Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Article online

Check the 'pinball subcontractors' article on www.flippers.be !

Friday, April 13, 2007

Screen printing

Worked yesterday further on my 'secret' article. Almost done now !
I think I will put it online this weekend and if I get new information I'll just update it.

I've added something important: the difference between process and spot screenprinting.
I knew about it before but didn't really research it. Now I did and it's more important than I first thought..
so a quarter of the article completely changed, some new interesting historic details were added, some new pictures, ..

My domain name www.flippers.be exists for 3 years now, so that article is a nice present to myself :)
The content btw is much older, I think I already started in 2000 or 2001 on my personal webspace with the 'newbie pages to pinball' (now renamed to pinball basics).


Something completely different but also pinball-related if it has to be, our fridge came back from the painter yesterday. It looks cool, identical color of the new kitchen cabinets.
The painter said he also has once clearcoated a pinball playfield and it costs about 75 euro to do. Interesting to know !!
I still have a Bally Eight Ball (with The Fonz on the backglass) in almost perfect condition, so when I restore that game it's a good candidate to have the playfield clearcoated.


Still haven't had time to set up the new Whirlwind. The gameroom is in the winter also being used as storage room. First have to take out our bicycles, get rid of the empty cabinet of a Williams JokerZ I parted, and then I can set it up. Can't wait to play it.. but I have to as other things have priority.


The good news is yesterday a set of SafeCracker antiqued tokens arrived. I ordered them last week from http://www.pinball.com Got them in a week, that's pretty fast.
They really look great.
The bad news is that one of them is wrong !!
Instead of the Getaway truck token that was antiqued in the original set (shows a truck in 3D), the Armor Truck token has been antiqued (shows a truck from the side). This Armor Truck token was not antiqued originally..

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Whirlwind !

This weekend I acquired a Williams Whirlwind pinball machine !

I'm sooo happy ! I got a good deal on it and it's in very good condition.
I had a Whirlwind a few years ago (in 2004) and loved the game..
but as I then also had an Addams Family and a borrowed Monopolyin my gameroom, it was just too much..
I love Pat Lawlor games (also have Twilight Zone, Funhouse and Safe Cracker) but WW, TAF and Monopoly just have a too similar playfield layout.
Monopoly and WW even 'felt' the same, if you could make the shots on one you could make it blindfold on the other game too.
So therefor at that time I sold WW as I needed the room and one game had to go.

Unfortunately the borrowed Monopoly went away after a few months and I sold the TAF too as the playfield was too bad.. I did have a better playfield for it but didn't have time to swap and restore the game.. and TAF just doesn't do it for me. I don't know why but I don't really love that game. But a very good friend of mine loves it, so I sold it to him for what I had into it..
But I love Whirlwind, that was one of the only games I have sold in the past that I really missed..
Welcome home Whirlwind.

Thursday, April 5, 2007

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..