I didn't get to go to York... but I still got a deal!

metahugh

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I didn't get to go to York... but I still got a deal!

Sounds like I missed some deals at York, I wish I could have gone! Being the impatient SOB I am in regards to getting pins I put up a WTB ad for a few games on the Richmond CL. I had a guy call me this past Sunday, out of the blue, saying that he saw my WTB post and had a game for sale that was not on my list. He asked if I buy pinball machines in general and I told him of course. Now I'm thinking what kind of game will this guy have for sale? Will it be that Medieval Madness that I have wanted for so long? Or maybe an old EM? I asked him which game had for sale and he tells me Firepower. Sounds good to me, I like Firepower after playing it on the Williams Hall of Fame on my PS3!! I asked him how much...here is where I brace myself. He says $100. I didn't ask any more questions at this point, I was like sure! I made an appointment to pickup the game on Monday.

I called to confirm the appointment Monday afternoon and we confirmed a 7:00pm pickup. I was headed to a part of town that isn't known for being the friendliest. That got my wondering how this was going to go down and whether or not I should be going alone! I got super lucky that my friend Taylor agreed to meet me. We stopped at a local Hardees off I95 waiting for the guy to meet us and lead us to this game. He arrived with another guy in a pretty nice Dodge truck so that put my mind at ease a bit (like a killer can't be in a nice truck huh LOL). We followed him to the storage facility and by this time it was getting pretty dark. We pulled into the storage facility and snaked our way into the back of the unit, sporadic lighting leading the way. When we got to the back of the facility the seller told me that his unit was at the very end of this really dark, damp road. I had to backup the van and Taylor was on foot. I didn't think much of it at the time but maybe I should have asked Taylor to ride back there for his safety... don't worry Taylor I had your back!!! :)

After backing up I jumped out of the van and headed over to his unit. He opened the door and there is was, in the very back with stuff all over it, a Firepower! I was hoping the whole time that this wasn't a Firepower II and it wasn't thank goodness. We proceeded to move things out of the storage unit to get to the game. From a distance the game looked decent but I couldn't see the playfield. What would it look like? Would this be yet another trashed Firepower? The more
things we took out of the unit the more excited I got. We finally got to take a look at the machine and hey this isn't too bad for $100 :)

The seller didn't have keys to the game and it was standing on its legs. He handed me an original manual and a rubber kit purchased from Centsible Amusements. We carried it outside and proceeded putting it into my borrowed Chevy work van. Because we didn't have any keys we
had to do some creative maneuvering into the Van... but it fit!

We packed the legs in and Taylor headed back to his car. Before I left the seller told me that he had done some carpentry work to a customer's house and this game was given to him as part of his compensation. It wasn't working when he got it and it just "lit up". I didn't really care what it looked like because I have resurrected a nasty System 6 Time Warp... this one isn't scary at all!

So I got it home and the first thing I did was drill the coin door lock off. I momentarily thought about drilling the head lock to get the head off but what if the key is on the inside of the coin door? So that's why I drilled the coin door lock first. In retrospect I don't think the older games have keys attached to the inside of the coin door but hey I'm glad I drilled that lock first because I found the key to the head inside the game in the coin box! I even found a
few dollars worth of quarters in there.

The game needs some work but it will be a fun player. Here are some pictures of my grab:

http://www.metahugh.com/arcade/pinball/FP/index1.html
 
Awesome grab! Firepower always seemed like fun and I just recently played it as well on PS3 :p Post some after pics when you get done!
 
Most everything was there. Turned out that the wrong sound board was in there and it was missing the speech board. I got a set coming to me for $50. I have pulled the playfield and buffed it... it's looking quite nice considering what it looked like on pickup!
 
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