My thoughts on Allentown (From a Veteran)

awarner

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I have been going to the Allentown show since 1999 off and on. When I lived in NJ it was a lot easier, but now that I'm in GA, it's much tougher.

I had a few reasons to go this year:

1) Our new DVDs are for sale and this was a great place to sell them
2) I had just finished putting the Bill Ung kits in my AFM along with the Color DMDand a proto Ramp from Pinball Inc.
3) I promised to help James at Pinball Inc. sell Ramps at his booth.

This was the 2nd year that Ivan was doing the show and I was pretty good friends with Brian who had previously done it for years. I really wanted to see how a different guy would do it.

The number of machines to play and the variety of machines was absolutely incredible. The hall was huge so the noise level was normal to low. There was air conditioning so it was a very nice temperature.

The dealers were spread out well and there was plenty of light in the dealer area. We sold a ton of Ramps over the two days and show prices are really as good as they get.

I got to talk to people about pinball and our discs. I met Jersey Jack and really liked talking to him about what he's doing.

The Flea market was both indoor and outdoor but it seemed small no matter where it was.

I missed Steve Young and Mike Pacak being there but I found the things I planned to buy there at other vendors.

When I got the AFM to the show on Thursday, I had to finish putting in a switch that had broken the week before and solder some wires that had broken. It all went fine and was ready to be played on Friday. At about 6:30pm (Friday) I was told that the left Flipper was bad. I immediately thought it was a transistor and started to figure out where I was going to get the money for a new RottenDog WPC-95 driver board. Jim from Rottendog offered to loan me one to test. Yeah! It takes a while to swap them but the results were the same. Still no left flipper. So I swapped them back. Jim is still my new hero!

I found a guy selling a coil and I put it in the coin box for a Saturday morning install. I brought my soldering iron and I swapped the coil and it was alive! There was also a problem with the center drop target switch so I fixed that while I was there. It was done as soon as they started letting people in. It had people in line to play it and never showed a credit dot all day.

On Saturday night I packed up the 4 copies of the DVD I had left, helped Pinball inc. get packed, and loaded the AFM in my wife's van for the 800 mile return trip.

2 days later and I'm still tired but I have to say, it was a blast and Ivan and his crew have a lot to be proud of! To all my old and new friends, it was great seeing you!
 
Al,

Sounded like lots of fun. Wish I could have joined everyone this year.

Looking forward to heading to Expo this year with Al, as it's been a few years since I've gone and had a blast meeting everyone when I did go.

Now if I could just find an RFM for sale locally, I'd be set. Actually if I could just find an RFM for sale before Al finds it, I'll be set. :)
 
I saw a vid clip and I wish kinda that TPF was more like that....more open, not a huge crush of people and a chance to actually talk to someone and HEAR them. TPF even got rid of the music this year and I still had a hard time hearing the machine I was at most of the time.

Looked like a lot of fun. :)

Hey, Al...looking forward to seeing your vid, I'm gonna have to order one when I get some scrounge money. Looking forward to that. You got any inside scoop from James when he's going to sell the Shuttle ramp/toy directly through his site? Seems like it's still REALLY sparse trying to find it. I'm hoping to do my shuttle swap over the summer and I think I am going to try to use gottlieb plastic rivets to hold the hardware since it doesn't come with any....

Just don't see the point in paying the middle-men. He had mentioned on RGP there might be a combo discount.
 
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Just call James and he'll sell you whatever you want. I worked at the booth and the Shuttles ran out early on Saturday but he had more back in Atlanta.
 
Very cool! I thought it was you but didn't say anything. I bought the FH ramp set from them. Great deal there for sure!
 
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