Visitors from Finland, it's been busy weekend

We had visitors from Finland over this weekend.
I was contacted a few weeks ago by Teemu, as he was looking to buy pinball machines for sale in Belgium and the Netherlands and wanted some help finding them. Later Ari contacted me too, as he was going to go together with Teemu on this road trip.

This was great news. I had already contact by mail and on irc (#pinball) with Ari about 10 years ago. So I was looking forward to meeting him after all these years.
He's well known in Finland, he's a good player, and has a large website about pinball: apz.fi. (unfortunately almost completely in finnish)

Friday they arrived, we met and we already played some pinball.

Saturday we visited a pinball dealer here in Belgium where we filled their van completely :) Seeing five Medieval Madness pinball machines next to each other was impressive for all of us.
Later Peter from gamebunker.be joined us. The evening was spent in the historic city of Antwerp (you need to do some sightseeing and taste belgian beer), and we even played.. guess what, pinball.
Then we went to some bars in search of a bingo machine.. unfortunately in the first 2 bars we found that had them, all machines were occupied. So we played some Stern Iron Man pinball instead.

Finally we did find a bar with a bingo machine. Ari really wanted to play this type of machine on location..
After having watched people lose over 100 euro whilst we were playing a few games of pinball, we all were curious how well Ari would do.

Well he had been training at home, and said playing pinball had learnt him how to nudge a game skillfully. He put a bit over 2 euro in.. and in the end won 22 euro !
My task was to convince the bar owner to pay us out. After needing to buy another drink he did give us a 20 euro bill. Not bad! Getting 1000% return on your investment isn't bad for 15 minutes of work..
Although it probably won't work every time;. but still, he did much better than some guys we saw losing over 100 euro in those bingo machines..

Maybe this is what pinball needs to become successful again: all the people that are addicted to bingo machines, in the hope to win some money. You're doing it wrong !
Bingo is a gambling game, but your skill can influence it a bit.
First learn to play pinball very well, and use the skills you learnt to earn money on bingo machines.

Sunday we all went to the yearly open air jukebox show in Rosmalen. We visit this show every year.
There were not a lot of pinball machines, even less jukeboxes than previous years. More rock&roll, rockabilly, .. I didn't buy a lot, just a manual for Funhouse and Orbitor One. I'm especially happy with the O1 manual (even it's german) as the game is rare and finding a manual for it is also not easy.. (I only had a bad photocopy of the german manual). Also met some people there that we see every year at the show..

In the afternoon we had to say goodbye as our visitors had to start their long trip back home..

Over the years we've already had some other pinball visitors from abroad at our house (Germany, Poland, Netherlands, United Kingdom), but Ari and Teemu from Finland came from the most far away..

new articles

Posted a lot of new articles the past weeks.


How to fix a sag in a playfield. This was posted on rgp so I asked the person if I could write an article about it.. sometimes playfields are warped and it's really no fun playing a pinball game like this.. so you can make a whole fixture to make the wood flat again.


Dutch Pinball Open competition 2009. It's been a few years since we visited the competition (or another event organised by the dutch pinball organisation) but it was really nice seeing a lot of people again and meeting new people.



The yearly Rock around the Jukebox show in Rosmalen. Every year this show is held in Rosmalen, the Netherlands. It's their biggest jukebox show. A lot of pictures are online..



Merlins Magic: a custom, handmade pinball machine by Henk De Jager.
If you're interested in electro-mechanical pinball machines, in custom made pinball machines, game design, .. you really have to see this.
It's a unique game, with some special features, it was fun to play.

jukebox pictures online

I put almost every picture I have about jukeboxes online at www.paperarcade.com.

As I have room enough at that domain name and want to put more things online then pinball machines, I made a quick index. Looks like I have more pictures than I thought I did.. For some brands there are rare jukeboxes that are hardly documented on other websites with jukebox overviews.

In September and October there are some jukebox shows, then I'll make more pictures of jukeboxes. If enough visitors are interested in jukebox photographs, I may put it on a seperate website and put a database behind it so people can upload their pictures.. trying to get pictures of every jukebox ever made ?

Jukebox AMi K

This weekend be bought a jukebox !
It's an Ami K of 1960. Not in perfect condition, some of the cosmetics were badly restored - the 3 metal parts in front of the speaker grille ie have been spray painted with chrome paint, instead of having it actually rechromed.
Looks ok from a distance but you notice it when you look closely.

Most important is that it works right, the mechanics are ok, everything still looks good, no rust. All selections play without any problem. That's the most important for me, as a lot of the cosmetic parts can still be bought new..
we'll have a big shopping list when we go to the jukebox show in Rosmalen in a few months !

Warehouse find.

Been busy the last weeks with a warehouse find.
Technically it was not really a find as we know the operator for many years, and he contacted us. My wife had met him years ago at a distributor when she was there to buy some parts.
He asked for help to sell some machines as he really needs the space and wants to get rid of some machines very fast. He has everything, pinball machines, old and new, but also a lot of old arcade video games. So we made a few phone calls to people who can buy a few dozen games at once..

And by coincidence another operator I know told me last week he will clean out his warehouse in about 3 months.
I'm really curious to visit that warehouse and take pictures. He said there are a lot of old pinball machines but even (broken, incomplete) jukeboxes and even some slotmachines and jukeboxes. You never know what treasures I'll find ?!
I don't have room in my gameroom (or a truck to move everything or the 10.000's of euros needed to buy big lots of machines like this) but just walking through hundreds of old arcade games, hunting for that one special machine, is always nice.

Pictures of a similar warehouse find I had a few years ago can be seen at this page.

The article from my previous post will have to wait for a few weeks. It's almost finished but I want to wait on the feedback of someone and that can take 2 weeks or more..