Apollo restoration complete

mnrocketry

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Donor 14 years: 2011-2024
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Just finished work on my 1967 Williams Apollo. I'm really happy with it - looks and plays great! Thought that I'd share a couple photos.

Alan
 

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Here are before and after pics of the backglass bagatelle, and a before pic of the playfield.
 

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Thanks guys!

I should tell the story of how I acquired this game.

Back in late July of 2009, I saw a listing for a household auction sale out in Spicer, MN. (That's about a 4 hour roundtrip drive from my home.) On the sale was a "Williams / Apollo Pinball Machine" with a single photo of it in the auction listing. I was intrigued, and it looked to be in decent shape in the photo, but the auction started at 4pm on a Tuesday. This was a traditional auction sale, so, if I wanted to bid, I'd have to be there in person.

Eventually, I decided to take that afternoon off from work and convinced a friend to go with me to the sale. So, we drove out there, found the "auction center", and luckily the game was in pretty good shape. I'd guess that it had been in home use for a couple decades. The cabinet was nice, the backglass was in great shape, the playfield was dirty but had lots of potential, and the game played. It had some flipper drag wear, one flipper was broken, and everything had been removed from the back side of the coin door (with a piece of sheet metal pop-riveted over the coin return opening).

I decided that it would be going home with me. I tried not to show too much interest in it. <grin>

Of course, then I had to sit through nearly two hours of auction as they sold off junk, bric-a-brac, household items, furniture... #sigh#

Finally, they got to the Apollo. Now, having grown up going to auction sales just like this one with my father & grandfather, I knew what to expect, so I had a strategy.

The auctioneer started off looking for a $500 bid, then started coming down. I knew that if I let him get all the way down to $20, a ton of locals would jump in. I'd fight them off, but they'd drive up the final price. So, when the auctioneer got down to $100, I jumped in and bid. Only one other guy then jumped in and bid against me, but I was persistent.

I honestly can't recall the exact hammer price, but I got the Apollo for around $220. I came prepared to pay a lot more, so I was happy! Even better, no sales tax or buyers premium. Inside the cabinet, I found the original documentation and no less than 3 copies of the schematic.

We carried it out, broke it down, and hauled it back. It then sat until last month when I finally started working on it.
 
Nice job!

I too have an Apollo. It is next on my project list. I hope to begin work on it next month. My game works about 95 percent with only one scoring function not working at all. I haven't looked at it in great detail since I have been working on my Eight Ball restoration (almost done!).

Thanks for the pics! Gives me inspiration to get started on mine.

Phil
 
I ran out of time to post these before Thanksgiving arrived, but thought that I'd do so now. Here are some before and after photos of the playfield.

upper playfield before and after restoration
1a.JPG

1b.JPG
 
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