Cool, it's a win-win for me. I usually do day trips for the events there, and the short drive a little further keeps that doable. Or, it's always fun to hang in PS for a few days. Being able to go and play pinball more often will be great. It's always so fun to go there.

We do tend to do most of our PS trips in the "off" season, that is, summertime. There is a cadre of cheap ass Southern Californians who go there at that time so we can stay at fancy resorts and play fancy golf courses for way lower rates than they charge during winter. You do however, roast your ass off.

I also would like to thank the Weeks and also Chuck who I communicated with a few times. Once I found out about it, I went to every possible event I could get to it, around a half dozen of times or more. Each and every time, I had the blast if a lifetime. When I took friends they also had a blast.

I saw Pinsiders there, spotted RotorDave and his family ( I think his daughter won a tourney?).

Walking into the pinball room was always an amazing experience. More than once I cleverly got there right at opening on the slowest day which was usually Sunday. Walking in there and seeing all the machines on with about a dozen people in the entire room is an adrenaline rush!

I played pinball until my eyes were glazed. I so much appreciated being able to play all the games I read about at Pinside. This way you can get the real picture as to whether you personally like a machine. Tron, TZ, Addams Family, Medivial Madness, AFM, ACDC, Metallica, all 3 Elviras, and anything else you can name. I also played the heck out of all the EMs as I really like those also.

I also really enjoyed the video games, everything and anything was in there also, all the classics I grew up on.

Each day since this announcement I have kicked myself for being an idiot and not going to the last event. like a fool l thought naw, $150 is too much, I'll wait for the next event which is sure to come soon now that CV is calming down. That was foolish and I so regret I didn't get one more visit. In hindsight $150 is nothing for that privilege.

I also had hopes to join the tech team when I hopefully soon retire. I'm not an expert like so many of you, but at the minimum I could tweak the Bally Bon Voyage and Monte Carlo to perfection, those two I know since I have them.

Dang like every good thing in life, it has to come to an end. I hope it all works out ok.

There are a few machines that I really liked that I might take a shot at if they come up for auction. It would be cool to have one to carry on remembrance of the MOP.

As Chuck wrote in the the thread with the list of games:

We have EVERY Stern LE, the largest collection of LEs in the world.
We have EVERY Spooky except for Rick and Morty which is due to arrive in April.
We have EVERY American Pinball (Octoberfest arriving January 30th)
We have EVERY JJP including two WOZs (Emerald City and Yellow Brick Road) with two being CEs (POTC and Wonka). Haven't ordered a GNR yet.

How many games is that list alone? I don't know but I bet someone does. I'm guessing that is about 50 or so?

Again just speculating, but maybe these would start out first? Here is where the big bucks are. Heck, what would the Tron LE go for?? They are being offered for $20,000 these days.

After that, there is another big pile of earlier era desirable machines. like Addams Family, TZ, AFM, and such. These will go for thousands, like $7-10,000 or more.

Then lots of cool older SS machines.

And finally there are lots and lots of EMs. But how long would it take to get to them? Will the bidders be burned out, or broke? Or, will there even be many people there that care about the EMs? Would they go for good prices? I like the new machines, but I like the EMs too. It would be interesting to see if there could be a good score there.

I ask lots of questions, I have no answers...

And then, there are those arcade machines by the hundreds! I spent some time over there also when I visited, that collection is also amazing. Its kind of funny how the KLOV thread on this topic is very similar to this one. The same discussions and arguments about the volunteer techs, did they waste their time and effort, or were they happy to do it, and on and on. It's like 2 parallel universes that intersect with one another at times.

That post was made by Chuck a few months back, apparently before all of this stuff started to happen. Or, right around the time it was looking like a somewhat solid plan to move to the new location in Palm Springs and open up there.

I do this goofy stuff all day for work.

Copy the entire list from the web page.
Paste into a Word doc as txt
Search on View Playing Tips on Pintips and replace with empty space
Search on ^p^p and replace with ^p to remove all the empty lines
Set the margins to narrow and the font to Arial 10point to reduce the number of pages

Done

Print to PDF so it can be posted here. Want Word doc by email? PM me. It could easily go into a spreadsheet as well.

MOP games list.pdf

There are 3 specific machines that I played there a lot and would not mind having. So I would appreciate it if you peckerwoods would all refrain from bidding those up on me. And no I am not going to name them here!!!!!!!!!

There is an announcement and link to it here.

https://bid.captainsauctionwarehouse.com/m/

Clicking there will allow you to go here:

https://bid.captainsauctionwarehouse.com/m/view-auctions/info/id/80

There is a lot of info there about how the auction will go. However the online catalog is empty at this point in time. They have a lot of work to do if they are going to build the catalog similar to their usual auctions. You can checkout the one that is coming next weekend for a idea of how it usually looks.

Thanks Chuck. You know one thing I have always been curious about and never seen mentioned is how late those Captains auctions go. On occasion I will look in on the live bidding, and as you said there often have 400 or so lots, and it seems like it's pretty late and they still have a long way to go. Past my normal bedtime for sure. Do they go onward to midnight or beyond? And do the bidders start to thin out and/or tire out for the last items in the lot?

As you can see, the start times for all 6 days is listed, but no end times.

Edit...I was going to add for the heck of it, for most of the events I went to at MOP Captain's Auction had a table and people there, so they are more than familiar with everything over there I'm sure.

The latest conditions as posted don't read exactly like that. I don't see any distinction made between in-person and online fees. It says 18% for all buyers, with a 3% discount for cash (or bank checks, etc). So you won't get the 15% if you want to use a credit card, it will be 18%.

Looks good...

But what if I want Tron LE???

Yeah I watched a bit of that. One thing for sure is that he cranks those out, most of them seemed to last 3 or 4 minutes and they were done. I watched a half dozen or so pinballs and they sold like clockwork as far as the hammer price. You could predict the selling price for every one, just look up the median selling price in the Pinside database and they consistently sold for $200-400 above that. And that’s before the fees.

Here’s a few more. It’s almost 11 and there are still more than 100 items to go.

Comet 2,000 TMNJ 6,600 Demolition Man 2,800 Sharkeys Shootout 2,600 Space Shuttle 1,700

Tempest 2,100 Joust 1600 Centipede 2,500 Ms Pacman 1,200 Frogger 1,500 Pacman 1,200

In the end, barring philosophical debates, these things are worth what someone is willing to pay. It does seem in the last year or so pinball pricing has ramped up. So it may not be surprising to see higher prices.

However this Captains Auction situation is muddied because of the possibility of the owner bidding the sale up to an inflated price, then taking it back for $25. That’s kind of lame and annoying. So we cannot determine the real market price from those sold lots.

For Banning, just like any other auction, the rational approach is to do your research, figure out what you want, and then mentally go through the exercise in advance of figuring out the max you will pay. The chart posted earlier by DudeRegular eliminates all the maths for you as far as the fees and tax. Then, when the bids start, you go to your max to try to get it, and if it goes higher, you bail.

I am pretty much giving up on the idea that you could get something you like from Banning at a decent price. I might go over there for a day just for the experience and to look at all the machines one last time. I’ll take some money but I’m expecting anything.

You are right, I am appreciative of my opportunity. It's not too long of a drive and my only skin in the game for showing up is having to put up $300, which I believe I can get back if I get nothing. It's a good situation for all the Socal people.

However, one problem is that the dang thing is 6 days long. I don't have 6 days to go hang out over there, fun as it would be. So it will be interesting to see how the catalog is set up, and hopefully you will be able to know in advance exactly what items will be sold on a given day.

That's strange, I don't recall any of those pinball machines from my trips to the museum, except I do remember a Comet there. Maybe those just weren't on my radar, there are 800 or so of them after all.

I probably went by those, not my favorite era, I tended to go to the older EMs and then to the newer machines.

You can't play them all. One time I thought I was going to try, I think I got close to playing 100 different ones and my eyes were bleeding and brain was twitching.

From WSJ:

The average price world-wide to ship a 40-foot container has more than quadrupled from a year ago, to $8,399 as of July 1, according to a global pricing index by London-based Drewry Shipping Consultants Ltd. The measure has surged 53.5% since the first week of May.

Listed prices to ship from China to major ports in Europe and the U.S. West Coast are closer to $12,000 a container, by Drewry’s measure, and some companies say they are being charged $20,000 for last-minute agreements to get goods onto outbound vessels.

Yes, now seeing a lot of the machines I remember, the order sounds close to how they were arranged on the floor. There are a lot of good ones in there...

But do stop at Hadleys and grab some goodies, and for sure get a date shake for the road. I went through there recently on a hot day with traffic on the 10, and that shake was one of the most delicious things I have ever drank. Or drunk. Or drinkedted.

The old building has been gone for a while, it had the old diner with all the cool autographed pics on the wall. (Well the building itself is still sitting there, around the corner, but its empty). There is still a similar diner in the back, but more modern. But the new building is pretty nice really. Its a big setup and they are very efficient. When I rolled through there in June, they were doing a booming business. The line for the data shakes and food was pretty long, I almost wasn't going to wait, but they cranked everyone through pretty quickly. Great place to stock up on all sorts of fruit, nuts, breads, candy and such.

Megaload up to lot # 2013 now shown at Captain's Auction.

For the second half, pins start at lot # 890, then again at 1305.

Hint: Start at 1342 if you are looking for the latest, big bucks stuff. Its all in there.

I noticed that there is a "Jolly Park" (#989), I saw that pop up in the game room thread and thought it looked pretty cool. I never had heard of that one before. I wish I could have played it when the MOP was open, although I don't remember seeing it on the floor.

Dang it! How could I have missed that? I walked through there a hundred times, and played Hercules a few times. Shame on me.

banning deal (resized).jpg

Yes, I played them both a lot, but I didn't have the knowledge to know what the differences were. Its a great machine, I'd like to have one some day.

There also were 2 Capt Fantastic EMs side by side. One with the uncensored backglass, the other with the censored version.

Its funny, I was planning on going in with some more serious intentions to get some photographs of a bunch of different stuff on the pinballs and arcade games. Then CV hit, then this hit, and I lost my chance.

Same here, also, of that list by doghouse, I don't remember seeing many of those there. Maybe those are some of the ones that were stored away. Hercules yes that was obviously there, and I think Spirit. I don't remember Cyclopes. I would have loved to see it and play it, after watching HEP do one recently in his thread. It looked cool as heck.

Royal Rumble lot 385

Wrestlemania lot 1384

Can't remember if this was covered. Do you pay sales tax on the Buyer's Premium?

My spreadsheet is pretty simple, and it just has a short list of games that I think I would really be interested in buying some day. For most of the games, I have pretty much been following them since I have been on Pinside, so I have a pretty good idea what they typically sell for, at least here. As one example, a TZ for quite some time was going for right around the $7,000 range pretty much all the time. In the past year of course, things have jumped almost across the board, so now TZs seem to ask $8-9k.

So I just came up with a "Final Cost" number, that is, if I decided to bid, this would be the max amount I would pay, and that's it.

Spreadsheet:

Col A Lot #
Col B Manufacturer
Col C Game Name
Col D Max Bid (Formula is this: multiply Col E by 0.81)
Col E Final Cost (The total amount I am willing to pay)
Col F Auction Date

So Col D is the number that would be my maximum bid. If you divide that by 0.81 you will get the final cost (close enough). That's the amount you are gonna have to pay for your bid. That assumes a 15% markup for paying cash, and 7.75% sales tax. I would be able to drive over and pick up if I had to.

This is just an exercise for fun. I don't plan to do any bidding this time. I just want to see, if I had decided to bid, would I have been able to get any machine I wanted for my max price or lower? I'm guessing NO.

If it’s like past auctions you can watch the actual auction as live video over the internet. So you can see how the actual bidding goes as you are watching, hear what they say about the item, etc. You can also just open up the catalog and the current item being bid on will show up with some text showing the bidding. From there you can go backward to the ones that have already been sold and see those hammer prices.

Yeah, I think pretty much every single person I know has sent me the amazing news. What's funny is that they all seem to think they are giving me a news bulletin, like, "hey, did you know about this?".

I have 3 pinball machines that I baby and tweak and play bunches of games on with no issues, and it seems that every time some people come over and start playing, at least one if not two develop problems out of the blue, or even go down entirely. I just can't imagine these scales.

I went to Banning a number of times. There would be some machines down sure, but not really that many. And there were hundreds and hundreds to play, and it seemed to me the vast majority of those worked pretty well. An amazing effort really. I have been to PHOF a number of times, it was not as good, but for me I did still have fun and found enough good ones to play to be happy.

This makes complete sense given the operations. There was a team of dedicated people from the local area who would go to Banning and work on the machines on a volunteer basis. And, it was only open a few times a year for hordes of people to come in and start banging away on everything. PHOF is open all the time, and only has Tim Arnold and a few others to keep everything going. I can't even grasp how they can keep it all going at all.

I thought about all of this a few times, and it seems to me that in order to keep things going best and not go completely insane you would need an ordered, organized, systemized, process in place. You would need to buy all the common parts in bulk to save money, such as flipper repair kits or parts, lamps of course, rubbers, pop bumper parts, etc. These would need to be stored in an organized inventory where they could be quickly and easily accessed. If you were really anal, you would have a complete and organized inventory of every machine and track everything that was done to it, its current status, when it is due for an inspection or maintenance, etc.

But the real stickler is you need the people to do the work. Its not like you can hire someone off the street to do it, there are only so many who have the special skills to fix pinball machines in an efficient manner. People could be taught I suppose.

Here's a tip for everyone who is headed over to be there in person. Take SEVERAL of those phone battery banks with you (and the cable of course). If you are hanging out in there for the good part of the day, you have a crappy phone signal, and you are probably taking lots of pictures and even videos. You will drain your battery much quicker than you would think. Then you'll be dead in the water, or find yourself sitting in your car trying to juice it back up and missing the fun.

NV its good to hear from you, I was gonna post about your setup. I am pretty sure you are one of those "full-on attack" types with your machines (as in go through everything and get it all optimized and tweaked), and I was going to bet that your 65 or so machines have a high percentage that are working and in good condition. I've learned a lot from your various posts and videos, and I with I had been able to have you come by here on your tour. Of course, there is still a big difference between 65 of them and 650 of them.

And here is a slight side trip that I also was wondering about for all of you managers. If you are taking money into the individual machines as opposed to accepting some sort of other payment and having everything on free play, the simple management of all of that gets mind-boggling at scale. Luckily coin mechs are somewhat cheap and easy to replace. But, how about just managing the hard money? The PHOF is all quarters, I can't even imagine how many quarters even in a day. There must just be piles and piles of them. They all have to be removed from the machines and counted, and then presumably some go back into the coin changers but then all the rest have to get to the bank somehow in sacks or whatever. This all takes time and effort. And of course, its <--money--> so you gotta make sure to keep track of it all.

I've got $1900 on the Spidey for my guess. Hammer price.

Usually stable, this is a mess.

OK Nitro Ground Shaker was the only one of real interest to me today. The hammer price was $2300 for a final cash price of $2839. My max hammer if I were bidding was $1458, for a final cost of $1800. I am pretty sure I can get a nice one for that range some day.

I have 13 on my list for tomorrow, it will be interesting to see what they go for. I'll check in on the final prices as I get time, but mostly this is a complete waste.

I’d say right around 1800. Depends on condition of course. One recently sold on Pinside for 1300. One is for sale now for 2300, looks pretty nice.

Pengo went for 1600 plus fees, I’m pretty sure you can get a nice working one for $700-900. Great arcade game I dropped a lot of quarters in back in the day, but hey at least I can play it anytime I want as long as I have a joystick and Raspberry Pi.

I guess the pinballs are coming up next. It will be interesting to see what happens, but I won’t know because I have an actual life and other things to do on a Saturday night besides looking at games being sold.

Ok fuck it I lied, I’m watching the auction.

Well before these 3 show up I’m gonna give you all all chance to get them for a GOOD DEAL!

All 3 for $19,500. What do you think?

F040DAA2-4622-4A2F-B95F-1BFFAAF0CAA6 (resized).jpeg

Seriously though I can’t wait to see what these 3 go for, this is whacked.

Folks we have a Xenon coming up. And a frickin Fathom! These are actual desirable games. I can’t even imagine the Fathom. I guess I’ll throw out $19,000 for the Fathom, hammer. Seems stupid, but then again…

As I recall from playing it, their Fathom is a pretty nice one.

As for the last ones of the night, TZ, TAF, SS, AFM, etc, what the hell? In the 20s?

Ok so.. DE Star Trek was next on my personal-interest spreadsheet, after the long past Nitro Ground Shaker.

I wrote in there, I would go for a max bid of $2025, or final cost $2,500.

The hammer was $7,400.

I’m starting to get this feeling I might not get any of the deals I was hoping for.

Thanks for posting these numbers this is interesting. Also, are these the hammer prices@?

I don’t know what happened but I guess the whole thing halted for some reason. Only 2 more on my interest list went through.

Xenon for $4900 hammer or over $6,000 as was pointed out is ridiculous. You can get a nice one for not much than half that all day long.

Fathom for $6500 hammer is the steal of the auction so far, relatively speaking. That’s around $8,000. That is not totally crazy, that could even be considered somewhat reasonable. Still, I recently saw the chance to buy a very nice example locally for $6500. So, still too high in my book.

As estroh said above, Fathom was OK condition but not great. There is a really nice one with a brand new playfield for sale right now on Pinside for $6100, even after paying for shipping from PA it would be a far better deal than this one.

The only interesting thing about Fathom is that the price does not match up with the true desirability of the machine, relative to the others being sold. This is more evidence that the buyers know nothing about pinball, which is pretty obvious at this point anyway.

It’s not just that there were no good prices. Consider this. Captain’s Auction has sales going all the time, and they sell lots of pinball machines. There are usually never “good prices” there. Sometimes as has been discussed in past threads, there have been a few good scores at good prices by Pinsiders who stuck it out until late, or managed to get something that for whatever reason didn’t attract a lot of interest.

The general discussion after one of their auctions is “eehhh, nothing to see here, prices too high after the fees, I can do better”. But THESE prices make past auctions look like the deals of a lifetime. They just had a sale in August, unfortunately I think those results go away after a time, or at least I can’t find them. But I bet if you looked at those prices you would see everything at half or less than this craziness.

There is something strange going on with this auction. I guess the current theory that it is due to the marketing and the subsequent interest of a bunch of non-pin people with too much money to burn makes sense. Maybe crypto profits, or what I don’t know.

The spending on those stupid NFTs is ridiculous, but I guess no more so than paying millions for an ugly piece of scribbling from a graffiti artist like Banksy. Paying millions for a sealed game cartridge seems equally dumb. But hey apparently people have the money so they can blow it however they like.

What I don’t get is the sudden interest in pinball. It seems to me while people generally know what a pinball machine is, the vast majority don’t really care much about it or would have some sort of idea that they would actually like to own one. Realistically only a bunch of boomers with nostalgia for the past give a crap. (Although there are some younger people that really get into them, and thank goodness for all of you, but you are in the minority).

And finally, add onto to this what you are going to get. A complicated thing with moving parts that slam into each other that weighs a ton and most certainly is going to malfunction in some manner within a short period of time. And even if you have so much money you don’t care , it won’t be too easy to just pick up the phone and write a check for someone to come fix it for you.

However, I will note that having spent quite a bit of time on Bally EMs (as evidenced by my Bon Voyage and Monte Carlo circuit description threads) I am fairly proficient at troubleshooting and fixing those. I will be available to help. $500/hour, 4 hour minimum, plus parts.

I almost forgot I had another thought as I was falling asleep last night in the middle of the action.

Why don’t they have a Supreme pinball machine? And what would that sell for??? Eleventy billiony dollars?

Been off doing other things and just caught up. The madness continues, maybe it’s even getting worse.

Scared Stiff is the bargain of the auction so far at 8500. Relatively speaking of course. 8200 for EATPM in comparison makes no sense. Then again, nothing much is making sense.

Kinda weird, all seem to be hitting 3000 or close to it for every one now.

Couple of decent Playboys for sale right now on Pinside for the 3000 range, you could buy one, ship it HEP, and end up with a real museum piece for what that one sold for.

Ok first one of mine is around the corner. What will Strikes and Spares go for? The redhead rules!

Was wondering where that Strikes and Spares came from, there was never one there when I visited that I saw.

Still far over what I paid! I’ll consider myself rich now.

Do blue displays cost $7000?

You can just flip through the catalog and click on games to see their sold price. No need to sign up for anything.

I think someone will have a list when it’s all said and done, there are a few here who seem to be working on it.

Dare I say it? Not a bad deal for Seawitch $3,700 hammer? In relative terms to this craziness, best I have seen so far.

Kinda hard to put a price on the Mata Hari EM version, I think it’s pretty rare. Someone knew what they were going for on that one I think, $7000 hammer.

Run to the hills

Prices still high but not insane, are they running out of steam a bit? Surfer is the next EM coming up that is pretty desirable.

Surfer not totally unreasonable at $3200 hammer.

Agreed , Seawitch best deal overall.

Well there certainly was a group in SoCal who thought we might score some good deals and drive them home. Pipe dreams. Those hopes were dashed after the very first machine was sold. From then on it was just entertainment value watching it.

Thank you for your interesting post.

I was wondering, if someone had walked into one of those last planning meetings and said “I’ll just write you a check for 3 million dollars right now and take the whole thing off your hands!”, do you think he would have gone for it?

You know, in case I invent a time machine…

I was thinking of all the games.

OK looking over my spreadsheet, here are some observations. Keep in mind, this is a limited number of machines from the first go-round, which were various ones I had an interest in. I tracked 32 total.

My pre-auction final cost was based on what I thought I could get the same machine for if it were to pop up on Pinside. Then I backed out from there with the costs to get what would be my max bid price. Its not entirely realistic as I do think you need to go ahead and add a bit extra to account for the fact that this is an auction. But, its just numbers for fun.

Now looking through the numbers, and sorting them based on the overall difference between what I would have liked to pay and what the final cost was:

What items were somewhat reasonable? (HEY! I also just realized for the first time, you can copy cells from an Excel sheet and paste them into the discussion, and it makes a nice image like this)

pasted_imageGottlieb Surfer $2,592 $3,200 $3,200 $3,951 123% Gottlieb Atlantis $2,025 $2,500 $2,500 $3,086 123% Bally Fathom $4,

I think these 4, Surfer, Atlantis, Fathom, and Seawitch, were actually pretty reasonable. Only about 1/3 more than what I would have like to pay. Looking at Surfer, I thought a final cost of $3,200 would be reasonable (which would be a bid of $2,592). It hammered at $3,200 for a final cost of $3,951, which is 123% higher than my goal. The numbers are similar for the other 3.

I think I would have been somewhat satisfied if I had gotten any of theses for those prices. These are all nice machines (well IMO anyway). Of course, condition plays a role. I played all of these at MOP, but I never knew that this was coming, so I didn't take notes. But as I can remember, these all were in decent players conditions.

Going down my list, most machines sold for double-to-triple what my goal price was, as we all know.

How about the other end. Which machines were the HIGHEST price, relative to my guesses?

Well, the worst one of all is Monte Carlo, which I own.

pasted_imageBally Monte Carlo $405 $500 $2,500 $3,086 617% (resized).png

If this is the same Monte Carlo that was on the floor at MOP, I did play it a number of times and compared it to mine. It was OK and it worked, but nothing fancy. The usual cabinet and playfield wear if I recall correctly. I don't think MC is much more than a $500 machine. (Maybe if the playfield were excellent then it might approach $1,000). It sold for $2,500 hammer or $3,086 out the door. Sheesh, that seems a bit nutty. That is 6 times greater than my projection!

Here are the ones that exceeded 400%, or 4 times my projected final cost:

pasted_imageBally Mata Hari No Inscription $972 $1,200 $4,200 $5,185 432% Bally Fireball $2,025 $2,500 $9,000 $11,111 444% Bally

All classic Ballys, interestingly. Nice, desirable machines, but those prices seem a bit extreme.

I guess I meant to say...reasonable in the context of all the rest. But yes you are totally right, which is why I was not in the mix.

How about Tron LE? It’s supposed to be worth $21k on the “normal” open market. It should go for 40k or more in this auction.

Paradise was the only one I was interested in for today, it just went for $3,000 hammer price. It always looked nice, but wasn’t working the last two times I went there. Not sure if they ever got it fixed. But, a nice one in NoCal was offered for sale at Pinside last year for $1450.

The Firepower is excellent. It’s probably the #1 machine I had hoped to get. It looks great and it plays super fast. Every time I went to MOP I always played that one the most. I really like it and more than likely Firepower will be my next buy if I can score a good one.

The Firepower at PHOF has the drop targets. That one is pretty nice also but it always seemed the one at MOP played better.

Space Shuttle $5100 plus fees. There are 2 pretty nice ones for sale for $3,000 each right now on Pinside. So, I could buy those 2 for $3,000 each, then sell one of them for $6,000, and then I will have a FREE Space Shuttle! Wait, is that how this works??

Well, there it goes. $4,200 hammer for the Firepower. Sigh.

$9900 plus fees for T2.

A Pinsider just sold a HEP T2 for $11,000, that would make a lot more sense if you want to spend $$. Or, buy one of the nice ones for sale for around $4k and ship it off to HEP and get yourself a real museum quality one for that kind of money.

Yes, will be interesting, the pre-show estimate was $7M+ if I recall correctly. Found article:

The collection could be worth as much as $7 million, according to the auctioneer handling the sale, which includes some machines more than 60 years old. The holy grail of the sale could be a “Pirates of the Caribbean” collector’s edition pinball machine from 2018, associated with the Disney franchise, which the auction house said could fetch up to $35,000

That sounds like a great time. I always loved going there and playing machine after machine. I like playing the paltry three that I have too. But I like working on them even more. I definitely spend more of my free time dinking around with them than playing them. I like to get into them, figure out how they work, tear down steppers, fix and tweak everything little thing. It’s an enjoyable thing to do for me. So yeah, if I had that opportunity I’d do the same and wouldn’t care a thing about getting something for it, because the work itself is the payment. A bit of pizza and beer would be frosting on the cake.

It appears that "analizing" is not actually a word, however whether it was intentional or not it seems to fit right into this sentence perfectly. So I am sending it in to Merriam Webster with a request to make it official, because I love this word!

Today, you have won the internet.

All I know is that every god**mn day here it is 75 degrees F and sunny.

I love the dancing hula girl. I’m glad you guys got Paradise, that was one of my top 3 I would have liked to get from Banning. Also, I was wondering, was it hard to get the machine working? It had been shut down for repairs on my last two visits to the museum before the end, so I missed out playing it, although I did get some time on it during earlier visits.

Also, if there is ever a circumstance where you have the glass off, or her somehow out of there, could you post a closeup photo of her in her entirety (so there won’t be a reflection)? I would like to get her digitized.

There was a chance not long ago to buy a really nice one from a Pinsider in CA and I didn’t do it, so I have no one to blame but myself.

That's too much work! No worries. Just a fun project. Here is what I have so far from a few minutes of messing around. I can mess with these when I get bored with other stuff and see what I can come up with. The final goal - get her dancing on the computer screen!

This is about the best one I could find on the internet, reworked a bit. Its a nice image, but not much there as far as resolution.

Paradise Dancer 1 (resized).jpg

Here's your shot posted above, much nicer resolution and detail, especially in the face.

Paradise Dancer 2 (resized).jpg

It’s kinda depressing seeing those pics. I did go there quite a few times, but I could have gone a lot more. I just took it for granted that it would be there forever. It was a great place to get hands-on experience with a wide variety of pins to see what I liked or didn’t like. I always had a great time playing all those different machines, and wish I had done more.