My Gameroom
Mappy on ebay didn’t sell
The Mappy auction did end yesterday without any bidders. I emailed the owners yet again, asking to work something out. This time I told them that I could barter my services with them so they could get the total worth out of the machine according to their minimum bid on ebay on this time.
I almost think they aren’t getting the emails, but they should with the subject line being about ebay, and they have been sellers for awhile. I did some research today to find out how much parts might go for when parted out, and I saw even four years ago, $300 for a Mappy was pretty common. The parts didn’t go for much, a Mappy pcb might run $45, and I saw a full size marquee go for less than $20.
Making an offer on the black sided Jr. Pac-man
The Mappy auction ends today in less than three hours. I don’t think it will sell, there are no bidders, but we shall see.
I emailed the guy I met over Christmas with an offer for his original Jr. Pac-man in Ohio. It doesn’t have the sideart, is a touch beat up, and the sides and marquee area are painted solid black. It would be a job to get that off, it is a flat finish paint. I offered him $450 for it. Probably more than I wanted to pay necessarily, but more becuase I knew at his first asking price of $900, and current of $695, there would be little chance my offer would fly. He emailed me back and said “No Thanks.”
Mappy game in Warsaw IN
I have been monitoring this auction for a complete Mappy game in Warsaw Indiana. Only two an a half hours north of here, this is the closest I have ever seen any Mappy game. Now, obviously, I want this for my Jr. Pac-man conversion. As I have gone along, and talking more with Joe in Chicago and Richard in PA, I think I want my Jr. Pac-man in the original cabinet if at all possible. Right now I have enough projects to keep me busy so I can be patient.
This auction already ran once in late Feb with an opening bid of $500. Now, not unreasonable, this is a fairly rare game, and fairly popular if Jakks games would have you believe. But for me, that isn’t going to be profitable for what I wanted it for.
I want to be able to remake my own Jr. Pac-man machine, or buy a working one, at an approximate total cost of $500. That might be impossible, but like I said, I can be patient and I also don’t think that it is impossible.
Now, they relisted the auction after no one bid on it the first time. They relisted it at $400. I had emailed them twice asking if they would consider coming down some from their price, but I didn’t get a response which is a bad sign.
There are still no bidders on it, and two other Mappy cabinets didn’t sell for a lot less on the East coast in the last month or so. One was going for an astonishing $150, and the other for $250. So, what I am hoping is, since this is a remote area to require a pickup only, that they still won’t have any bidders, and I can get them down even more, even to $300 and then bargin for the remainder.
$300 with travel would put me at a cost of $350 for the game. I could probably sell off the three parts, Marquee, Control Panel, and Bezel for at least $50, if not $100. That is the unknown, I don’t see them come up much on ebay so I assume they would generate interest, but I just don’t know. But, for me to reprint Jr. Pac sideart for the game at a price of at least $170, my cost would right away be over the $500 mark without the replacement parts like the board, etc.
It doesn’t sound like in the ad that they have to have a fire sale, and have to part with it, but I am hoping maybe I can barter something with them, because if they come down to $300, and that is a big “if”, I don’t think they’ll come down more than that.
And I really need this cabinet.
Trimming down the new Ms. Pac-man back door.
Today I went over to Kenny’s and he helped me cut down the back door to the Pac-man that I have in the garage to fit in my Ms. Pac-man.The backdoor I had was so broken and waterdamaged that there was no salvaging it. I still don’t know what to do with the Mr. Pac, and since it is already painted a very similar blue, I thought it only made sense. We got the hole drilled in the back for the lock at approximately the same size, I haven’t tried it yet. If I want to be thorough, and I probably will since there is no rush with the game no working, I need to put the vent holes at the top of the board too just like the old one.
Testing Ms. Pac-man Power Supply
Today Kenny came over to work on all of the machines, including the Ms. Pac. We are going to start with testing the transformer, and probably all of the fuses.
We did determine that the marquee light is getting power, so the bulb, which doesn’t come on, is probably burned out.
He also figured out that the line coming off the power supply, an orange line that eventually ran to the PCB and powers that, seems to have a short. It was only outputting less than a volt, like .3. He did some testing with a jumper, but we blew some fuses, so for now he is going to take back what he learned and talk to other people and see what they think. But I think that is worthwhile discovery. It would explain why I was getting a white screen with a known working monitor, the PCB wasn’t getting power so hence nothing. But, I don’t really know, that is just a guess.
Pengo Updates from July 2006 – March 2007
I did a couple of minor things to my Pengo after I got it in July of 2006. I cleaned the outside of the cabinet, gave it a pretty good scrubbing down and vacuumed out some of the junk in the back underneath the pcb shelf and behind the coin door before moving Pengo into the house.
I knew when I got Pengo that the monitor had a broken neck, let me tell you, it was a fun sight to see and hear when turned on. So, I swapped that out into one of the cabs I resold and for awhile it sat without a monitor.
I finally recapped the G07 that I had gotten from my first machine, the Pac-man and planned on putting that in the Pengo. Only problem, horizontal frame and horizontally oriented. So, I had the take the tube and chassis and swap them into the frame from another vertically oriented monitor. I also had to drill some new holes in the frame so the ground lines could have something to screw into. It was a chore, but I got it done.
Then, there was the remounting. It was a pain taking the old monitor out, but it was busted so I didn’t care. But putting in a working one, I did care very much. So, Sarah had to help me screw it in as I held it in place. But, we did get it put back together.
The connectors didn’t match, so I had to use a different connection and cut the wire on the G07 for the power. That bummed me out, but wanting a working game was a higher motivator.
So, that took me into March of 2007, when the game was working with the terrible sound.
Starting to test Ms. Pac-man Power Supply
Kenny and Lori were over tonight, and Kenny and I got to talking about electronics, and the games I have and me ended up making it downstairs. He started to do some testing on the different fuses in the power supply to see if that was the issue with the game. It has been established that there is some sort of power problem, but figuring out exactly what that is, is the problem.
