Wizard of Wor, Dig Dug and Tetris Sold!
For a month or so I had been responding to the common Craigslist ad looking to “buy” games. Usually people put out these ads looking for freebies, but I knew it couldn’t harm me any to try to sell some of my non working games. I wanted to try to reduce as many distractions as possible to focus on studying, and fixing up the Midway Wizard of Wor, Atari Dig Dug, and Dynamo cabinet Tetris were time suckers to say the least.
The Tetris was the only one I was seriously considering keeping in my game room, but the black cabinet was so ugly. The original intention was to resell these once they were working to help pay for gas, or take down the paid cost on one of my other games. But the motivation for selling a game to make a small amount of money waned for me. I got my holy grail, the Jr. Pac-man. I had originally wanted to use the money I made to help pay for my trip out to PA to pick it up. But thanks to DanOfEarth, that wasn’t an issue anymore.
Finally, last Tuesday I found some people who weren’t looking for free games, and were interested in the three I had to sell. I just wanted my itemized costs back in total for the games, and the price was more than fair, great if you intended to keep one of the games. Dig Dug is too slow of a pace for me, Wizard of Wor holds no interest for me other than the fact that it is a two player game, and Tetris, again, ugly cabinet with no sideart.
Here are some photos of the games being taken away.
I made a whopping $10 on my sale after all of my costs were added up, but I learned a lot. I originally bought the Dig Dug as a Land Sea and Air Squad, painted solid black on the sides. It was my first game that I brought back from the brink of oblivion, and restored in some sense of the word. It was a lot of fun, bargaining for the deals, but it was a lot of work, and without knowing much about electronics, it was hard work for me to constantly figure out all of the problems I was having with any given game.
In the end things worked out great. I didn’t lose anything but time, and that is debatable when compared to what I learned and the contacts I made hunting down the arcade parts. The games found a good home where they should be reused in a family fun center, and I can park in my garage again:) Just in time for winter. Not to mention I can keep the other two cabs in case I need a fix, my empty Atari Food Fight and Atari Xevious.
Here are some similar arcade posts
- Tetris Cabinet
- Dynamo Tetris Cabinet takes a 25″ monitor?
- Buying the Dig Dug cabinet
- Tempest Arcade Cabinet
- Sold my Xevious Cabinet
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Comments
My wife has been so supportive of this hobby…she got tired of walking around the games in the garage, but by the time she said it, I was sick of it too. I think we were both sad to see the Dig Dug go in particular…because I said I had brought it back from oblivion, but it also has some really fun sideart. But, space is always at a premium when collecting in a home and I couldn’t keep it.
The second one I’ve owned. They aren’t too hard to come by right now. If ever change my mind I should be able to find one pretty easily again.
Yeah, I know what you mean about space. I have been drooling over the new arcade that Peter Hirschberg has been building. Someday when I hit Powerball I’m going to build one like his only bigger. 🙂
http://peterhirschberg.blogspot.com/
The Dig Dug is making money at a Family Fun Center in the small town of Martinsville, IN. Whereas the Wizard of Wor sits in my house and occasionally gets played just because it’s neat. The Tetris I have to agree was very ugly, so I am going to use it for parts. I recognized the pictures of the games on my friends old trailer so I had to leave a comment.
@Andrew Trout:
I don’t get what people’s fascination with Wizard of Wor is. But, I also don’t get Tempest, so I suppose that rules me out. I know another collector here in Indy who has one, and the only thing I like about the game is that it is a two player, which is cool for that era.
I love Tetris. I just never did see a cool full size art laded version of a cabinet. They were all conversion kits will the small stinky little decal sticker on a humongo black cabinet. If I’m going to have a huge arcade game take up space in my basement, I want it to look really awesome head to foot with great care taken in design of the cabinet and how the artwork works as a composition.
Didn’t the Dig Dug end up getting water damaged in a rental property? That broke my heart when I heard, I brought that think back from the brink.
The Dig Dug had minor water damage. Replaced the rectifier in the Transformer board, and got a PCB off of e-bay for next to nothing. Still needs monitor caps, but plays great. Wizard of Wor is fun for me, I just like the 80’s maze games. It’s no Pacman, but I’m sure if pac man had a gun it would have been similar.
@Andrew Trout:
So…was the Dig Dug PCB trashed because of the water? I thought those circuit boards could get a little wet if they were dried off soon after. When the game left here all it should have needed was a new chip or two.
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November 19, 2007
Congrats on selling those. Dig Dug is definitely on my want list. I sold my first game about a month ago. It was a 2nd Pac-Man for me that I thought I might be able to use the cabinet for. I needed the money more and out it went. I don’t think I could fit a tricycle in my garage right now. 🙂