Picked up my first Ms. Pac-man

Exciting day, very short and tiring night, but it was worth it.

There were a number of arcade cabinets in Marion, as I mentioned, and I was looking to buy one of the Midway’s that has the same shape as a Ms. Pacman so I could build my own.

But this week I had been watching a local auction on eBay for someone selling a Ms. Pacman that wasn’t working. I looked at the photos, the cabinet appeared to be in good condition, artwork was good and the problem sounded like a simple fix. The Ms. Pac-man was in Columbus, which was the closest one I had seen to this point and for the amount of money he was wanting as an opening bid I decided to see if he would sell it offline. I made the guy an offer, and a couple of hours later he took it! That was the first time I had did that, and it worked, and now I had my favorite game!

So I took the van down to Columbus and picked the machine up and brought it back. I was so pumped, when I first started collecting a Ms. Pac-man was what I really wanted, and I didn’t have to pay an arm and a leg to get it like I had anticipated I might. This Ms. Pac-man has a little bit of a cool back story.

The guy I met was involved with the youth ministry at a church in Columbus. When I pulled up with the van he opened a large freestanding garage that was fairly empty except for this Ms. Pac-man and a Tron (also on eBay, also not working). He started to tell me that these were the last two. He had liked both Tron and Ms. Pac-man growing up and since he had some electrical knowledge the plan was to try to fix them up.

But he could never find the time (shocker!) so it was time to sell them off. He said that the church has purchased an abandoned storage unit in the area of an old operator. Apparently this huge freestanding garage was at one time full of classic games that they had ebayed a number of years back! So at one time he had about 20-30 games, all classics just waiting to make their way into collectors hands.

Obviously I would have liked to have been looking for a Ms. Pac at that time, but it wasn’t in the cards and he didn’t really have any other information about that old operator for me. He just kind of vanished and defaulted on his storage payments.

What to do about the faded sideart?

As I researched and researched, I didn’t feel great about making my own with reproduced artwork, it would just never be the same, but I couldn’t pay the outrageous price that the machines go for, they just were too high. This kind of fell into my lap, and I was glad I didn’t go to Marion, it would have been a ton more work. Check out photos in the Photo Diary section of the machine, and keep posted here and I will try to mention when I get it running.

Here are some similar arcade posts

• Picked up Tron in Columbus, Indiana
• Adios Red Baron
• Dedicated Jr. Pac-man on Craigslist in AZ
• Another Pac-man and Space Invaders Deluxe dropped by
• Sold the Pac-man, Space Invaders and Ms. Pac-man

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