Archive for August, 2007
Spanish Eyes, Bronco Pinball Machines in Greenwood IN
Today was the first of two busy days for auctions coming up.
I wasn’t sure how much a Williams Spanish Eyes or a Gottleib Bronco (1977) were worth. I started to do some research, because they were close and there could be a limited audience of really educated buyers. I knew they were both old enough to be EM’s, so the demand on them would probably be sketchy.
My research from past pinball posts on the Google groups said that Spanish Eyes was a more fun and challenging pinball of the two than the Bronco. If I was lucky I might get $400 for the Spanish Eyes, and the Bronco for $350 depending on condition of course.
But I emailed a guy in my network, who I think must also have access to the Mr. Pinball price guide, and gave me a different story. The Bronco could go for as much as $675 and the Spanish Eyes for $500.
Now, seeing that I would flip them, and I am interested in having a ton of money tied up in the machines, the likely hood that I am going to get them is low. I watch a lot of people checking the games out. Both of them turned on, but had a relay problem? Both had a clicking sound constantly happening, like a new game and ball should come out but didn’t. They were in some model homes for a builder here locally, I don’t know what happened to them.
So, in the end, the Bronco auctioned for $400, and the Spanish Eyes went for $235. The Spanish Eyes could probably have made me some money, but the body had some scratches and some wear around the buttons. The Bronco was in great condition.
I let them go. I need a great deal to mess with them. There is that excitement when it comes time to bid, that was enough to start to think about owning them and learning a little more.
J. Scott Campbell Head Sketch – G.I. Joe Baroness
I got an awesome surprise today!
Our close friend, and well connected comics enthusiast David Wray called on Saturday to let both Christine and I know that he had a surprise for us. He got us the 2007 J. Scott Campbell Sketchbook at the Wizard World Chicago convention.
But, then later on in the day he found out that J. Scott would be doing sketches tomorrow, and he was going to try to get in line.
Well, turns out that they were just quickie sketches, but who cares. He stood in line to get one and was able to score one for the both of us! How exciting is that!
David is networking, trying to break into the comics business as and Editor I believe. I wish I could do more for him in that arena, because he always takes care of his friends without asking. He is always thoughtful, and looking out for others best interests. I have to believe that would translate really well to being an editor. Working with the different artists, being a liason between them and the company.
He hasn’t been doing networking for too long and he has already made a ton of progress. He also has a great resume having done Public Relations for a comics periodical based out of Cincinnati, OH.
Well, either way, I could sing his praises all night. Thanks David, you’re the best.
Nobles Visit – Day 3
With no church in the morning, I thought it might be nice to take a “mystery” trip and take everyone to Long’s Donuts. I tried to take a back way to throw Sarah off and make it a surprise for everyone. But there aren’t that many ways to get there so she didn’t stay fooled for very long.
That was the first time they had Long’s and they liked them quite a bit. Most people do notice at least that they are a higher quality donut for a great price.
After our sugar binge, we tried to find something to do. We did some poking around on the internet, but most things opened at noon so that didn’t give us much time if they wanted to leave around 2:00 pm. We thought about going to a water park or to an area to swim, but again, it came down to 2 hours wasn’t enough time so we just skipped it.
So instead, we played some sequence and talked. It was a lot of fun, and more lively, sometimes sequence can be a quite deliberating game.
We had some lunch, burgers, salad and watermelon and they were on their way.
Soon after they left, Sarah went up to school to work in her room. I worked on my blog, updating some other information and sent out some emails to some contacts.
All the while I was trying to finalize our plans for tonight. David was stopping in on his way back from Chicago, and Christine and I were going to try to meet him for dinner. We all met up at Target first, the GI Joe 25th anniversary figures are out and David wanted to see if they had any.
From there we went to El Mason, a Mexican restaurant down off Emerson by County Line Road. The food was good, I was pleased. It was just a short dinner, you could tell that David had been “on” all weekend and both he and Kevin were tired. We had a couple of laughs, and got to see all of the cool presents David brought us, including J. Scott Campbell head sketches and sketchbooks. (I wrote all about that in my comic section).
When I got home Sarah still wasn’t back. I scanned my sketch and found an image of the sketchbook and made a post online. That took me forever for some reason. Sarah came home and was in a good mood. She had gone through a lot of stuff in her room and really felt prepared. She sorted through all sorts of old books, and boxes that last year she had just stashed or hidden in her class room because of time.
Then I had one other thing I had committed to doing that involved some heavy thinking and concentration. I didn’t finish with that until 11:30. Sarah and I had a glass of cataba, thanks Christine, talked more about our days and then went to bed.
Many arcades this week at Grand Rapids
Pretty exciting. I popped out on Monday like I normally do to see if there was anything.
Well, there are a ton of games, all starting around $25.
They have a Ms. Pac, Jr. Pac (conversion), Galaga, Qbert, Mr. Do! (Pac-man cab), Arkanoid, Centipede Cabaret and Lethal Enforcers. I have a feeling I might seriously bid on the Galaga depending on condition. Supposedly it works. The Ms. Pac looks like it has great color in the sideart too, and Qbert is just a cool game.
We’ll see how this develops, I have until Thursday to decide.
Nobles down for a visit – Day 2
With all of the wine the night before, I wasn’t sure how this morning was going to go at the gym. But I wasn’t affected by the early time (partially because the dog woke us up before 7).
I met Dave at the gym at 8, and Sarah took the time to go shopping.
We all ate breakfast together when we got back, I made blueberry pancakes as a fun little treat. Then it was time to make a decision about what we were going to do. We could go to the pool for a little bit with Lori and Kenny or we could go to the movies.
We decided, because of the time frames, to go to the movies. We saw Ocean’s 13. Pretty good, not as good as the last one (my favorite) though. And, we had about 10 minutes of the movie, just when it was getting good, where the sound went out. But what are you going to do? Ask for a two dollar return ticket? I don’t want to put the movie theater out of business.
From there, we dropped the girls off at the baby shower. The guys came back, dinked around in Best Buy and looked at tv’s and computers and guy stuff. On the way back to pick up the girls, I stopped for some Culver’s. Very good on such a hot day.
We had some lunch back at the house and just hung around and talked. It is unbearable outside. All you have to do is take two steps and the backs of your knees are like little rivers. We decided to go to church tonight for sure, so we headed out aroudn 5:30.
After church we had a little excitement, which I don’t think I should go into detail here. I’ll just say that we had to spend a little time outside and some angry wasps were involved.
Sarah started dinner soon after we got back inside, we had pork, corn on the cob, and a homemade cherry pastry desert and celebrated Ryan’s birthday. It was an embarrassingly late celebration, but he is a really good sport.
After dinner, it was time for a little bit of Phase 10 with a time limit. Ryan won, stinker.
Then I went out to get a movie, returning Miami Vice and got Let’s Go To Prison. It was one of the only things on my queue that I thought may be appealing to everyone, and be kind of lite in subject matter for so late in the night. It was absolutely horrid.
Re-attached harness connector to Dig Dug
Since my brother in law was down this weekend, I took the initiative to have him help me look at the edge connector for the Dig Dug in the garage.
I had unplugged the Dig Dug harness to solder on that new finger and forgotten which was the connector went back on. I knew that if I put it on wrong I could fry the board, so I had delayed figuring it out. But I had an idea. I should be able to test voltages in the connector, and compare them to a pinout to check and see which direction it should go.
Like the other Dig Dug, the pinouts seemed to be very inaccurate and we were having problems pinpointing a direction. Then, we noticed that printed very tiny on the connectors, were the letters and the numbers for solder and component sides of the board. I had no idea. If you look very close to the connector on the back where the wires go in, you can see the raised printing. Fortunately the Dig Dug PCB had letter and number markings on it as well.
So, even though I had solder the finger board replacement upside down, I was able to easily figure out which way the harness was supposed to go. We powered it up, crossed our fingers….
And it worked fine. So, the plan is to list it on ebay. I have my costs, they were higher than I wanted, and I worked really hard to keep them down.
I just need to wait to make sure the demand is still there. I may wait a month or so before listing it.
Removed Wells Gardner 19K4635 from the Wizard Of Wor
After we got home last night, I got around to taking the Wells Gardner monitor out of the Wizard Of Wor. I took some photos, and labeled the one hook up in particular. Still no expert, I need to help remind myself.
It has been over 95 consistently the past week, so I am not sure when I will get the motivation to go out into a sticky garage, heat up an iron, and switch out the caps. But, hopefully soon. It would be good to get on with the simple task and onto figuring out any sound issues with the game so I can sell it.
