I'm kinda new to all this, but having GREAT fun (again) thus far! I grew up playing EM's and early SS's in the 60's/70's and am now one of the baby-boomers who's bringing them back home. I bought my first machine--KISS--a couple of months ago and have had a ton of fun working/playing on it.
Being a collector I'm used to scouring ebay and craigslist on a regular basis and have now added pins as one of my searches (much to the chagrin of my other half)!! I was a little surprised to see a post pop up last week for a San Francisco for $50!! The playfield and backglass looked decent, so I called the seller. He said that two people had previously committed to it and never called back, but he realized that I was sincere and was kind enough to pull the ad. I finally made the half-hour trip to his place out in the country to pick it up yesterday.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was in much better shape than I anticipated. The playfield and backglass are extremely nice for a game that shows over 89,000 on the counter! It appears to be complete, other than missing the door on the backbox and coin mech, and someone decided to paint the cabinet blue at some point.
I realize that this isn't a high-demand game--even though it's the last EM made with a gobble hole and has backglass animation--but figured that it would be fun to try to bring it back to life if I can do so without sinking more into it than it's worth. I figured that it would be a good winter project. I'm currently putting my spreadsheet together on restoration cost, but can't seem to locate any back doors--?? Does anyone reproduce them or can you suggest a source for a NOS or used one?
I'm also open for suggestions on how to best redo the cabinet to original. Again, it's not popular enough to have a paint template anywhere that I've found, but I may be able to put one together myself as I'm someone handy with graphic arts.
I need to go to the hardware store and pick up some bolts to mount the backbox and then will see if she'll fire up--keep your fingers crossed for me!
Oh yeah, in addition to the machine I got the head off of a United Singapore bingo machine. Not sure if there's any reason to keep anything other than the backglass out of it?? I noticed that the one that's shown on ipdb doesn't show the sides of the cabinet, so maybe I can add something to the community.
Any advice or feedback would be appreciated. TIA!