I was dealing with a route operator about 4 years ago. I bought all of his games for excellent prices.
He mentioned me at the time that he has two more games on location, but he did not visit that location for 2 years and did not know (or care) if his games were there anymore.
He called me last week and said me that the location owner called him and asked him about the games, because he had some guy interested in them. He asked me if I want the games.
I said sure. I took a day off today and headed with him to pick up the games.
The games were there sitting unplugged. IJ is an early production version with lost plastic and display panel with holes for jackpot lamps. It has a faded cabinet and missing fighter plane, but that is about it.
DH will be in nice shape once I clean it.
IJ had remote mounted battery pack and DH was without batteries so there is no battery damage on CPU boards.
The best thing is that the op gave me the games for free.
On the way back we stopped by another ex operator, who gave me some spare parts (targets, metal posts, rubbers, coil stops, ...), which he had laying around for - you can guess how much -- free.
Below are some photos of the games still loaded in his van and a photo of spare parts.
It was a good day pinball wise .
IMG_8140.JPGIMG_8142.JPGIMG_8143.JPGIMG_8147.JPGIMG_8149.JPGIMG_8152.JPG

Believe me. More free spare parts from the second op tomorrow . Pics to follow .

_{Post edited by rygar: Spelling.}

Does not matter, I am keeping the games .
Thanks.

No need to be jealous. This is a result of 15 years in the hobby. Once you stop looking for deals the deals will find you.

I have checked out, no such luck . Just broken hand of fate plastic and a bunch of tokens plus one coin . Inside DH there is a copy of the manual plus tokens.

Totally true. I will be only able to fire up and thoroughly inspect those two in next week. At the moment they are staying at my friends place.

As promised - pics of another bunch of free parts from other op. Metal hardware, plastic posts, electronic parts. Both parts cabinets were included. Also heard some really good operator stories from back in the old days. That was priceless.

IMG_8157.JPG

IMG_8156.JPG

IMG_8155.JPG

IMG_8154.JPG

This guy had a 50+ machines route (all of them gone 10+ years ago) and just wanted that stuff out of his garage. There are some other items in his other garage (he remembers fuses for sure and some legs). I will probably go there next week to pick that stuff up.

True. He could see my passion for pinball when we were talking about his operator days. He is a friend of the guy who gave me DH and IJ.

Does somebody know which game is the small metal wireform from?

Believe or not, but this exact op who gave me the games yesterday did the same thing to me when I have called him for the first time (that was about 2 years before our first deal). I have got his number from another operator (with 2 MMs which he refused to sell) when I asked him if he knows any operator with MM.

Fifteen.

A little update after inspecting the shape of both games. I am happy to report that both games are fully working.

On DH the right upper flipper was sticking and I had to loosen the mech a bit. I also needed to replace a ribbon cable which connects driver and CPU boards. Credit dot is due to dying batteries (remotelly mounted batteries - time and date not set error). The cabinet has some scuffs which should not be too difficult to repair. Playfield is really nice which leads me to believe that it was not a very popular game on locations around here.

On IJ I had to replace the swich in front of top lock up post (in front of POA) and both optos at idol entrance (transmitter and receiver).
Some joker used too long/wide screws on the flipper plates which leads to some planking in the lower part of the playfield. The playfield is also mylared and mylar is pretty gnarly in some places. I have tracked down a playfield from a parted out IJ (I ll trade one of my extra playfields for it). Current playfield is an early production one with black and white super jackpot insert, which might be worth restoring. The game also has the lost plastic, its light board and speaker panel cutouts for the jackpot lamps.

Missing/broken things are:
- fighter plane,
- bi plane wire,
- hand of fate plastic,
- left sling plastic (currently a TAF one),
- right sling plastic (I have a spare),
- raise jackpot plastic,
- a fracture in center part of left ruins,
- missing jackpot lamps panel.

According to the game acquiring budget I ll try to have some fun and try to keep the restoration costs as low as possible. A friend of mine is training himself on Illustrator and he agreed to help me in the process (the hint is in the last two pics). Another friend who is in 3d prototyping will scan and 3d print the fighter plane for me.

A few pics of both games:

DH.jpg

IJ.jpg

Ijdh1.jpg

IMG_8158.JPG

IMG_8162.JPG

IMG_8164.JPG

IMG_8174.JPG

IMG_8186.JPG

IMG_8192.JPG

IMG_8193.JPG

I hope that I ll be able to return to the crime scene as we have left a FABI foosball table there (I did not want to take off the legs of pinball machines).