Halloween

I already had last week's auction games in the garage, so I cleaned up Joust and Primal Rage, and rolled them out for the Trick-or-Treaters.

A lot of younger kids played "Primal Rage", so I was glad I'd dialed down the gore in the settings. A little girl told me "your house was my favorite", and that kinda made my night.
 

A few adults were interested in where I found the games, and whether I wanted to sell any. I think I need to put a FAQ on here for folks who are new to arcade and pinball collecting.

$12 buys a lot of parts

In my last post, I mentioned a vid that I got for $12:

Today I hooked its 25" monitor up to the working A51-Site4 next to it. At first, this is what I saw:

But after a few adjustments, I've got it looking pretty good:

 

There's smearing along the top third, but the tube (built in 1990) is looking pretty nice. Colors are correct and contrast is good. I'll order a capacitor kit for this, and then I'll be able to replace the 19" monitor with this 25" monitor. A 19" monitor just doesn't look right in a huge cabinet, no matter how nice the bezel is.

Arcade Auction!

Cherokee Music hosted an auction this Saturday. This was the first auction I actively participated in, and I learned a lot. First, I learned never to bid on stuff that I don't know the value of. 

I thought it was crazy to let a really nice Joust go for $450, so I bid $500. After fees and taxes, the final price was $600. Not bad, but not great, especially since I have no room for it.

Second, I learned that the best deals happen late in the day, after the crowd thins out. I picked up this Gottlieb "300" for $60 (after fees):

A good friend of mine was also interested in it, but he was a pal and didn't bid against me.

The second half of the auction was for items in the warehouse that weren't powered up for preview, so there were some good deals. I picked up this "Area 51: Site 4" for $240, and a junked "Area 51 / Max Force" for $12:

The junked game was my best deal for the day, because the boards and hard drive worked! I'm planning to try the monitor tonight, and if it works I'll put it in the Site 4 next to it. 

One gut-wrenching thing did happen to me, which leads to lesson #3: don't rent trucks from Home Depot to haul games. I got a beautiful "Primal Rage" in a minty cabinet for about $350. But even with 2 guys helping me unload it, we dropped it off the truck ramps:

The boards and monitor came through unscathed, so it's not a total loss. I'll probably try to repair the cabinet at some point. Very fun game.

Speaking of gut-wrenching, look at this stack of pinball backglasses:

I'm surprised that this wasn't in the auction, and I wish I'd offered the owner something for it.

More than 30 pins were auctioned off. Here are approximate final prices after fees/taxes (assuming cash sales) - thanks to Ken for hammer prices and notes, and Eric for adding more notes on condition (bb = buyback, in orange):

• Fish Tales 1 - $1380, nice but didn't power up
• Fish Tales 2 - $1680, this one had a wild touch up on one side, for the fade, and a few broken plastics
• Bugs Bunny - $2100,  a stunner
• Scared Stiff - $2500 (bb), looked ok, weak up kick, LEDs
• AFM - $2600 (bb), faded 3 sides, needs ramps
• Fun House - $1700 (bb) eyes didn't work, and the vuk was weak, faded cabinet, LEDs
• LotR - $3000, left flipper dead, and a lil chunk out of the ring hole
• Austin Powers - $1560, didnt see it playing
• WCS94 - $1440, will be nice after a shop job
• Slugfest - $600, bat was dead
• Maverick - $870, upper left part of DMD had issues
• FirePower 2 - $390, blown out playfield
• EarthShaker - $960 backglass was ready to peel at bottom left
• Mousin Around - $600, lots of wear near flippers
• Nascar - $1800, nice - good deal at that price
• Getaway - $870
• Rollergames - $600, pretty clean
• Mario Andretti - $1800, touched up front, siezed up flipper
• Party Zone - $720, DMD was out
• Striker Xtreme - $600
• Hollywood Heat - $300, working and decent
• Rescue 911 - $690
• Haunted House - $720, not working
• Shaq - $500 (bb)
• Dale Jr - $2000 (bb)
• Black Rose - $750, never saw this working
• Royal Rumble WWF -$600
• Comet - $240, clean, but sat there and hummed 
• Cyclone - $1000 (bb), wavy mylar
• Amazing Spider Man - $720, worn backglass, one missing insert
• Playboy - $ (bb)
• 8 Ball - $1200, worked well
• Kiss - $3000, looked pretty clean, think cabinet was repainted
• Dolly Parton - $625 (bb)
• Nugent - $650 (bb)
• Grand Prix - $360
• Rack em up - $120
• Dealer Choice - Pass (no bids)
• Lucky Ace - Pass (no bids)
• High Speed - $90 & $150, together they will make an ok machine
• 300 - $60, some flaking at bottom of BG, nice playfield and cab, not tested so may not work

A few more lessons I learned (hey, you've read this far)...

• Huge games go cheap; nobody wants them
• Keep your cell charged so you can look stuff up, and so your wife can reach you

Color mixing results

I mixed the Phthalo Blue and Dioxazine purple, as discussed in my last post:

 

I could tell right away that the shade would dry too dark, but I tried it anyway:

This was how dark it was wet, and I knew it would dry even darker. I wiped it up with naptha and a paper towel. I added a drop of Titanium White, and at first I was afraid I made it too light:

Actually, it still dried too dark. I added another half-drop of white, and then it was pretty much spot on. Here are a few sections that I touched up:

So is mixing based on the Magic Palette chart the only answer? Fortunately, no. I also bought this handy color matching guide, which showed that Cobalt Blue should be a great spot match:

I decided to try Cobalt Blue straight out of the tube, and it was almost identical to my mixture of purple, blue and white!

In summary, what have I learned?

• The Color Mixing Guide is great for matching hue, but I had to add white to get the right shade
• The Color Matching Guide more accurately matches the shades of artist colors out of the tube (for Liquitex "Basics", anyway).
• Don't bother with the Color Mixing Guide if you find a match with the Color Matching Guide.
• It only took a tiny amount of paint to touch up the entire playfield; a little goes a long way.

Note that the Color Matching Guide only has 36 colors (180 tints/shades), while the Color Mixing Guide has 841 (29 * 29 colors). I'd guess that most playfields originally used a small palette of artist colors, but these may have yellowed with age. This makes it necessary to tint the original color to match. Maybe Liquitex should sell a "cigarette smoke stain" hue. 

I'm hoping that someone can explain something. Why do these 2 color guides, from the same company, have two different shades/tints for the same color?

Color matching with "Magic Palette"

I'm not the first to use the "Magic Palette" to match colors, but I found a neat Photoshop trick I thought I'd share. I started with a picture of the MP on the playfield in good lighting:

Next, I created a swatch of the playfield color, using the marquee tool, and then I cut a hole in the middle of the swatch (again, with the marquee tool). This is what it looks like (it's in the middle of the picture):

This "playfield swatch" is in a different layer, so I could drag it anywhere without changing the rest of the picture. I moved it around until I found where it was hardest to see. It just about disappears into the square to its bottom right:

Then I just noted where this color was on the grid. It's the 16th column on the "dioxazine purple" row, which corresponds to "phthalo blue". 

Now I've got a choice: I can carry my MP chart into the art supply store to look for a good spot color match, or I can mix these 2 colors from a set of 36 Liquitex artist color acrylics I picked up at Sam Flax for less than $40:

I'm cheap, so I'll try mixing first. I'm also curious to see how well the Magic Palette works. More soon!

Centigrade 37

I really love C37. It has that classic Gordon Morrison artwork, a scifi theme, and two women with an interesting relationship. The bonus animation is really unique, and when you reach the top of the thermometer and reanimate the blond, the kickout hole is lit for unlimited Specials! I was 13 when this came out in 1977, but I don't remember seeing it then.

My backglass is a high-quality screened reproduction done by Ron and Nancy Webb. The old glass was flaking and faded, so I was really glad when these were released. 

I replaced the red and white thermometer ribbon with one that the previous owner made. The old one was pretty ugly:

Next, I tackled the rusty set of legs. I used my smaller wire wheel and "The Must For Rust", and finished off with "Nevr-Dull". The picture below shows how well this combination worked. I recommend a dust mask when doing this, because the air gets full of tiny metal particles - not so good for the lungs.

It's actually pretty amazing how well these cleaned up; they look brand new to me. 

The flipper buttons were removed and cleaned next:

Before - cruddy

After cleaning with Novus2 - shiny

After taking about 100 pictures, I stripped everything off the playfield:

I used short lengths of plastic tubing under the playfield, to hold the switches down:

The 1-way switch actuators will really gouge up your hands, so this is well worth the time. 

Some spots on the playfield will need touching up:

I've got an arsenal of art supplies to tackle this, starting with this small set of Golden acrylics:

The "Napthol Red Light" was a perfect match, so I really lucked out on that. Yellow and orange will be more difficult.

All of these pictures were taken about a month ago. I now have three major projects underway:

• Centigrade 37 (1977 Gottlieb)
• Space Mission (1975 Williams)
• World Series (1974 Chicago Coin)

I'll write more about World Series in my next post.

The humble coin door

It's great to see businesses trying a little harder in this economy. If I was hungry for an Italian sub (as I often am), this guy definitely would have gotten my $6.95:

I think it's actually "Giggity", but he tried to get my attention. I respect that. Maybe he was avoiding trademark infringement...

Coin doors don't get much consideration, even from most pinball collectors. The lights are low and the games are on free play, so we don't give them as love as other parts of the game. I more or less accepted this, until I found that Marco had new coin door "skins" for old Bally games. I just bought a Centaur with a beat-up door, so I thought I'd give it a try.

For those short on time, here's the "reveal shot":

If I'd just done the visible part of the door, this would have been a 3-hour job, tops. But the old door had coke or beer all over it:

The worst of it came off with Simple Green, but I decided since I had it apart, I might as well do a full-on restoration. Forget chemicals; all I needed to make these parts shine was a wire wheel, a drill and a lot of patience. The smaller parts went into my Berry tumbler.

I took about 50 pictures as I took it apart, and I'm glad I did. Putting it back together with clean parts was kind of fun, like assembling a puzzle I'd created. 

My other 80's Ballys probably won't get this much love, but I'll definitely replace the beat up old coin door skins. You can do this without removing too many bolts; you can tell which ones if you look closely at the picture above. 

The first time I reassembled the door I left out this little part (in the center of the picture):

I realized that it's important, because it braces the door so that it doesn't warp when you install the lock and tighten it down. So, I had to back up a few steps.

Happy restoring!

Mylar removal complete!

Wow, I really misjudged this mylar. The 2 pictures below tell the story: everywhere there wasn't mylar (even where the ball never went), the playfield looks like an old barn door:

But the areas protected by mylar look great. Check out the ball arch - no wear!

 

When I'm removing mylar on a game this old, I feel kind of like an archeologist at a dig. My main concern is not to damage what I'm trying to uncover. But I got a kick out of this spinner lane mylar:

Dirt trapped under mylar

Clearly, the guy was in a hurry to finish. I'm guessing the mylar picked up some dirt before it was laid down.

I lost a little paint on the lower playfield, but I did a better job with the upper playfield. The technique that worked best was holding the hair dryer close to the seam as I gently pulled the mylar toward me, like this:

I could pull up a few inches a minute this way. I eventually learned how hard I could pull without pulling up paint. If the mylar didn't move with that much force, I'd heat it up some more. I had to stop every 5 minutes or so to let the hair dryer cool down. 

The original pop bumper mylar was factory-fresh under the "after-market" mylar, so I just cleaned it up and admired it:

The mylar near the ball arch came off in one big piece:

After I got all the glue up, I gave the playfield one more good wipedown with naptha (lighter fluid). Here's the result (click on the picture to see the original image):

The next step for Space Mission will be to level the inserts. The inserts at the top of the game have shrunk so much, the ball gets trapped in them sometimes.

- John