Pleasant or Unpleasant Surprises

Madaracs

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If you've been collecting or repairing for awhile, we've all found surprises in our games from time to time. Sometimes pleasant, sometimes--not so pleasant.

For instance:

When I opened up my Star Trek Cockpit I found a rats nest, mouse poop and pee and about $5 worth of tokens in the bottom. Most of the tokens were from Beanies Arcade in Bloomington but there were a couple of Chuck E. Cheese tokens too.

When I bought my 1974 Rock-Ola 460 this summer I found a bunch of quarters and a half dollar in the bottom! All dated before 1980 with a lovely patina on them.

Post your photos and stories here! I think we'd all love to hear 'em.
 
I brought home a Midway Hyperdrive and stashed in the garage for a few days, when I started to clean it I saw a snake coiled up in the very back of the game. Not only did it startle me, I was worried that I may have carried snakes into the house. I get a stick to try to force it out and knock it out of the game to discover that it was just a realistic looking rubber snake.
 
I brought home a Midway Hyperdrive and stashed in the garage for a few days, when I started to clean it I saw a snake coiled up in the very back of the game. Not only did it startle me, I was worried that I may have carried snakes into the house. I get a stick to try to force it out and knock it out of the game to discover that it was just a realistic looking rubber snake.

eek.gif
 
The Tron I acquired last month had several dried out spiders and a few dirt dobbers nests' (just dried up dirt) I was like what have I got myself into :)

6 weeks later Tron still doesn't work, but I got rid of all of the spiders and the dried up dirt.

I'll get it working and making noise one day.
 
Mouse nests? Too many of them, unfortunately.

Found a (knock-off) Seiko wristwatch in my Lunar Lander. It was up in the speaker compartment behind the marquee light assembly.

A dessicated bat lying on the mirror in my Battlezone.

About $14 in quarters in a Time Soldiers (Kangaroo conversion). They were all lodged in the cracks and crevices in the bottom of the game. Every time I moved it around the garage, more quarters would fall out.

In my HUO Star Wars, about six copies of the flyer and an original Atari Star Wars poster still in its plastic sleeve.

A friend once asked me to restore a Centipede cocktail that he'd acquired. There was no key to the coin box, so I drilled the lock. Inside was the most enormous key chain that I've ever seen. It probably had 100 keys on it with various rings, fobs, doo-dads, chains... I wish that I'd taken a photo of it.
 
Bought an Arkanoid years ago in a Tempest cabaret cabinet and opened it to find the Atari brick and Tempest wiring harness still inside (mostly intact too!). The other surprise was the monitor was a horizontally mounted EZ20 (yes, it fit!), which I traded for parts for my Star Wars amplifone monitor. Funny how things work out. :)

Over the years, I have also found plenty of the other nasty stuff mentioned in this thread.

Scott C.
 
Picked up a Blitz 2000. Opened it up and found a NOS marquee

Picked up a Simpsons. Opened it up and on the bottom of the cab, I found about 300 arcade tokens.
 
Found a few bucks in change & tokens. I love opening them up and finding the original manuals. My Asteroids Deluxe had all the original manuals & coin door stickers in the original bag.

But mostly I find monitors needing caps, regulator boards needing rebuild, missing coin mechs etc etc.
 
All of the alternative pricing tags ("Free Man at Every 10,000 / 20,000 / 25,000 pts") to fit into the backlit instructions on the bezel of my Robotron cabaret. (In the coin box.)
 
Pole Position - birds nest with piss and sh*% everywhere.

DK Jr - A detailed, child's runaway plans.

Duel vs cabinet - hornets nest w/ a mouse. Was still in the cabinet on the ride home.

Rampage - 20+ tokens

Swimmer - Nice mint manual
 
I opened up a Star Trek UR several years ago and found a non-working G08.

That was unpleasant, I can tell you.
 
While cleaning the garage out I found a Zanen cap kit list dated 6-5-2006 for my DK Sanyo monitor. The monitor looks great so I'm happy it's a relatively new cap kit. Means it will last a bit.

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