This is a sad video Warning not for the weak
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Tornadoboy
Well-known member
F'n hell... 
I could have salvaged a LOT of those by using the old cabs as templates and building replacements with a wood router, right now I'm working on a Bump N Jump that's just as bad as the one he ripped apart and it looks like it's going to come out nice. Yeah it's a lot of work, but still it's not as hopeless as it looks with most of them.
I could have salvaged a LOT of those by using the old cabs as templates and building replacements with a wood router, right now I'm working on a Bump N Jump that's just as bad as the one he ripped apart and it looks like it's going to come out nice. Yeah it's a lot of work, but still it's not as hopeless as it looks with most of them.
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I love the commentary, lol.
yeah it was funny, guy was wearing a Michigan State hat... wonder if this was in Michigan somewhere... I couldn't see what license plates were on the trucks
Man I hope they are salvaging some of that stuff. I'd buy all the apb parts.
Those may be these games referred to here?Stripped hardware from damaged cabs. Lots of it. What to do with it? http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=337520
OregonPacman
New member
Just another case of life happening. Sad though. In both of those cases, it looks as though few dedicated classics were lost.
Tighe
Well-known member
This is awesome. Love the video. Looks like you had a lot of clean up work there!
Not sure I guess. That post was a year ago and the video shows uploaded 3 days ago. Could be I suppose. Not all of the games seem to match up. Anyhow, sure would like to know if it's a different batch from the same guy because I'm sitting in Annapolis ATM.
Agreed! It is a sad thing. The dark humor is what we humans often do.
It has been a lot of clean-up work. Note to others: Don't store wooden cabinets in the swamp in SE Virginia for 20 years in leaky containers.
For the "YOU COULD/SHOULD HAVE SAVED IT!" crowd.... you just have to be there inhaling the mold. Even an east-coast coin-op company known for flipping almost anything walked away after picking a few choice items (some of which fell apart before/after resale). Most collectors haven't seen the level of long-term saturation here. This is not a one-time flooding event. Black mold inside the particle board. White & yellow mold colonies thick enough to scrape up. Rust that makes the fasteners into chunks of bubbly crud. I won't even get into the discussion of how people have great ideas what other people should be doing. It's been ~100 cabinets going back to the beginning of last year.
This stuff actually happens more often than people realize, it's just that they don't take the pictures because of the flack they will receive because pictures make it look better than it really is. They just scrap the cabs and move on. I figured it was a unique opportunity to document. Check out the Facebook page and look at some of the good pictures. You will start sneezing just looking at them. Oh, BTW, the trailers are right next to where someone kennels about 20+ hunting dogs. The smell is wonderful.
We didn't start the mess, just trying to save what can be salvaged. Original owner put them there not knowing how long it would be and the effects of the environment. It is a sad situation, but we are almost done and then the 2nd pass sorting can begin. Out of the entire batch, only a few were salvageable. A converted Moon Patrol, converted T&F, dedicated Turbo, Super Contra, Guerilla War, Bad Dudes, and I am working on trying to put together a Defender. (4/18/16 edit: and maybe a Gauntlet converted to Gold Medalist)
Last note: Auric and I aren't doing some sort of "grab and run". I've seen collectors do that and it is -not- cool. No stripping of easy to snatch parts (PCB's, Marquees, special joysticks, etc..) and leaving the husks. All the wood goes to the landfill. Everything else is being saved or recycled (if it is just too rusted to blast). All the chassis are being saved for parts. Last year I gave 25 of them to a guy here who does chassis repair. All the tubes that pass being hooked to the tube tester are being saved (even the ones with the restraining strap that has rusted off). Someday, someone might want to redo the Aquadag and use them.... or we might have just inherited a hazmat nightmare. Who knows?
If I just looked a the pictures... I might think the same thing. The only reason that most of them were standing is that they were literally squeezed in with no way to fall over.
We will be glad when the weekly trips to the dump with 900 lbs of soggy wood in the truck are over. We fully expect the "aw, ya should've saved them" to continue. That's OK. We understand where it comes from.
It has been a lot of clean-up work. Note to others: Don't store wooden cabinets in the swamp in SE Virginia for 20 years in leaky containers.
For the "YOU COULD/SHOULD HAVE SAVED IT!" crowd.... you just have to be there inhaling the mold. Even an east-coast coin-op company known for flipping almost anything walked away after picking a few choice items (some of which fell apart before/after resale). Most collectors haven't seen the level of long-term saturation here. This is not a one-time flooding event. Black mold inside the particle board. White & yellow mold colonies thick enough to scrape up. Rust that makes the fasteners into chunks of bubbly crud. I won't even get into the discussion of how people have great ideas what other people should be doing. It's been ~100 cabinets going back to the beginning of last year.
This stuff actually happens more often than people realize, it's just that they don't take the pictures because of the flack they will receive because pictures make it look better than it really is. They just scrap the cabs and move on. I figured it was a unique opportunity to document. Check out the Facebook page and look at some of the good pictures. You will start sneezing just looking at them. Oh, BTW, the trailers are right next to where someone kennels about 20+ hunting dogs. The smell is wonderful.
We didn't start the mess, just trying to save what can be salvaged. Original owner put them there not knowing how long it would be and the effects of the environment. It is a sad situation, but we are almost done and then the 2nd pass sorting can begin. Out of the entire batch, only a few were salvageable. A converted Moon Patrol, converted T&F, dedicated Turbo, Super Contra, Guerilla War, Bad Dudes, and I am working on trying to put together a Defender. (4/18/16 edit: and maybe a Gauntlet converted to Gold Medalist)
Last note: Auric and I aren't doing some sort of "grab and run". I've seen collectors do that and it is -not- cool. No stripping of easy to snatch parts (PCB's, Marquees, special joysticks, etc..) and leaving the husks. All the wood goes to the landfill. Everything else is being saved or recycled (if it is just too rusted to blast). All the chassis are being saved for parts. Last year I gave 25 of them to a guy here who does chassis repair. All the tubes that pass being hooked to the tube tester are being saved (even the ones with the restraining strap that has rusted off). Someday, someone might want to redo the Aquadag and use them.... or we might have just inherited a hazmat nightmare. Who knows?
If I just looked a the pictures... I might think the same thing. The only reason that most of them were standing is that they were literally squeezed in with no way to fall over.
We will be glad when the weekly trips to the dump with 900 lbs of soggy wood in the truck are over. We fully expect the "aw, ya should've saved them" to continue. That's OK. We understand where it comes from.
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Rob, didn't mean to suggest that you were not doing what you could. I've been there with stuff like this (not on this scale though) and I understand the situation. You can't save much and even when you start out trying to you begin to realize that you are throwing good effort after bad so to speak.
Frankly, I am amazed that you haven't reported some sort of illness with just being around that stuff.
Ill be watching to see if you list any of the stuff for sale, as I said, that APB stuff is of interest to me as there is a gutted APB cab south of me that I could put it into.
Frankly, I am amazed that you haven't reported some sort of illness with just being around that stuff.
Ill be watching to see if you list any of the stuff for sale, as I said, that APB stuff is of interest to me as there is a gutted APB cab south of me that I could put it into.
LordAuric
Member
To echo RobMcRaf, our efforts are a labor of love. We all grew up on these games, and to see them in this condition first hand is depressing. Seeing a cab that is complete, but is water-logged and home to a mold civilization has been really tough. Because we both knew the moment we tried to move it, that it would collapse into a pile or ruble. You can see several in the video that collapsed like this, but there were far more you don't see.
All we can do is part them out the best we can to try and let these cabs live on as donors for sister cabinets.
All we can do is part them out the best we can to try and let these cabs live on as donors for sister cabinets.
Rob, didn't mean to suggest that you were not doing what you could. I've been there with stuff like this (not on this scale though) and I understand the situation. You can't save much and even when you start out trying to you begin to realize that you are throwing good effort after bad so to speak.
Frankly, I am amazed that you haven't reported some sort of illness with just being around that stuff.
Ill be watching to see if you list any of the stuff for sale, as I said, that APB stuff is of interest to me as there is a gutted APB cab south of me that I could put it into.
Saved anything that wasn't wood. The wood was so waterlogged that I couldn't get it in my truck. Too damn heavy. Unfortunatly, the plastic "bubble" marquee cracked due to stress of the wood warp, brittleness, and the bolts being so rusted that I had to break the wood off instead. I collected the pieces as best as possible. That was disappointing. I wanted to make a stand-alone marquee out of it.
PM me a link to pics of the empty cab. Will see what we can work out. I also know where an APB seat for it is (I think, it might have walked off).
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This situation is sad. Makes my heart cry. So much lost.
First batch
That was from the first batch at the beginning of last year. That time, the operator tried to move them from similar storage conditions and a few of them didn't even make it on the truck. Found remains of an Ast Dlx, Space Duel, and others that just fell apart when put on the handcart. At that time, I thought we were done, and then later found out there were about 70 more that needed something done with them.
BTW, don't think badly of the operator who put them there. He didn't know, was out of warehouse space, and really meant to get them asap. Running a business got in the way. The 90's were tough on guys who had made a killing in the 80's and then found themselves trying to keep up with the changing landscape of coin-operated operations. They went from having most of the machines on route to most of them in storage while struggling to find places where they could squeeze out a dime. Could he have taken them to auction at a time when working games were selling for $30-$50? Sure, but the glory days weren't that far behind and we all would hope to get more than $50 out of a $2,500 machine purchased a decade earlier. He has told me that it kills him when I send the pics and serial #'s so he can write them off.
That was from the first batch at the beginning of last year. That time, the operator tried to move them from similar storage conditions and a few of them didn't even make it on the truck. Found remains of an Ast Dlx, Space Duel, and others that just fell apart when put on the handcart. At that time, I thought we were done, and then later found out there were about 70 more that needed something done with them.
BTW, don't think badly of the operator who put them there. He didn't know, was out of warehouse space, and really meant to get them asap. Running a business got in the way. The 90's were tough on guys who had made a killing in the 80's and then found themselves trying to keep up with the changing landscape of coin-operated operations. They went from having most of the machines on route to most of them in storage while struggling to find places where they could squeeze out a dime. Could he have taken them to auction at a time when working games were selling for $30-$50? Sure, but the glory days weren't that far behind and we all would hope to get more than $50 out of a $2,500 machine purchased a decade earlier. He has told me that it kills him when I send the pics and serial #'s so he can write them off.
ElectricDreamz
Well-known member
thread-appropriate music:
try this ... play the original video at half-speed while muted, while the song plays in the background
>feels
try this ... play the original video at half-speed while muted, while the song plays in the background
>feels
Tornadoboy
Well-known member
Just for the record what I said wasn't in any way, shape or form meant as a criticism, I was just saying sometimes even things in that bad a shape can be salvaged if you're willing to make a replacement cab, but that doesn't mean everything is worth that effort and not everybody has that kind of ambition and spare time. But yeah, as they were there was no saving anything wood on those games, it's sad but still true.
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