Great show as always!!! I can’t wait for the next show.

Man...tryin to digest this glorious weekend. By far, and I mean REALLY far, my favorite location for a show. This place was slightly out in the woods, and it was a PERFECT setting. Loved it.
Was great to finally meet some of you MI and OH dudes. I finally hung out with TheLaw, and he's pretty fuckin awesome.
Next year I'm just bringin a tent and stayin Thur-Mon. See y'all next year.

yeah, and we didn't do anything at all

GREAT to finally meet ya j_m_ and that IS his name.

Clay was on his best behavior Saturday, just riding his mini bikes around the property, spreading good cheer with a healthy dash of Oscar the grouch. Awesome show, ideal location, great food, great people, sweet tailgating vibe, perfect weather (at least when I was there).

But (there’s always a but), of the hundred or so games moved since my last visit, I’d say approximately zero of them had been re-leveled. Crack the whip on those minions!

Hilltop is in St. Joe. They later moved to Riverview Dr. in Benton Harbor. But they weren't much of anything at that time.

Perfect weather (Saturday) and the perfect amount of people. Great games and food as always.
Thanks to Clay and company for all the hard work they do to make this a smooth running show!
Terry.

Good show! Thanks to everyone who worked so hard to make it happen. Need more time on those Zaccarias.

Will do

Wasn't the Riverview place just for the computers & Education items (Heath-Zenith IIRC)?

I think they still did a little mail order/kit stuff, but not sure.

Also, big shout out to Clay and all the club members/workers. Awesome show as always. Food was great. Games were also great. Liked the new layout. Wish I could have met more of the workers and been able to put a face with the pinside name.

The Michigan locations are all gone. There was a last liquidation auction years ago. A place in CA bought the Heathkit name and is creating a few new kits under that name. Not really the same company. They have one person that I know of who used to be technician at Heathkit during the Benton Harbor days but that is about it.

They had gone through a few other purges in prior years. A company in Redford, MI had bought the old HERO robot line from Heathkit back in the 90's. When they were done with it I bought it from them. So, although Heathkit is no longer in MI the HERO robots and the remaining inventory of parts are still here.

Robert

come back in the fall. like last year, we'll probably do a one day show in late september/early october on a saturday when it's nice and cool out

My third time attending, this time with my 18 year old son. It was fun watching him walk through in amazement and play the games. I was surprised at how much he enjoyed the EM rifle games and the old ski ball machine. We made memories before he heads off to college. Thanks Clay and staff for allowing me that opportunity!

chuckwurt - awesome to meet you too brother! It was nice introducing my wife to the guy that made her an awesome GOT player. Had a blast both Friday and Saturday. Enjoyed meeting j_m_ too. Tailgated with my new buddy amkoepfer and his friend Collin who hooked me up with some awesome Dragons Milk Stout. Was very cool running into @violinsteve! Haven't seen him since expo 2014. Was really cool going down memory lane when he and I were doing shots at the bar with Steve Richie. Love this hobby! Thanks again to all.

Good people, good beers, and good pinball. how can you go wrong. I look forward to the fall show

Got to see a lot of people ive known for years, met some new people, saw new and old friends. It was great. Bax1 and i made it thru a lot of the classic sterns. Ive always overlooked them but they are great! @gryzzz ViolinSteve chuckwurt great finally meeting you. Good to see you again kevin, RCA1 i hope you enjoy abra ca dabra. RyanClaytor it was great catching up.

You forgot me

And no, mini baseball def will not fit in my car

Damn! How could i forget my canadian friend! It was great to finally meet you. Always nice to put faces to the names i always see on pinside

Clay,

THANKS for moving the show up a week or so as it will not conflict with Pinfest next year as far as I know at this point in time. Typically Pinfest is the first weekend in May. What upsets me now is I already told Ivan I will not be attending Pinfest next year as a vendor because we have a cross country trip planned. Now I need to see if I can change my route to include your show.

Originally we planned to head west by the southern route in April and come east up north sometime in June. Hopefully I can figure out how to make it as part of our trip. I really want to check the place out and spend some time playing properly working machines at a show.

2019 was my first time attending the VFW show and I just wanted to thank Clay, and all of the amazing techs and volunteers, for putting on the best pinball show I’ve ever been to. I’ve been to PAPA, ReplayFX, Allentown, Arcade Expo, Pintastic, the White Rose Show, and many others and this honestly was the best pinball show of them all. The quality of the machines and the techs are what set this show apart. Every machine played exactly as it should and if there was ever a problem with a machine, a tech would fix it literally right away. Everyone was super friendly and the laid-back atmosphere was awesome. The decision to limit the amount of attendees was perfect and I loved spending every hour of all three days onsite at the VFW. As someone who flew in from out of state to attend the show, I’m sad to hear that next year the show will only be 2 days long but I hope that means longer show hours each day. For anyone on the fence about attending, just go. This show is amazing and we are very lucky that Clay and his team allow us the chance to play this amazing collection with such great people once a year. So thank you again to Clay, Eric, and all of the amazing techs and volunteers! I can’t wait to see you all again in 2020!

Walk through of the show.

Yay Clay! :0) Thanks a ton for making whatever adjustments needed so you don't conflict with Allentown...holy poop is that gonna be a couple busy weeks next year. Better schedule the whole month off...

Sean

So what does a Hero go for these days? I remember when they first came out. They brought one to our school to show us.

Just curious, why no Friday in 2020? I was looking forward to the tournament.

When do tickets go on sale for 2020?

One of the main reasons is that a three day show is rough on the staff, as we're all usually working our day jobs on Friday, so working at our day job and then rushing to the VFW or having to take time off from work so we can be at the VFW instead can be an issue for a lot of us (unfortunately).

Understandable. Thx for clearing that up. Damn, I knew I should have made this year’s, but my loss. Looking forward to 2020.

Thanks much for posting your vid, Owl. I think it captured the VFW's fun and friendly atmosphere quite well. You did a fine job at moving around with a camera and showing fairly clear views of the wide variety of machines.

The vid really shows all the machines are clean and fully functioning. No burnt out bulbs, broken rubbers, filthy worn playfields, or poorly maintained machines here. STAFF members are frequently roving within a building and between buildings, attending to machines for things as simple as stuck balls; resetting machines with uncompleted games; and making quick repairs on the floor if these can be done without interfering with other VFW guests.

Your video also shows the central workshop hub where highly experienced TECH members will handle repairs needing more focus and time best done with the machine off the main floor. In fact, at approximately 2:39 in your vid, you see TSPP and an EM (it was Bally Happy Tour) in the workshop. At 2:52 and 13:13 you show their respective vacant spaces in the line-up, the only two vacant spots out of 400+ machines in your vid. The cool thing about this is it shows we care about all the games there. You can play the much-loved TSPP just about anywhere, but where else is someone going to find a 1964 Bally Happy Tour in near perfect (or as close to perfect as anyone came make it) working condition -- only 250 were made according to IPDB. Granted, the Happy Tour was brought to the workshop 4 times during the weekend, but we had it back on the floor as much as we could to make it available for anyone wanting to check this rare machine off their "never played" list.

Hope you join us again next year!

Besides the year-round work leading up to the show, the two weeks prior are basically dry runs as all of the members rotate through and test play/repair all of the games. Then comes the show days. It is taxing on us "middle-age & up" crew members.

Glad you made it home safely. Bally Kid will be heading West on I-80 in a week with a loaded U-Haul.

Historically the ticketing system opens up on January 1.

If we have a Fall show, the ticketing system will be activated in advance of the show.

Bally Kid is a fine young man and I predict great success for him.
Congratulations Mr Bally!

By the way, I noticed you and The Law had cameo roles in Owlnonymous's video.
Bravo.

Owl, nice video. Question for you, what do you use to hold the camera when filming?

PiscisMagnus Thanks for all the work on the games. I didn't really run into a problem on a single game.

wiggy07 A telescopic selfie stick that I hold just vertically . The stabilization is due to the software in the new GoPro Hero7 Black https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B012AGH0KO/

Thanks Owl for the info, The stabilization is nice in the video. I use my Sony 4K camera now and the blur and bounciness is very noticeable.

The Go Pro even works well under darker conditions it seems.

Thanks again for the info.

It was New Year’s Day this year. That would be my guess

THANK YOU to cfh and all the other members of VFW for making this happen every year!!!

FINALLY got to play/fondle both of these babes.....

fastasy1 (resized).jpgmystic1 (resized).jpg

why is everyone shouting as of lately in this thread?

All these BOLD postings. Hrmmmm.