Space Mylar

I've just started this blog, and I know it needs an introduction. But for now, I'll just dive right into my first post.

I bought this Space Mission from a local collector friend. I'm a sucker for space-themed pins. It's beautiful, isn't it?

The backglass is in amazing shape for a 1975 game, with just a little fade in the reds.

The playfield paint looks good too, considering that the play counter was over 80,000. Think of it: even at a dime a game, this pin brought in $8000 over its commercial life. Sadly, there's a curse on this old game: a really crappy mylar job.

In the last picture, you can see that someone cut a 2"x4" square out of the mylar in the bonus section (maybe even before the mylar was installed!). But even more inexplicably, someone decided to patch it up with a semicircle, so now there are 2 layers of mylar in some places, and no mylar in others.

(update: I think I figured out why they did this. The mylar must have been particularly nasty in that one area, so they cut it out with an Exacto and grabbed the closest thing that was available.)

 
But I never back down from a challenge, especially for a game this cool. In my next post, I'll share my success or failure at removing this nasty stuff.

- John