At work and a coworker was reading the "Buy, Sell, and Trade". Think craigslist / kijiji, but in newspaper format. He asks me if I like pinball and I say "yes, of course".

"Do you want one?"

"That's a thing? Eff yes."

So off we went to pick up 3 of them in what I now know is a called a shed find. Stern Galaxy, Bally Strikes and Spares, Bally Harlem Globetrotters. $100 for the three, all non-working and covered in pigeon poop. This is about 1999. 50 bucks each. I take Bally S&S, he takes the other two - the extra machine is the finder's fee. Within a week or so, his girlfriend is yelling at him to get that junk out of the house, so he just gives me the other two. The only thing wrong with Galaxy was the power switch was broken. S&S takes a little more work, I never did get all the lights working again (that would be a cinch for me now), and Globetrotters never comes to life. I sent the mpu off for repair, after 6 months, some angry telephone calls, and a few hundred dollars I finally got the MPU back, still broken, so I used the Globetrotters as a parts / experimentation machine.

A couple years later I moved to Toronto and had to sell all three before moving, again for $100 to someone who drove from Quebec to pick them up.

When I moved back from Toronto and had space and some free $$$ again, pinball was #1 on the to-do list.