That's another fun risk of routing games.
Usually the place gets padlocked and you NEVER get your games back.
The Feds will lock a place down for taxes, the landlord will lock for rent, or some other government entity will close it down for some infraction.
Even if you are "best friends" with the owner or manager, they will never call and alert you. They have bigger worries than your pins when the lockout happens. They will never answer your calls, because they are embarrassed, and they don't know what happened to your games.
You call the police, they say it's a civil mater and they have no jurisdiction.
You call the corporate headquarters and after weeks of runaround you get someone that knows about the closed location. "Yes, we were forced to abandon that property due to unforeseen circumstances. We no longer have any legal right to enter the premises. You might talk to the owners of that property, let me see here, Al Binyiah LLC in Dubai, but, oh, it looks like the property was changing hands and that's why our lease was broken.... "
You call a local landlord and actually tell him you have two $8,000 pinball machines locked up in the building. He says "I think they cleaned that place out before it got locked." or "I don't know who you are, and honestly, I don't remember any pinball games". Maybe the landlord will agree to meet you next Thursday at 10am. This gives him time to take the games out, now that you've told him they are worth $8,000. You take the day off work, you take you son out of school to help you carry the games. You aim the flashlights around and the games are gone.
You call the State trying to find someone who will listen that they've locked up your games. After a week of runaround you get a totally disinterested employee who reads you the boilerplate paragraph about unsecured property claims at said location. He tells you that there are always 4 Soda Dispensers owned by Pepsi, 8 Upright coolers owned by Heineken or Bud, Pool tables and coin op darts in every location - that are normally considered abandoned when a property is seized. You press the matter further saying you are not a giant corporation. He tells you you can request a claims hearing in the state capital, three hours away. When you show up that day, it gets postponed a month because some party did not file something somewhere someplace. Your games are auctioned off at some point without you being informed.
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James "King of Cranes" lost a few Crane games when a movie theater chain went out of business and got padlocked.
8 years latter, a new owner bought the theater, and called James to "Get these things out of my building!".
The new owner made him take his two cranes but also forced him to take a few pins and a photo booth that were locked out too.
We joked that the extra machines were interest on the cranes that were not earning.