My Tempest story

KazooBR

Well-known member

Donor 3 years: 2023-2025
Joined
Jun 9, 2010
Messages
1,887
Reaction score
1,555
Location
Kalamazoo, Michigan
Back in 2004, I found 3 broken tempest games for sale on the RGVAC message board. The story was an Op got a heart condition and didn't want his route any more, so his daughter was selling all his stuff. I want to say they were in Utah or Iowa. Anyway, I was new to collecting and thought I could make one good game out of all three. I was working for an auto parts company and we would get great rates on shipping since we had trucks all over.

I had my company pick the games up, box and pallet them and ship to my place of work ... for $70 total! I had paid $300 for all three games so at the time I remember feeling like I was out some big money and wanted to get back to even.

I managed to get one game going and put the working parts into the best cabinet. Then I sold the other two for $300 and felt great that I essentially got a free game. I didn't know enough to realize this is TEMPEST. That was a huge score!!!! Even in '04 that was a deal. Anyway trading away the other parts was dumb ... dumb ... dumb. I had an early cabinet and also the PCB you see attached. I remember thinking at the time it would be cool to keep the PCB but wanted to make my money back and I preferred to have a numbers matching cab and gameboard so I gave it up.

I'm still happy I have a super clean game but sometimes wish I had kept that low PCB and early cab.
 

Attachments

  • Tempest1.jpg
    Tempest1.jpg
    52.8 KB · Views: 65
  • tempest9.jpg
    tempest9.jpg
    74.5 KB · Views: 49
  • tempest4.jpg
    tempest4.jpg
    74.9 KB · Views: 40
  • tempest12.jpg
    tempest12.jpg
    83.2 KB · Views: 41
You now have a nice working cab and the parts you traded away or sold are now making other Tempests live. That's what it's all about....They don't call it the Video Arcade Preservation Society for nothing. I think sometimes people think it should be called the Video Arcade Revenue Society.....forgetting the reason this site exists in the first place.
 
Oh well,live and learn.We all have regrets of some sort in this hobby.What would really have been bad is if you had sold all of the Tempests,then you would have really been kicking yourself.
 
In my eyes that 009 sticker is just that- a sticker. You have a working game, so you still made out good.
 
Back
Top Bottom