Love those "get in the car and go" unplanned pickups.

Fully complete with 100% original documentation down to the mail-in card, all in plastic. While keeping it short (it was quite the adventure!), the owner has owned it for a very very long time (decades) and didn't even know you could take the back door & head off or lift the playfield glass up (nor did I, in a different sense... lifting the glass "up" like on this age of Bally machines rather than sliding it out is new to me), besides the backglass being only okay it is in great shape and is fully working, just needs the usual tune-up. It was in his dark (at the time of day) old barn, and was apparently well-loved by his grandkids (in 2017), but he wanted it to go to a good home (and also make some room) and he was happy it was headed that way.

Going to keep how/where I found it & the cost to myself, but it was cheaper than some pinball parts! (accessories)

I know this is a very desirable and quite rare Bally, and a very well-liked title here when posted, so I figured I would share with a thread. Only 545 produced! Love a good barn save, especially for such a great machine. Back to glory it goes! I had admired pictures of this machine before but was by no means searching for one or even waiting for one to find me - so I had never seen the skyrocket feature until when I went to pick it up, in the dark barn late at night (only had one outlet! So the game was previewed under the light, and played in the dark!) which only added to the effect. I was totally blown away and not expecting the light show. Amazing.

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Oh, and that's me keeping it short. Figured I'd keep some mystique

Definitely. The local arcade/pinball guys make jokes about the minivan but not when it starts to rain! (thankfully a dry but very chilly evening last night, it had snowed lightly earlier in the day when only a few days ago I was wearing just a T-shirt! That's New Jersey & Pennsylvania for ya... Cleared up nicely though afterwards in time for my adventure.)

Great to see all of the replies and interest. I will post more photos once I get it set up in two hours or so. Going to vacuum it out & clean it up inside and out then bring it into my collection, looks like there a was a quick group of mouse visitors although no nest or damage in sight yet so must have just been a pass-through, still have yet to peek inside the body cabinet fully but did look through the "port hole" after the head was removed, and also the head itself looked pristine inside besides a little birdseed and droppings, no big deal at all and feeling great about it, 100 times better than something like cat hair and dander which I've found in other machines full of (those never made it downstairs yet, will need deep cleaning one day) and now HATE with a burning passion, cats are okay in my book but finding old hair is so so gross, impossible to get out of all of the wiring, and I'm slightly allergic to that, so a little mouse poop and some seed is a-okay to me and quite a breeze to easily get rid of. Fun fact, my pinball basement (before cleaned up and slightly redone of course) use to house my late grandfather's hobby of raising canary birds so I'm conditioned to vacuuming up seed!

On a better note than talking about those other machines, right now I am going clean it up outside of my home, then probably bring it downstairs tonight once it is sanitary enough to join the ranks of the other machines.

I will get back to some of the other replies later!

Yesterday.

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Crisis averted. The seed & very tiny bit of mouse poop I saw through the head port-hole was pretty much the only stuff in there! Actually quite clean... great!

The cabinet got a very thorough vacuuming out regardless over quite a long time.

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(Buckle in for the long reply that may not be too relevant of a response...) Finally getting back to reply to you on this (been meaning to as I definitely wanted to) - running out of room for games but continuing to find ways to store them.

Games are meant to be played and seeing games stored away for years by others makes me a little sad so I am going to rotate through them but even if they're stored for a few months I don't feel bad as they have somewhat of a "destiny" to fulfill rather than just being storage eternity - my plan (and sometimes an excuse to hold onto yet another game) is to open a museum (similar to the Silverball Museum) one day.

I have been planning this on a realistic level for quite some time now and due to age and finances of course it is not viable just yet, but by having a collection of games ready to go one day it eliminates a huge expense you would need to spend to buy all those games when you decide to open a museum especially since you need the games immediately which will cause the price to go up times 5 (especially for rarer games) and the selection would be very slim, rather than seeking out games I tend to wait for games to come to me and that way I get them for great prices or even free. I don't go picking up every game I see, I still have a "wish list" like some people use for wanted ads, but mine is more of a filter than something I use to seek things out - if I see a game come up for sale and it's one I have been wanting or have interest in owning I jump on it. Obviously I'm not the only one and it's probably a pretty common way of doing things around here, I believe you did the same thing with your own collection. It's probably the more common way infact - but some other people just have a list and are destined to buy it all as quick as possible rather than waiting for it to come to you.

For example, I remember seeing your gameroom and falling in love with Domino, and rather than putting out a wanted ad (even though I really wanted one) I waited around, with Domino in the back of my head, and eventually months and months later I found my Domino at a pinball show and jumped on it and got it for a song. Now I probably have hundreds of titles in the back of my head after playing so many at shows and other collectors' houses or even just hearing of them or seeing pictures and that is what I use when searching sites like Craigslist with very broad search terms and looking at results (rather than being specific for what I want). Good things come to those who wait!

Anyways, getting way off-track here. Just wanted to explain why wanted ads were so expensive in contrast. (Plus people aren't "ready" to get rid of those machines if they're not the ones listing it, etc., etc.)

But yes, one day I hope to open a pinball museum with a healthy dose of arcade & video gaming thrown in. Although this is something I would like to begin within the next 10 years or so to share the love of pinball, the important part to me is later on (even if there is a gap in between and I start again later on) - I have thought about the future of pinball and I'm not sure what to think, without being too morbid I've kind of wondered how the mass of machines out there right now will fare once most of the people who care are gone, for instance today's mega-thousands Gottlieb TKO may very well be tomorrow's curbside trash pickup *while knowing the rarity* (yes there are oblivious people even today but that is different) - there are no parts of value inside of these machines for other applications and they have long since earned back their factory price and aged so much that the original price is not relevant or reflected through sales, so the worth of them these days is 100% only determined on collector pricing & demand. It is strange to think about how this will affect the already-low number of machines that have survived long enough to make it into collectors' homes when there are no longer thousands of people who care enough to keep them alive and also provide a worth/a market to them.

So in a way I feel partially obligated, though it's something I obviously want to do, to carry on the torch but I would also like to share pinball's fun and already-very-historical (and old!) values with everybody of today/near-future too of course, not just some long-term torch-carrying scheme decades from now, I am not too focused on that right now (that would be a little silly), so much changes in a few years let alone that many. Certainly keeping the door and idea open though.

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BUT, I am still primarily a collector and doing this for my own enjoyment right now, collecting the games I want to have in my own present-tense private collection rather than simply buying up pinball machines to use as future business assets, that is the farthest thing from what I am doing right now. That whole idea is still definitely secondary, and I'm in no rush, just enjoying the ride. Just happens to be a bonus for later on. Right now I am still only a collector and maybe a little bit of a dreamer. I still just buy pinball machines with my collection and basement in mind rather than thinking about a business and what would appeal there, it is very much separate right now. Which is good!

Oh, and although it's likely more referring to 80's solid-state pinball machines (but some EM, would have to be rougher ones), for fun I'm already going into routing pretty soon with a client I already do machine repair for (has arcade machines but no pinball at his business) - right now I am doing well enough on running my own repair business with multiple returning customers to make it my primary job while I still live at home and is how I fund my hobby. Grateful for that. Pinball giveth, pinball taketh away!

I was going to upload a picture of the back of the cool "business reply card" with the game title stamped on it but the pictures actually came out way too close-up and clear for my tastes (almost looked like it was scanned the quality was so good and not a fan of reproduction without asking, or reproduction of the rare bits at all as I think owning them is unique for that reason) so I'm just going to take one big picture of all the cool factory documentation later on which will help ward off these crazy concerns.

Here's a picture of the machine all set up! Just placed a huge pinball order today to get this shopped out! (Possibly not only for me... wink wink, Pinfest is coming quickly, it MIGHT make an appearance)

This is pre-doing any top-side work to it besides replacing a few playfield bulbs as they may or may not have accidentally met 50v due to an oversight ("the game's fault", not mine; I hadn't noticed a short) after setting the game up. All is well now, no rubbers or flipper rebuilds yet but still somehow plays like a champ!

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