Hartford, CT
If all goes as planned, we will be closing on the sale of our old house about a week prior to Pintastic, which means my pinball budget will be fully restored and burning a hole in my pocket! I can't wait!! 
(Topic ID: 159542)
You're currently viewing posts by Pinsider dawezl.
Click here to go back to viewing the entire thread.
1 week later
Quoted from dannunz:On Saturday afternoon, the games will be auctioned by Ralph
Labozzo (Mass. License AU2630) for a cash sale.
As an inexperienced noob anticipating having a healthy pinball fund by the time Pintastic rolls around, do people really show up with thousands of dollars in hand? Or is there some sort of escrow service that people use for larger transactions? I'm still bummed about a $20 bill I dropped in a taxi cab 15+ years ago--I can't imagine how I'd feel if I lost my entire pin fund!! 
Quoted from dannunz:Another first! Pintastic 2016 on site PINBALL FINANCING!!!
Have you wanted to purchase a pinball machine but didn't want to fork out a huge lump sum. With many of these new games costing close to $10,000 I had an idea!
You may remember that we had a financial institution at the 2015 show. They are back this year and have arranged on-site game machine financing direct to our vendors! If you are considering the purchase of a machine and don't have enough cash on hand, ask the vendor if they have a time payment package. Bring your pay stubs for quick low-rate on the spot approvals!
Hah, jinx!
1 month later
Quoted from dmarston:I'm designating 9:00 PM on Thursday, July 7th. We'll meet in the foyer outside the Ballroom, toward the back. ForceFlow (a Pinside moderator) plans to be there. If there seems to be demand for a serious discussion, I can find a later time slot for a follow-up meeting. Please come prepared to state your real name! This is social, but it's also an opportunity to build trust within the community.
.................David Marston
I'm also not getting there until mid-day Friday as well. Booooo!
Yay! Can't wait!! 
I won't be around on Thursday for the official Pinside meetup, but I should be pretty easy to spot since I'll be the nerdy girl with really short, colorful hair and glasses, occasionally with my son in tow, and generally playing crappy. I answer to any form of "Weasel" or "DaWezl" among other things, lol. Feel free to say hi if you see me! 
Had a great time yesterday, and gearing up for another great day today! It's been amazing to see how far Pintastic has come in such a short time. I'm sure Gabe, Dave and everyone else involved in planning are probably pretty exhausted right now, but they all deserve a huge round of applause for putting together a terrific event with lots of great speakers!
I've also had a lot of excellent conversations with other attendees. It can be a bit intimidating to be fairly new in such a complex hobby, but everyone I've spoken with has been amazingly supportive, helpful and encouraging. I didn't catch a lot of Pinside names, but I really appreciate the warm welcome!
Finally, tons of thanks to everyone who has brought their games to the Free Play area! It's so much fun to try out all sorts of different machines, many of which I'd never heard of before. I definitely appreciate the effort and expense involved in getting them all here, plus the tech support keeping them all running smoothly during the show.
But enough blather! Almost time for early entry to the halls, which means MORE PINBALL! 
Quoted from Crispin:Big thanks to Tony who helped me with Congo. He texted me an alert during dinner that the switch was down and could he inspect inside the pin. He confirmed the switch was bad and when I finished eating he quickly installed a new switch which he had on hand. Big thanks to Shawn for helping me get Congo off the floor!
The whole tech team was really great but Tony definitely went above and beyond! Mattmarr mentioned how NGG had an issue with one of the posts on Friday that was repaired in his absence. When we came back for the final pickup, the problem had resurfaced. Tony took the time to fully troubleshoot the entire assembly, fix another small problem that cropped up *and* walk me through some basic things that I can do to help keep it running smoothly. I can't thank him enough for helping us out!!
Besides that moment, the entire tech team was extremely organized and on top of things. I reported a couple of issues that I came across, and in every case, the machines were back up and running soon afterwards. For anyone considering bringing games to share in the Free Play area next year, know that the tech support at Pintastic is superb!
I've already said how much I enjoyed the show, but some thoughts I had in no particular order:
1. The hallway with the Super Smash Bros Tourney would be a great location for a larger daily schedule to be posted.
2. I'm curious if you have a sense about the (rough) proportion of local walk ups vs. planned pre purchased attendees. With all of the family activities, there seem to be a lot of people who might be new to pinball just coming by for something fun to do. I've already chatted with Dave about scheduling the Noob lectures at times when people are more likely to be off work, but I'm thinking it might also be really great to have time set up where someone opens up a machine and shows people around. Even simple stuff like how to remove the lockbar--my husband looked at me in amazement that I knew how to pop it open bc it wasn't obvious to him--but also pointing out switches, steppers, etc. If there's a lot of noobs, helping them understand the basics of pinball ownership would be a good gateway into the hobby.
2 1/2. There's also a marketing idea to pull together a "pinball tool starter kit" with some standard useful tools, some wax and cleaner, and some clean cloths!
3. The onsite financing was super easy for me to use when I unexpectedly decided to up my budget to buy NGG. (Hopefully Mattmarr has found it as simple as I did!) It might be great to call it out down in the free play room with a "Like it? Take it home today!" sign, bc I know that until recently I didn't realize that pin sales were cash only. If you decide at 3pm on a Saturday that you want to spend an extra $1500, you really can't just pop over to an ATM and withdraw it. It would also be good to explain how it works to the sellers when they are setting up their machines bc its not as straightforward for them as getting cash.
4. From the buyer's perspective, $35 is not a huge deterrent overall for removing a $1000+ machine early, but I can also see that upping it might disproportionately hit sellers, since many buyers will say "forget it" if they can't leave right then. Maybe a small extra incentive for buyers as well, like inclusion in the Thank You drawing?
5. Thinking of car shows, it is really neat when people share pictures of a restoration process and then you can see how it's ended up. There's not a lot of space in the free play room, but it might be fun if there was poster board available to post restoration stories in the hallways.
I think that's it for now, lol. Love the event and have already blocked off next year on my calendar!
Quoted from rkahr:Over in the Northwest show thread I've read the show will COME GET your game and BRING IT BACK if you are willing to put it in freeplay during the show. I think their radius is pretty tight (less than 100 miles), but it seems to be a big success out there. What if Pintastic could use (pay) the official transport company to offer a similar opportunity? This year the official transport was Ray from Games on the Go, so let's use him as an example:
1. Ray does his long-haul loops to collect what people want to meet at the show. He gets to Sturbridge 2 days ahead of the show and his haul is unloaded into a holding space at the hotel.
2. Show coordinates a couple of local routes for him to run (and labor for the ride) to collect freeplay games. You guys know the geography and population areas, so perhaps runs paralleling interstates make more sense than a radius... the goal being to fill the trailer without a lot of time consumed.
3. Games are in freeplay for duration of show. Ray uses his storage space to deliver the long haul games he brought and to collect the outgoing long-haul games.
4. Post-show, local game-return loops are run.
5. After the local loop(s), long haul is loaded and away Ray goes.
Lots of details to sort out (eg., $$$, what if local is one-way b/c of sale, etc.), but there is a model to follow out in Tacoma. Maybe a show volunteer/employee could even reach out to CL "For Sale" posters in the month(s) ahead of the show to try to populate the local route(s) from people who might not even know the show exists.
-Rob
-visit http://www.kahr.us to get my daughterboard that helps fix WPC pinball resets or for Wiliams system 3-7 sound board potentiometer solutions
I would not be against sharing a game or two next year, but I have weak T-Rex girl arms, so moving a pin anywhere is a huge issue for me. When next year's show starts being planned in earnest, if I can coordinate with someone to help get my machines out and back into my (first floor) house, I'd be up for bringing them.
You're currently viewing posts by Pinsider dawezl.
Click here to go back to viewing the entire thread.
Reply
Wanna join the discussion? Please sign in to reply to this topic.
Hey there! Welcome to Pinside!
Donate to PinsideGreat to see you're enjoying Pinside! Did you know Pinside is able to run without any 3rd-party banners or ads, thanks to the support from our visitors? Please consider a donation to Pinside and get anext to your username to show for it! Or better yet, subscribe to Pinside+!
