Classic SS Williams & Bally. My time capsule. A link to the past.
Ok had a similar thread in the for sale forum but thought it would be educational to newer collectors to get a glimpse of what is was like collecting back in the late 90's through early 2000's Luckily I have dozens of pictures from pickups and the many games I came through. There will be many other pins and arcades thrown in as well.

A little about myself. My grandfather used to have a small collection of EM pins in his garage that I couldn't wait to go over and play. Loved pinball and arcades all my life. Always loved tinkering with stuff for as long as I can remember.
Bought my fist pin around 98. It was a non-working Gorgar. I still have it and never fixed it YET. Picked up a few more pins over the years and slowly taught myself how to repair them. Once I knew I could fix them the fever set in.
I was buying everything and everything. I never considered my self as "flipping" pins for a profit. It was always buying and selling to expand my collection. Eventually every room in my house was filled with pins and vids. My dinning room became my sale room, My kitchen became another workroom. Had to build a bigger garage to store the projects in. That wasn't enough. Had storage units and even had junk vids stored under tarps, on skids in the yard. Bought out many retired operators, private collections and out of business arcades. Pins and vids were plentiful and cheap.

A few years pasted and my girlfriend (now my wife) moved in. Slowed down on buying and just started selling off all my vids and a few pins until everything in most of the house was in my garage. My second daughter was born in 2005. By the end of that year the last of my newer pins system 11's and DMD's went out also. Around 2006 I locked up my garage and had one goal of getting a bigger house to set up my games in. Well it took almost 10 years and now it's finally happening!!!!!!
First I got my nicer games setup and a row of old Williams in my game room. My extra Williams went into my sunroom. Brought my Gottliebs home and sold most of them. Now it time to bring my Bally's and Sterns home. This is a work in progress. First picture is from 2006 and is of my classic games. they were stacked in a row of 10 and 4 deep. Next pictuers are from now. As you can see I got several games out and have enough room to squeeze through rows. They have been there so long I forgot what most of them looked like and what condition they were in. I'm finding several that were shopped out and working that I didn't remember ever fixing them. Keep in mind these games sat for almost 10 years without me seeing them.
Many more pictures to come. Warning!!!! my shop was always a mess! Not for the faint of heart!
Anyone with old pictures please feel free to post in. Also pictures of any classic Williams and Bally please post here.

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Some pictures of my current game room.

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I keep my blinds closed and cut off the pull strings so they can never be opened.

Had the flipper fever. No interest in buying and selling games in the past 10 years. Only selling off my doubles and games I know I will never get to.

Yeap my garage was full again. Just enough room to walk through.

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Dead on buddy. If I paid $200 for a game it better had been working and in nice shape. I had operators bringing truckloads of games to my shop and just say "how much will ya give my for the truckload." And it usually wasn't much. I'd give $20 for complete vids and average of $50 for non-working pins. Had one op that had a barn full of games and just gave them to me. He was burning them by the dozen in a huge pile out back of the barn. After a couple of weeks of my getting a truckload a week he started delivering them to me.

This was my overflow of games he brought me. I was already paying for 2 storage units for my pins, I sure the hell wasn't paying for another for a bunch of worthless Donkey Kongs, Atari Vector's and all those other dime a dozen games to be kept in storage.
But this was the late 90's.

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Old vid cabs like these were always fee.

Some pics of the pins after I got rid of my vids. Around 2004

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Some of my old Black and white vids. I think I paid $100 for all of them.

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Ok what is the pinball machine in the back of this picture?

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Some of my old Black Knights

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And I just had to have 3 Gorgars to go with the 3 Black Knights.

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And a pair of BK20's.

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I bought both of these the same day from two different people but at the same storage facility.
Ohhh! This picture reminds me that when I pull my EBD CE out of storage it should be working. Unless I sold the boards before putting it away. I did that with a couple games.

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Ok, Enough with the history lesson. Back to pulling my games out of 10 years in storage.
First of my Bally's was the Xenon. Got her all shined up and working again. She is a double and is for sale.

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My next Bally's are my Lost World twins. One looks like it was shopped before putting away and the other the head was locked and I never had the key to open it. Finally got it open and can't believe the boards in it. No battery, No acid.

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I probably saved at least 50 to 60 games from the burn pile. It was horrible!!! The guy even had a huge dumpster throwing PCB's and monitors in. Yeah I dumpster dived in that bitch.

Just plugged in my first of the Lost Worlds. Boots up but needs work.

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Live update from the time capsule. Lost World #1 has a complete boot and starts a game. After resetting the score display connections they are bright and clear. I have no solenoids firing. Damn it's not a fuse. I'm on my 4th beer so might not be to many updates tonight.

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Oh crap make that my 5th beer!

Live update # 2 or 3. Lost world #2 is up and running. Not bad for sitting 10 years in storage.
Man do I love these old games.

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Another flashback picture. This is what a typical bottom shelf raid from an operator look like. This was in 2005 probably one of my last. It was two weeks after my youngest daughter was born. Yup there's a big old box of Bally Displays. I still have that box sitting on one of my shelves today. Never got a chance to go through it.

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I am offering up one of the two Lost World games once shopped never mind I'm keeping this one.
Still have the Xenon for sale for $1450.

Another flashback Story. Not an early SS but a EM pin. How I got my Dealers Choice game.
It was around late November. I seen a Space Invaders video in the paper in Duncanon PA. Called and went to get it. While I was there. The seller told me a story about how he was at sheriffs sale a few months ago that was a house, barn filled with games and a large building that was a rundown mom & pop arcade. He then tells me the guy that was running it was known to be a perv and got shut down. He gave me directions to the place. Just out side of town down some old road where you would never think you would find an arcade. There are a few Pinsiders here that live in the town now so you might have heard stories about the place.
I drive by the place, get out and take a quick walk around to see if I could find someone. First thing I see was a dumpster. From past experiences I learned to always check the dumpster. Well I peak in and my heart starts racing, my head starts spinning and I probably had tears in my eyes. It was full of busted up EM pins!! Next I checkout the arcade building. Part of the roof was collapsed, windows broken and graffiti all over the place. NO games to be found.
I go take a peak in the barn. It's an old two story barn with gaps in the wood siding about 1/4 apart. This building also had a huge hole in the roof and looked like it was ready to fall down. It's getting dark by now. Kind of hard to see but I could make out a few rows of old vids lined up and what looked like plywood staked on top of them.
Grab some old paper and wright down my name and number and stick it to the barn door the best I could.
For the next couple of days I'm driving by when ever I get the chance. Keeping check on the weather watching for rain. A few more days go by, No calls but they are calling for heavy rain. A trip to Lowes to get some plastic and to Office max to make up a sign and have it laminated. I go up, put the plastic over the dumpster and nail my new sign to the barn door. A couple more days pass. By this time I'm in full-blown stalker mode. Coming home form work, packing a lunch and going up to sit in front of the building for a few hours a day. Yeah, I should have just grabbed everything out of the dumpster but that's not me. I'm not going to take stuff without permission. I'm stopping at gas stations asking people if they knew who owned it. No one did. But I find a small guide style paper that was just for Perry county. I put an arcade games wanted ad in and in a few days I get the call.
Finally I'm up there talking with the guy. He tells me they already paid to have one dumpster full if parts hauled away. He very next sentience was I want $500 for everything. At this point I felt like a mother hen sitting on her eggs. I wasn't going away empty handed. We talk and I get him down to $300. I didn't even see in the barn yet.
He opens up the barn doors and (MY GOD WHAT WERE THEY THINKING) came to mind.
To find out what allll was stacked on top of the games stay tuned. more to come.

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Back to the story. We walk into the barn and there were 5 rows of vids 5 rows deep. On top of these vids was a makeshift loft made out of 2X4's and broken apart video games. He just laid 2X4's down and nailed cabinet panels and doors to the 2X4's witch just laid on top of the bottom videos. On top of them were another 15 video games standing up on end. Well they probably were at one time but now they were leaning and many broke through the old boards. So now I'm thinking how the hell am I going to get these down from there.
I filled my van up with all the broken pinball games that were in the dumpster and left. Next day I picked my 15 year old nephew up. Brought a bunch of rope, straps my chain host and my coma-along. First we used the guys latter to put a chain around one of the center-posts in the roof of the barn. Hooked my chain host to that. Next pulled my van in the doors and hooked the coma-long to my trailer hitch. Ran rope from there to the chain host and left it hang. Wrapped rope around the game and strapped the rope on so it couldn't slide off. Hooked the pull rope to the game and winched it up and I pushed it out as he lifted it. Then set it down in front of the pile. Once we got a row out I would move the bottom row of games and cut the wood out from the loft. We worked row by row. The whole time we're doing this my feet are breaking through boards and I'm prying "Please god don't let the roof cave in" over and over again. Remember this roof already had a big hole in it and the whole building looked like it was ready to fall down.
It took a couple weeks to get everything out. (Oh forgot still no pinball machine.) After I finally got the last game out the guy I bought them from says to me. Are you going to take the ones in the out building? I didn't even know there was more!! At this time I'm about sick of the whole thing but since I already paid I was going to get them. In this was several coin-op kiddie rides, A busted up shuffle alley and in the back corner was my shinning light. There she sat covered in shredded plastic that was once a plastic cover, birds and rats nests and and just about anything else.
I really didn't want those kiddie rides since they weighed a ton. But finally got them all and Dealers choice. It a little work and a lot of cleaning but I brought her back from the grave.

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There still out there. Just harder to find. But people find them every now and then. Keep in mind I was spending hundreds a month just posting wanted adds in every news paper, guides pamphlets and what-nots within a 200 mile radius from my home. Calling operators, posting little index cards in game rooms and builtin boards. Not everyone is on Ebay, CL, pinside, Klov and the rest of the forums.

Ok tomorrow I short story on how I once bought out an operator's complete inventory of games for $68.53 And got my first slot machine in the deal.

My story on how I got an ops complete inventory for $68.53
Around this time I had bought out a couple shutdown ops in the area. They were all old ops that have been around for a long time. They pretty much all knew each other. On a Wednesday I get a call from an op (we’ll call him mike.) He says he talked to another op and was told I was the man to talk to for bulk buyouts. Told me he was renting a small store front building in down town Harrisburg and he needed to have everything out by Friday. He says he’s not worried about the price just make him a fair offer and get the games out by Friday.
First off, downtown HB isn’t the best area. All the ops ran games in old laundromats, small dive bars, a few in mom and pop stores, stuff like that. So I already knew there wouldn’t be anything exiting and the games would be beat. I get there and sure enough it’s all junk generic jamma videos and a few upright megatouch 6 and 7s. Everything is beat. A couple games worked but weren’t worth much. The rest were missing this or that. He had about a van load of old parts in his back room and his pride and joy slot machine. He says make him an offer on everything but he wanted $200 for the slot machine. I’m thinking I can get about $25 each for the empty cabs from a guy making multicades. The rest of the stuff I’ll just ebay. Make a couple hundred off of weeks’ worth of work. There’s probably 25 vids and a couple megatouches. I offer him $200
The guy goes from laughing and joking with me to instant RED in the face veins popping in his forehead raging maniac. For a minute there I thought he was going to take a swing at me. Starts yelling at me “Are you crazy $200 for all my games and parts” I quickly apologize, and tell him sorry I’m used to dealing with large operators selling off 100 plus games and that is how I got the price. I couldn’t just come out and say “hey your games are junk, I’m doing you a favor” There is a really thin line when dealing with people to try to tell them there games are junk without actually saying they are junk. At this point he turns around, slams his fist against a machine and walks into his back room slamming the door behind him.
I’m just standing there waiting. 5 minutes go by…………….10 minutes…………..Screw this, I’m out of there. I walk out the door and just about to get in my van. The guy comes running out the door after me. Again I’m thinking “Oh shit. This can’t be good” The guy then tells me he just got off the phone with the op that gave him my number. He told him I was a good guy and my price was more than fair. Then he apologized for going off on me and said he would take my offer but since he was a betting man. He would give me all his games and parts plus throw in the slot machine for $68.53 but I had to have the exact change on the spot. I had the cash no problem. The change was the hard part. I didn’t have any change on me. Since I was standing there at my van with the door open I start digging though my seat cushions, checking the glove box, ashtray and under the seats. After I checked everywhere I was one cent short. The guy puts his hand in his pocket, pulled out a penny and handed it to me. Then said “Hey looks like $68.53 to me. Everything is yours.
I rented a Uhaul and came out the next day and made a couple trips to get it all. After I had the last load in the truck I came back in and helped him pack up the rest of his stuff he was taking. Even helped him sweep up the place. Well they say one good thing deserves another. Or should I say one good deal turns into another. While I was there helping him pack up. One of his friends came in. Wouldn’t you know it! The guy was another retired op that had a storage unit full of games just three blocks away. Again all junky vids but I came and got them that weekend.
Here is a picture of the slot machine I got. It worked too.

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In only got 2 or 3 good ones left. Most of my picks went smooth.
Gotta get back to working on my games for a few days. More to come later

I've had others like it. The most important thing is the backglass and top faceplate glass. I sold that one for around 200 back then. not sure what they are worth now. It's a classic Bally so fits in great in the game room. Wouldn't mind owning another one once my game room is done. If you have it setup to payout just a little it makes a world of difference. As for Bingo's I had several of them. They are kinda fun but wares off quickly.

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XENON is sold.