Quoted from ManyQuarters:Just brought a Bally Surfers home. I feel fortunate and thrilled!
It is now a never ever sell HUO, but I need serious advice.
This is a spectacular Zale/Kelley asymmetrical zipper-flipper creation. Congratulations!
My collection includes six Williams' games from that era. Two are restorations, with A-Go-Go and Moulin Rouge done by talented professionals. Three games, King Pin , Vagabond , and Olympic Hockey , saw heavy arcade duty, and Gulfstream saw home use, then lengthy inactivity.
Your game is going to have resale value because it is just a very popular game. Do you want your game to have optimal value for resale or do you just want to play it, and have it look decent, but not perfect?
I took a medium route with the latter set of games. I cleaned up the cabinets by getting rid of grime, lightly sanding them, filling large gaps with wood bondo, matching some paint, and then putting several coats of clear, satin polycrylic to seal the cabinet. I did some backglass painting on small spots with mixed results. The playing fields aren't perfect, but they work just fine for pinball. I've replaced some bumper caps and done some simple maintenance and cosmetic stuff on all of them.
I did not fill in the bumps and bruises on the cabinets, unless a corner or other larger areas were damaged or missing.
From your pictures, your game looks to be in very good shape. The weakest part is the paint job on the cabinet body. You may consider whether you want to spend the money on quality paint stencils and a new paint job. Only because you have a valuable game might it be financially smart to sand down and repaint the cabinet.
I agree with the previous poster, who has beautiful Surfer games, that the flippers and other smaller fixes should be done.
You have a nice, relatively small problem to solve. The good news is that you have a fantastic game to play whenever you want.