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.
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.

