Sunday, April 12, 2009

Pinball transport

We were recently contacted by an english pinball collector who was looking for a Gottlieb Shipmates. If we knew one for sale or were able to locate one for him.

Sure, no problem ! We put an ad on a dutch website, and a few days later we already had a response of someone who wanted to sell his.
We sent pictures, the buyer was interested.. so when we bought our Haunted House, we took a little detour and picked up this Shipmates pinball machine too.
It really was in good condition.. I haven't seen much games of this age that look so great.

Only problem, now the machine had moved from the Netherlands to Belgium.. but it had to arrive in the UK ?!

We don't really have time to take the ferry or eurotunnel to bring it to the UK (would quite expensive too just to bring one pinball machine across the pond) so we looked for other options..
Luckily a friend of us drives with large busses and he was going to the UK for a trip.

So.. transport problem solved: we put the pinball machine on the coach and the buyer was notified of the route the bus was going to take so he could go and pick it up.. (it arrived in great shape and the buyer is very pleased with it)

The pinball machine just fit the area (that's the area where a 2nd driver can sleep btw, it's not meant for suitcases).. as if it was made especially for it !



Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Haunted House

There's a new pinball machine in our gameroom since saturday: Gottliebs Haunted House !

I'm happy with it.. my wife wanted one, and I won't say no to a new game :-)

We couldn't test it when we bought it, so assembling it home and testing it was exciting.. would it work like the seller said or had we bought a bad machine ?
It was ok.. kind of :)
The cpu has no acid damage (great !) and the machine booted. I could start a game..
There are some issues with it however, one upper playfield flipper is very weak, and both bottom pf flippers don't work (one barely moves, the other it totally dead).
It also needs a good cleaning, new rubbers, ..

It's not the best looking game cosmetically. The backglas is perfect, plastics are good, but there are some heavy wear areas. If anyone has new playfields for sale (esp. upper and lower) then let me know..

I rearranged my gameroom, now Orbitor One, HH and Black Hole are next to eachother. Impressive to see such three huge widebodies together.