NH Arcade Run

Today started early with a planned run north to NH with some of my buddies from the New England Arcade Collectors Forum. We have hooked up with a liquidator who is clearning out several warehouses for local coin-op operators in the area. He has been giving us firt right of refusal and great deals on arcade games. So today we planned the second trip up to his warehouse to check out some new games he just got in. The plan was for several of us to meet up at a nearby IHOP before the "raid". Unfortunately, I got lost and didn't find the IHOP until around 8:15am, so I decided to bail and head over the Sean's (the liquidator) warehouse a little early. I was accompanied by two co-pilots, Ned the Zombie

And my trusty sidekick, Jackson.

Mr. Zombie was complaining that I got him out of bed too early, so we made a quick stop by MickeyD's for a large iced coffee.

With Ned the Zombie surfing the upswing of a caffeine high, we headed out. Like I said, we got a bit lost looking for the IHOP and stumbled across this old sub.

Ned the zombie insisted that I take his photo in front of the landlocked submarine as proof for his friends that their work on the Zombie Apocalypse was progressing well. When we got close to the warehouse, Jackson barked for me to make a sharp right and stop. I wasn't sure what he was going on about until I saw this flock of wild turkeys heading into the woods.

Despite all his protests, I told Jackson we had somewhere to be, so we headed on to the warehouse to meet up with everyone. Soon Scoots, Jumblejunkie, TomB, Starfighter and Arcade82 showed up and we started to dig into the goodies as Sean opened the bay door to the warehouse.

The first thing that I wanted to check out was this TRON cab. As many of you know I am a TORN NUT and recently sold my previous cab to a friend to fund other purchases.

Unfortunately, this game was in pretty sad shape. All the important parts were there, but there was a ton of water damage to the bottom of the cab. After chatting with my cohort Arcade82, we decide to part out the machine and split the guts. I grabbed the marquee, coin door and some of the facing plastics and he took pretty much everything else. The cab itself is headed for the dumpster.

Here are the parts I kept. I will be adding the marquee to my collection and probably selling the rest on KLOV to pay for the day.
Next on my list was the NEO GEO as I have been wanting one of these for a while.

I was very happy to learn that there were actually TWO NEO GEO's, one 4-slot and a single slot (missing the monitor). Each had a full clip of game carts (none of which I much cared for). After discussing things with the crew, I decided to take both and let Arcade82 "buy" the two Fighting game carts off me for $5 each. So I loaded both of these up on my baja and then set about helping everyone us load up their games.

My boy TomB took several cabs including a rathr nice Defender cab that was COMPLETE 

He also scored a couple of megatouches

A  Twin Cobra

Some of our crew doubted TomB's carrying capacity, but as you can see that he shoehorned in quite a bit between his trailer

And inside his car (that's a converted Nintendo cab in there)

Another of my friends Starfighter claimed a nice GoldenAX conversion in a Dynamo caband an Action Family Arcade (can't remember what type of cab that was in)

I can't remember who snagged the Shinobi innards, but the cab itself was some horrible conversion. So he pulled the boards, marquee and wiring from the inside and left the rest.

TomB also claimed some arcade bowlers that had pinball innards, which he will be heading back for in the coming week.

Here are the games that are still left.

One of the screwiest things about this trip is that while taking photos of TomB at the bay door, I tripped over his trailer and twisted my ankle pretty good. I have to be the only klutz who can come through skydiving from 10,000 feet one day and then get injured the next picking up arcade cabs.

So anyway, we organize trips like this on a fairly regular basis, though this particular warehouse and contact has been a goldmine. Get ready for this folks - we paid $25 a game for these cabs and expect to be getting access to several more shipments in the near future. So yes, it is great to be an arcade game collector in New England during a recession.