that kind of exists at
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!forum/Michigan-Pinball-League

I think mrbally is referring to this:
http://vfwpinball.com/?p=128

Video of the Ann Arbor pinball museum, which is about 4 miles directly south of the Arcade. About 200 machines set up and restored.

would anyone be interested in trading a nice fishtales for a pinball magic? (i've been looking for a PM for some time.)

A little off topic but the Ann Arbor Pinball Museum show (May 16-18) now has advance tickets available. Remember this is a limited event (not a cattle call), so once they are gone, that's it. This keeps attendance numbers at a workable number so there aren't lines or just too many people.
Show info: http://vfwpinball.com/?p=128
Tickets: http://vfwpinball.com/?page_id=179

Thanks guys! we're really trying to make this the best show in the midwest with no over crowding and a guaranteed number of games. the facility is set up for pinball too, so it's not like a transplanted room of games going to a hotel or conference room. and heck we don't have to beg people to bring games. (i always hated dragging games to shows myself, or having to say "no i can't this year" and then having the guilt trip that i wasn't a "good pinball citizen" for not bring a game.) That's the worst thing about pinball shows is dragging/setup/tearing down games. my back hurts just thinking about it! since we're a dedicated venue we don't have to deal with that. also that constant nagging from show promoters really gets old. moving games is the quickest way to lose friends. ha!

In regards to Craz's post... i'm just pointing out the facts. "Traditional" pinball shows' model is frankly flawed. Depending on people to bring games is a weird situation. Back in the day, when games were plentiful and not that expensive, you saw a lot of machines come to shows. now as games are harder to find, not as many for sale, and frankly very expensive, why would some one bring a Medieval madness to a show? or a cactus canyon? or a big bang bar? or a cirquis voltaire? or a Flipper Cowboy? or a Neptune? or a Mermaid? or a 1950s pitch and bat? or a 20 foot ball bowler? but ALL these games are guaranteed to be at the Ann Arbor pinball festival. In fact, you can go to the web site and see *exactly* what games will be there. There's no "gee i wonder" situations about what will show up. And what the quality of games will be. As we're a museum with a full scale on site restoration and parts department (probably the biggest pinball parts department in the state of michigan, or even the mid west.) http://www.vfwpinball.com/games.php

And frankly most people go to shows for one reason - to play pinball. the other seminars and stuff are nice, but it's not the reason people really go to a show (except for maybe pinball expo in chicago, as they have the best seminars, and no one is going to beat their gig in that arena.)

And yes there will be vendors at the show. There's no charge to be a vendor, it's free. this encourages vendors to come and show their wares.

Also we limit the number of people coming to a set number. So there aren't too many people and lines. again we are trying to come up with a show model that is optimal. something different to provide the best possible show experience.

our venue is dedicated too. meaning it set up for pinball. it's not a hotel, it's a pinball venue, designed for pinball. that means no extension cords. proper power for all the games. and on a scenic treed 10 acres so if you want to go outside for a coke, it's pleasant and casual. it's not in some strange parking lot in a mini mall or hotel concrete lot.

we are trying to present the best possible pinball show. I think after you see it, you'll agree this is a different model, and one that is sustainable and optimal. is it perfect? no, nothing is. but i challenge any show to have a better venue with a better selection and number of games. (and without the public having to haul their own games around, which is just a hassle, dangerous, and expensive.)

So far Sunday and Friday have far less people signed up than Saturday at the Ann Arbor pinball showcase. Again unlike other shows Sunday is a viable day. At normal shows Sunday is break down day or games are sold. But again we're not in that model, so Sunday should be just as good as Friday from a game count point of view. But any day should be fine as we cap the number of tickets issued so there isn't an over crowding issue.

hyperball also likes to break a lot too. kicking around 100 steel balls very quickly does that. the gun overheats easily, and the plastics (30+ years old) break. it's not really pinball but a gun game in a pinball like cabinet. uses a different boardset too (compared to system6/7 of that era.) and yea it gets old rather quickly. noisy game too, there's no volume control for the pleating balls!

personally i would not buy hyperball for 175. there aren't a lot of parts similar to other games either, so it's not really a good parts donor unless you need those parts for another hyperturd.

Obviously my view is slanted, but the May 16-18 Ann Arbor pinball showcase festival is really where it's at. There are 200 games guaranteed, without over crowding. It's on 10 acres too so there will be outside activities as well in a very nature/scenic environment, game giveaways, flee market, free vendor space, 25 cent casual tournaments, etc. And no one is asked to bring a game. It really is a best case situation of shows. We're trying to be even more casual than Kalamazoo, which is my benchmark for the most fun/lowest stress show on the planet, but with more games.

http://www.vfwpinball.com

I can't handle crowded shows either. the chaos that ensues makes it a non-fun experience for me, so i avoid shows with big numbers. especially shows that get their big numbers from the general public. not that this is bad, but if there's going to be crowding, i would rather have it be with people that enjoy pinball 365 days a year (and that i share my hobby of playing/fixing/restoring), opposed to the masses that think about pinball just 1 day a year. That is i like shows that are marketed towards pinball collectors and players, versus general masses. i know that sounds weird... maybe that doesn't make any sense... But this is why we're not doing big promotions or radio/tv ads or any of that stuff. Sticking to advertising by word of mouth and in pinball related blogs/publications/vendors. I mean everybody wants their show to be successful. but we just don't want it to be a victim of success and be so crowded there are lines for every game, you can't move, it's too hot, smelly, etc etc. If in the end only a handful of people come, so be it. We would rather have under expectations in crowd numbers than too many people.

That's why the Ann Arbor show is pre-sale only. When we reach reasonable numbers, sales of tickets are automatically turned off. This way we can't over sell the show. If sold out, and you show up without a ticket stub, you don't get in. It's like a concert, you don't sell more tickets than seats.

Thanks for supporting the VFW show guys! Just 12 tickets left for saturday, then it's sold out! So if saturday is the day you want to go, i highly suggest getting a ticket on the website ASAP. Still a lot of tickets available for friday and sunday. web site for info/tickets: http://www.vfwpinball.com

Don't forget the Ann Arbor pinball show May 13-15, 2016. There will be 300 restored games to play. Limited ticket sales to keep game-to-people ratio very nice.
http://vfwpinball.com

Two weeks...

You are most welcome and thank you!
This year we gathered nearly 1700 pounds of canned goods for the Food Gathers of Ann Arbor.
We nearly filled a Ford full size Explorer with food (even the front seat.)

Stay tuned too... we may be doing a Toys for Tots event in December. Still working on that idea...

food (resized).jpg

Ok confirmed on the Toys for Tots vfw event. It's Saturday December 10th, 2016 from 8pm to midnight. Bring a new toy for donation to Toys for Tots, and get into the vfw (brighton MI) to play pinball for the evening. We provide food and drink (but if you want to bring a dish to pass or a pizza, that is always appreciated.) Scott Randall from WRIF is our co-host for the evening (Scott has a thing for the Toys for Tots charity). He will be handling the toys and taking them to Toys for Tots headquarters at the end of the evening.

If you have any questions or would like to RSVP (appreciated) please direct email me at
[email protected]

thanks for attending and bring toys for the Scott Randall's "rock for tots" (aka toys for tots) gig!

Yea we could not open the other two buildings because the weather did not permit it. There was ice outside and it just was not a good idea, as we were worried someone may slip moving between the buildings. The other buildings are not just EMs though, they are about 1/2 solidstate (the entire solid state Zaccaria collection for example is in one of those buildings.)

Ann Arbor pinball show May 5-7, 2017 is coming up. Saturday is sold out. Still tickets for Friday and Sunday though, but even those numbers are getting thin. If you want to play 350+ restored games in a limited attendance environment, this is your show. There are also pinball tournaments Friday and Saturday. Tickets at the web site http://www.vfwpinball.com

Black Friday is coming

VFW black friday event November 24th, 8pm till midnight. this is a charity event. Come play the VFW games in the main building.

Admission requires a few things...

1) Canned food item for donation to the Ann Arbor Food Gathers.
2) a toy for the Toys for Tots charity.
BOTH of these things are required.

On the canned food, it must be valid and not out of date! If you're bring stuff from your pantry, check the date. If you show up with food that is out of date, it can not be accepted, and entry will be prohibited. This has been a problem in the past, we need to monitor it better (and will try to do this at the door.)

On the toy, we suggest visiting their FAQ web page at
https://toysfortots.org/frequently_asked_questions/Default.aspx#11
for ideas on toys and the age groups, etc. Note it must be a *new* toy up to age 12, and no weapon style toys.

We were thinking of requiring people buy a 'ticket' for like $1,$2,$3 (?) to manage the numbers better via paypal. Because we never know how many people will show up to this. What do you guy think of that?

i believe you can still use paypal as payment and just input a credit card. i don't think you need an account (assuming we set it up correctly!) the problem with just "winging it" is... we have no idea how many people are coming. this presents a problem with planning and knowing how many people to have there for help. it's a crap shoot that way. somehow need to control that, and requiring a 'ticket' (even if just $1 or $2 or $3) would manage that. we would also have everyone's name, which keeps more control on things. also my insurance agent prefers we do it this way. though we've never had any problems, i would like to keep it that way...

just i look at Dayhuff's party, and the lack of RSVPs he gets, yet the numbers that show up tend to be big. this is just a further indicator that we need to do something, because people just don't RSVP. Having a "ticket" that you had to pay for, pretty much guarantees that the person is serious about coming. It seems to be a good plan to do this...

We all talked about this last night and came up with some limits/ideas.

we want to make it a 100 people max event. any more and it's just too much work and too much stress on our people. we like to make it comfortable but not stressful.

so how do you limit it to 100? can't really just say, "first 100 in and turn others away." That's unfair to someone that drove a hour to get there.

I don't like the RSVP system because people will just RSVP and then not show. Because they have no skin in the game. When this happens it locks out someone that really wanted to come.

So using the paypal inventory cart system, i can put a limit of 100 ticket at some dollar amount. this means you bought a ticket (skin in the game), and chances are good they will show up. So we kill two birds with that stone, in that i can limit the event to say 100 people, and chances are excellent that most (all?) will show up.

The down side is is of course if you don't have a credit card (i'm not sure anyone doesn't have a visa/mastercard??), they can't attend. But that's a pretty limited downside. And i guess an email to me could solve that problem if someone really had no paypal or credit card.

Anyway that's the thinking on this... Comments?

Another idea that someone came up with was to have a $10 ticket fee which is refundable at the door. So you have to buy your ticket ahead via a credit card cart system, but you get it back in cash or PayPal refund at the door. That would ensure that someone would show up. And if they didn’t, then they lose their $10

Really don’t want to handle any money for this event. Handling money slucks would rather handle toys and food goods for the desired organizations. That’s why the refund at the door thing is appealing. PayPal’s card system can manage the Number of people in limited to 100. But it’s kind of a hassle because now requiring people to do three things. One get a ticket. Two get canned goods. Three get a toy. It’s kind of a lot to ask

We dropped the ticket idea. We’re just going to try this year without and hopefully it doesn’t spin out of control. Anyway this is the only place I will mention the Black Friday event. It’s November 24 from 8 PM to midnight, Which is Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving).

To attend you need to do two things.

1. Bring canned food items. They must be in date. That is don’t bring expired stuff left over in your pantry. Proteins always work best for this. Proteins are hardest thing for food gatherers to come by. So anything protein related in cans is much appreciated

2. A new, unwrapped toy, for toys for tots. No weapon type items. And please don’t buy the stuff at the dollar store. Get something halfway decent.

3. Also if anyone wants to bring a dish to pass that would be great too. We will have some food available but if you bring some cookies or pizza, these things are always appreciated. We will have pop beverages available so you don’t need to bring those

Note if the quality of your items is subpar, you will be refused entry. That is don’t be a cheapskate. These are charity items at a time year when people need things the most. Please be generous with your heart. And in return you get a night of pinball at the VFW.

I can’t stress this enough. Here we are collecting pinball machines that are worth a lot of money. The least we can do, once a year, is to give back to the local community, with nice can goods and a decent toy for an underappreciated child.

I apologize in advance if these things seem too overwhelming for people to get a hold of. We are looking for people with big hearts for this evening of pinball fun. Those that can only see the negative side of this, we’re not looking for you. Again this is a charity event, we get nothing out of it. We are just providing the venue and the games and the collection point for these items. In return you get to play 200 games for an evening.

if you have any questions direct email me. No PMs. [email protected]

In addition, screaming Scott Randall from the radio station WRIF will be a greeter at the door. He’s handling all the toys for the toys for tots charity. We are trying to get Arthur Penhollow to come too. If you remember him back from the older WRIF days he is quite a personality

Sorry spoke too soon. Black Friday event is canceled. Sorry for the confusion

it's really simple. We have zero tolerance for assholes. this event gains us personally nothing. actually it's just the opposite. i have to spend several hundreds of dollars to get an insurance waver, because you know, some drunk dickhead will manage to burn the place down or push their buddy into a machine and hurt them, etc etc. It also consumes a fair amount of time, energy and other resources to do this event. There's nothing in it for us other than the charity aspect.

And even the charity aspect has its limits. about 1/4 of the food gets thrown out because people are so cheap, they get out-of-date crap from their pantry and use that as their donation. If the food wasn't good enough for you (or your dog or even rats), why would you think it would be OK for people in need? Same thing for the Toys for Tots aspect. Look *i* can go to the dollar store and buy 100 crap toys for $100 too. There's really no point in that, now is there???

The VFW is probably one of the top 5 pinball collections in North America. If the people in michigan don't want to partake and share in the experience, or just want to be dicks, i guess that speaks volumes about their net worth. I saw a TON of people at Dayhuff's for example that i've never seen at the vfw. Now why is that? because Dayhuff's is free and we require a charitable donation? Perhaps. Maybe there are other reasons, maybe they don't know about the event. Hence the post in the Dayhuff thread (after that event was OVER), which seemed like a relevant place to post that info (since we're only about 1 hour from Dayhuff's)... but none of the reasons people don't come are probably good reasons. I thought people here were interested in PINBALL. Apparently that's just not the case...

A lot of work, money, time, energy goes into the VFW. There are literally millions of dollars invested. And we can only be open a few times a year to the public. But frankly if no one here gives a crap about any of that, and they just want to sit home, i guess that tells us something. But what it tells me is it's not worth the trouble to post to this group. it's just wasted time and energy. Frankly i have better things to do and better people to help.

sorry for the rant...

Anyone with any serious interest in some sort of charity pinball event please send me a direct email. Kicking around some other ideas over thanksgiving weekend. Not going Into details here for obvious reasons. But if you want to be involved email me direct, please no p.m. [email protected]

Thank you Mr. pmWolf. We’re trying to come up with something that works for everybody

Incentivized giving is always desirable. It causes people to do things that they may not normally do. That is the whole point of this and I’m surprised that some people just can’t see that.

I don’t think anybody cares what Scott does or does not do. That’s really not the point. The point is that he bags on what other people are trying to do to be helpful. that just makes him look small, regardless of his efforts in other areas and at other times. There’s really no point in it and No one seems to understand the reasoning

We (ok i mean Todd) dropped the food off at the Ann Arbor Food Gathers today. Here's the stats over the last 4 years we have been doing this....

2014 - Slightly less than 700 pounds of food
2015 - Slightly less than 1300 pounds,
2016 - 1693 lbs
2017 - 1344 lbs

That's over 5000 pounds of food since we started this!

For this year we were slightly down in total food weight, but the quality was way up. There were lots of proteins (opposed to cans of green beans, i mean who eats green beans for dinner?) Also we combined with Toys for Tots too, and Scott Randall (local radio station DJ "screaming scott" at WRIF) filled his F150 bed with toys. Toy giving was definitely up. And overall quality of toys and food was much better this year.

I think combing the two events (Toys for Tots and Food Gathers) may not be the best approach to maximize intake. But Toys for Tots has a cut off of like December 10th, so it's difficult to do two different events in that time frame (Black Friday being day after Thanksgiving.)

Anyway next year we'll re-think this (yet again) and surely come up with some improvements/ideas.
thank you to all that participated.

food2017 (resized).jpg

The Ann Arbor MI pinball show is coming fri-sun May 4-6, 2018. Tickets are pre-sell, and limited. Just a heads up, they are selling very fast. If you want to go to the show, get a ticket (now or soon.) For example, the Friday EM tourney is already sold out and Saturday is more than 1/2 way to sold out. We limit tickets so there's always games to play with no lines and no over crowding.

400 games on free play. One of the biggest shows in the country by game count. Tickets and information available at
http://www.vfwpinball.com

We'll have glass for sale at the Ann Arbor show. But glass has gotten expensive. unless i can find a better source, it's $40 a sheet (like Abel's pricing.) I used to buy them for $12 each not too long ago, but apparently those days are over.

Ann Arbor pinball museum mini-pinball show on Saturday Sept 29th. One day show. come check it out and play over 400 pin games. Limit tickets so get your reservation at http://www.vfwpinball.com

If any of you guys want to come to the saturday Sept 29th Ann Arbor VFW mini-pinball show, please get your ticket reservations ASAP. The number of remaining tickets is getting pretty thin....
http://vfwpinball.com/?p=128

Black Friday charity pinball at the VFW Nov 23rd, 7pm till 11pm. Toys for Tots is the charity this year. You need to get a ticket reservation and an unwrapped ($20) toy to come play free pinball that night. Details at http://vfwpinball.com/?p=128