Removed 4 machines from a dilapidated barn that had a couple stairs missing which we ended up using 2x10 planks to wheel the dolly down. This was the easy part. Then came the section of floor that had caved in which was in-front the only exit. I used broken down 4x4 posts and additional planks to create a bridge from one side of the hole to the door. It was interesting to say the least. No person or machine got hurt that day.

Pics don't do it justice. Oh and one of the machines was a Midway Stunt Pilot. A very large EM arcade weighing about 300lbs.

IMG_4892 (resized).JPG

IMG_4893 (resized).JPG

Coffin storage facility.

Eight trips in total.
Did I win?

72719423-6CCD-4221-8C7E-DDAAB0513DBF (resized).jpeg

I sold a pin to a first-time owner. I offered free delivery and setup to ease her nerves.

She wanted it upstairs, up this right-angle steps with a landing in a house built in the 1800s.

I got it up halfway and realized the only way we can get this thing at the top is if we lifted it over a railing. I asked her to reconsider and put it downstairs, and that if she ever moved out she would have to figure out a way to get it out of there. She was adamant that it be placed upstairs. OK.

Three of us lifted it up and over the final railing, a move so crazy that I thought for sure it was gonna drop. Job done, it's in the room. That game isn't coming out of that house unless the railing is removed. If you want a Genesis, you gotta buy the home too.

Installed a pinball into the second story window of a hundred year old hand-built house.

We disassembled the window frame and used a very tall fork lift.

The window frame was wider than the doors. No other way to get it into the room.

The backbox had to be removed, but the cabinet slid right off the forks into the game room. Easy work.

We joked with the owner and told him 'when you need to move the pinball, don't call us!'

Almost.

If it had pavers and sand instead of wooden steps...

(Nice delivery spot! Impressive!)

Zoom in duuude! Those steps are only at the halfway point, for the neighbor’s house next door!

Got an IJ (widebody, heavy as shit), had to go up basement stairs w a 90 degree turn at the top - couldnt maneuver it on the dolly or turn it in any way - had to lift it straight up and move it sideways and up the last 2 stairs. In July. Son and I were soaked by the time we were done.

I had to squeeze a freebie Darling out of a junk yard once. Couldn't get to it from the outside, so I had to move it through the front office with no dolly.
However, this led to a customer of said junk yard offering me some other pinball machines. Which is how, a week later, I was pulling two Judge Dredd machines out of a very sketchy bone yard of harley parts. I still think it was maybe a makeshift chop shop. I shoehorned both of those widebodies into my van, which necessitated turning one on its side.
Then, there was the time I made a deal for some games with a couple of Hell's Angels in a really bad part of town. The lead guy, a hulking giant of a man in full leathers, wouldn't do the cash deal outside, for fear of being mugged. But I scored a Baywatch, Black Knight 2000 and Jokerz! out of it. Still have the Jokerz!

4 Aces came from a place called Paradise in the mountains of PA from a bunch of dudes in a very rundown shack.

It was some sort of summer house converted into a full time living quarters for about 7 guys.
It was a dirt road so narrow I couldn’t turn my trailer around, so these very nice county bumpkins literally picked up my trailer and rotated it 180°
That was pretty awesome. That game was devastated, but it was only $30.

Ro-Go came from some off-the-grid people, the guy used to work for NASA and build huge radar assemblies. Their house was bizarre, with huge radar dishes 50 feet across in the yard. The Ro-Go was on the porch for about 10 years, not in good shape!
That was only $17.50 so there’s no way I’d say no!

They were doing that monarch butterfly thing, so we moved this heavy beast through a muddy field of milkweed with hundreds of monarch butterflies fluttering around us!

It was a crazy experience, only one in which I wondered if I had gone too far.

Bad part of town to boot, guy had a sports bar he was renovating and was storing them for a funeral home. Imagine a bar, construction debris, a wall of coffins and a pinball game. Picked up a neon sign for $20 too.

From a gay bar. On the glass were traces of a butt. And the lock bar was kind of glued to the glass.

Jungle Lord out of the 6th floor of an ancient Brooklyn apartment building with tiny elevators, spiral stairs, and no key for the backbox to remove it

I have to do this every time I move a game in or out of the house. we have 2 sets of steps, 10 feet from one another - both have 90 degree turns and require a lift of between 4 and 8 inches. I finally built a platform.

Basement of a funeral home… owner kept it downstairs, next to the embalming table, to keep his kids occupied after school, while he worked. Loaded it onto a coffin cart to carry it upstairs and roll it to the car.

I removed a TFTC from a tattoo parlor. It was sort of strange, but everyone was super nice. I brought it home to a funeral parlor so that might be even more weird for some people

Middle of the summer.

Second floor of an abandoned barn…owned by a hoarder.

Nails popping up and raccoon poop all over the place.

Most of the time was spent throwing stuff around just to get to the machine.

I helped my friend Jesse retrieve a free Williams "Triple Action" from a soon-to-be-renovated commercial basement, with a dumpster waiting outside for cleared-out materials (and the machine if he had said no). A couple years later, after several months of not being told it didn't work, I pulled my dubious 6803 out of a billiards hall.

You might think these are completely unrelated operations, but they played out in a surprisingly similar way. TA was sitting on the floor under a canopy of dust, and we soon learned there were no backbox keys to be found. This could've been solvable with a drill, however we hadn't thought to pack one for the two-hour round trip. The cargo space of my SUV can fit a folded or disassembled game, but a game with the head upright is a no-go. Fortunately, the game had no coin door lock, and we proceeded to do the only sensible thing: Remove the glass, disconnect and pull out the playfield, then reach up into the neck to wiggle the head bolts free. Ultimately, we succeeded.

Now, my Special Force, which had been a nonstop headache since I purchased it, ended up at a pool hall. This was mainly due to my pinball partners really wanting to offer a game but having a limited supply of working machines at the storage shop, so of course it borked itself beyond sensible troubleshooting within a couple months of going on route. "But you have the keys," you might say. "How was that a problem?" Well, there was only one set of keys, and it was left with the hall owner in case of stuck ball troubles. It goes without saying that the keys vanished.

So, after drilling out the coin door lock and installing an old faithful single-bore 700, I attempted some diagnostics and decided almost immediately that it wasn't worth messing with on location. And that's where the real adventure started. See, with no backbox key, I had to drill out that lock as well, except nothing I used would get through it. I don't know what that lock was made of, but even after almost completely destroying it, it still held the backglass tightly in place.

With no other options, I pulled a Triple Action Rescue, removing the glass and pulling the playfield. By some miracle I managed to snag the head bolts with my wrench, twisting my arm around corners to work around the neck-mounted speaker (WTF, Bally??) and finally release the head. From there, I swept up the lock shavings, tied down the game with a ratchet strap, and loaded it onto my cart. Then I had to ask for help tipping it onto its wheels, because my entire weight on the back of the cart wasn't enough to move the ludicrously heavy cabinet (WTF, Bally??).

But after all was said and done, I wheeled the game out of the billiards room to my waiting car, where I tipped it onto the back bumper and pushed it up into the cargo compartment. Halfway.

Because a 6803 cabinet won't fit all the way into my car.

WTF, Bally.

As far as the other kind of awkward. Married couple having a domestic, the Pinbot needs to go.

At the end of the driveway on arrival. The game was NOT free. Wife had already taken roofing hammer to the top displays. Hammer marks on the wooden light panel insert.

I applaud your insanely complicated work here, but next time, just pop the back door off with a large flathead screwdriver or something similar. It's almost always incredibly easy to do. Worst case you might damage the top of the backbox a little but you'll next see it, it's in the back.

The wood is old and pliable, the locks are cheap and bendy, the back door will pop off without much effort in most cases. Unless the game is a mint condition show piece and you absolutely need to keep it that way, it's a pretty risk-free proposition.

I'll keep that in mind for the future. I suppose that would've made one of these two jobs easier.

My last house was terrible. Had to get pins in by going to the backyard (over grass), up 8 stairs on to a patio, through a 26” door (head had to come off) and down narrow stairs into the basement (had to remove railing each time). It was the reason I never sold machine and rarely got new ones.

When I moved last year, I took a saws-all to the door frame and just widened her out so I didn’t have to take the head off four machines. We were doing a bunch of fixes to sell so I just added “fix the door” for the crew. Hah.

New house - from driveway, six stairs into basement and plenty wide. My collection has grown from 4 to 7 and I can finally start selling/trading.

I had something similar but no damage to the machine. I have heard of this happening but first time I witnessed it. I paid the wife and started folding the head down getting ready to take the legs off and husband walks in the room yelling at the wife "I cant believe your doing this to me !" Then he turns to me and yells " You'll love it its a great f------- game!" The guys storms out slams the door. I thought the guy was doing to get a shotgun and kill me and his wife. Got the game and ran out. Never saw him again

I once got a free pinball machine; a Williams "Dealer's Choice".
Only thing; it was in a second story walkup apartment in Midtown Manhattan with super narrow stairways with curves at the upper and lower ends. Went to get it on a Sunday, figuring the traffic would be light. Of course it was, but the other side of that coin was that everyone with a car had it parked on the street. So, I had to park about three blocks away, and it was about 95° that day. Got to the machine, and it was pretty nice all around. I only had my 5/8" and 9/16" wrenches with me, and I forgot to first ask the owner if he had any keys. Well, he did not. I asked him if he had a screwdriver, the bigger the better, and he went looking for one in another room. As he was looking, I pulled out my key ring, and just for yucks and giggles, tried any key I had that might fit.
Unbelievably, the key for my truck's cap opened the back box lock as if it were made for it!
That was the easy part. What an ordeal getting that game down the stairway. The owner was a judge in NJ somewhere, and he told me he had a bad back and couldn't help me much. Luckily I brought ratchet straps, and had a reasonably decent hand truck, but it was impossible to get the game down the stairs without gouging the plaster walls with the edges of the lockdown bar. The guy was cool about it, and said not to worry about the walls.
I don't think I'd have been able to do it if it was today at my current age and condition. I was absolutely exhausted by the time I had finally hand trucked the head and legs to my truck, and it was all I could do to muster the strength to lift the four-player head onto the tailgate.
Then, I got into the truck which was about 130° inside by then!
Free, but I sure paid for it in sweat!

I bought a machine from a lady as her home was going into foreclosure since her husband apparently was convicted of a triple homicide.

I hope he wasn't home!

3rd story attic in New York City that was over 100 years old. NAVL charged me me an extra $200 just to get it down from there. Game was Skyrocket which I later sold.

This thread shows just how crazy we are in this hobby haha

I can’t believe you’re gonna be so casual and not give us any more info. That’s pretty wild!!!

Do you know the name? Sell it on eBay as “serial killer’s personal pinball machine” people would go nuts for it!!

Bought my Robo-War from a recently widowed elderly woman. The game was her husband’s.

I politely asked her if I could bring a friend over to help me load it, as she seemed sort wary of even letting a strange man into her house, let alone two.

After my friend and I loaded the game, I thanked her again for letting me bring my buddy along. She said “ohh, I was never really worried about that.” She then patted her hip, and pulled out a massive concealed gun.

I skedattled on outta there at light speed.

In Vermont most would have asked make and caliber before kindly showing our own.

I've hauled a few out of barns where I had to move a bunch of heavy items to get
to them. But the most difficult was from the semi-exposed basement in a house
built on the side of a steep hill (Sausalito, CA). There was no way to get it through
the house, had to navigate the steep, soggy ground on the side of the house. The only
way to move it was to take it apart. Took longer but no hernia.

The great equalizer! Way to go grandma!

One customer insisted on having his wcs94 in the attic, had to use a system of ropes and pulleys to get it up there, backbox off too ofcourse. Completely unnecessary too.. guy had a huge house with a huge basement and garage but his mind was just locked in. No way he ever got it down from there, never heard from him again.

Well....I remember this:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/difficult-place-to-pick-up-a-pin

Most of my pick-ups weren't too extreme.

Pulled a Touchdown out of a giant warehouse that had gaping holes in the walls. Luckily, moisture didn't get to it.

I pulled a second touchdown out of a late 1800s house way up on a hill. The steps leading up to the house were very uneven with larger than average riser heights between steps, making things a little tricky. But at least it was all downhill when hauling out the game.

Pulled a fire damaged DM out of a barn way out in farm country. It was a really nice, large, modern barn--not 100+ years old. The owners said they rescued the game from a hotel fire. It played blind and deaf, was covered in black dust, the backbox decals were heat damaged, and some (obtainable) plastic parts were melted. They said they sanded down the balls when they got rusty, and kept playing it.

I hauled an atarians out of someone's walk-out basement. However, street access was 20 ft up a steep grassy hill that was slippery and soggy. I ended up laying the game down on some cardboard on the hill and pulled it up by hand since the hand truck wheels simply sunk into the hill.

I hauled a star race out of a lake house. The path from the walk-out basement up to the driveway was a narrow path of slate stepping stones. Maneuvering an ultra wide body cabinet was a little tricky on the uneven path. Those ultra-wide gottlieb games are a really tight fit in my vehicle too.

I pulled a SFII out of a hasidic jewish mansion with a giant flight of stairs up to the front door. They had portions of the translite covered up for modesty. Luckily, I was going down the flight of stairs rather than up, but I still managed to wrench my shoulder on that one. There was a high drop from the front door's doorway onto the landing, and sys3 games are heavy.

Also, there's this Pinside classic: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/into-the-maw-of-dispair-true-account-of-my-latest-craigslist-nightmare

Gun culture is crazy different down here in these parts of the country! It totally caught me off guard!

I can understand where the nervousness comes from. If folks haven't been exposed throughout their life I'm sure it amplifies that nervousness. Of coarse there are people/places you encounter that you quickly decide you would rather not hang around by. Usually its obvious there is something not normal. My wife comes from a densely populated country where guns are almost always looked at in a negative light. Mainly because they are illegal and the only times you see them is when someone is committing a crime. Growing up in a small town in Vermont it was probably a 50/50 chance of encountering someone carrying while getting groceries, gas, or just going for a walk. Good chance it was someone you knew. Nowadays you see it less in public. Not because they aren't carrying but because they conceal them more often. Its a tool.

For sure! Not to derail, but when I lived in Montana, firearms were everywhere. You'd see them strapped to hips of tons of folks. I never really thought twice about it since it was completely normalized there. But over here on the coast where it's not even remotely close to being normalized, it was just not something I even expected to see from an elderly woman in a busy suburban New Jersey town!

Just read this for the first time.
My skin was crawling!

Perhaps this would help add to the story for those awkward moments...

2023-01-19 10_11_04-1990 Cadillac DeVille - barter - trade swap — Mozilla Firefox (resized).png

I have 2 that come to mind. Both were sales/delivery. First one was an old house in Gross Pointe MI. Right on the River. Not only are the houses expensive but back then they never came up for sale. This is where all the big 3 GM, Ford, and Chrysler top guys lived. With that said, the type of people who lived in those houses were all about status and never took no for an answer. This customer wanted games in her sons room on the 3rd floor in a converted attic space. Not pinball but NBA Jam and 3 player Off Road. Took several guys and the removal off a giant metal spiral staircase. Had to lift the games up through the hole about 12 feet. At one point the games were dangling by ropes and straps. That was 20+ years ago and I guarantee they are still there.
Next one wasn't hard but more situation comical. Had a guy buy 4 pinballs and didn't want his wife to know. We waited outside while he distracted his wife upstairs, then his son would signal us and we would hurry the games down the stairs. Took about 90 minutes because we sat by the door waiting for her to move between each game.

That's freaking hilarious!

Definitely Crazylevi's kitchen.