's the abuse that's above and beyond.

I'm going to just stop before this turns into a pissing match. You have your opinion and I have mine.

I don't think I need to grow a thicker skin when people pick up a machine with the front legs off the ground and DROP it. That's not normal. Normal is nudging, some slap-saves, some shaking, etc.