Digital Press Goes to
Super Auctions (TX)

by Wes Southern

On a hot Texas day, a Saturday August 16th, the cream of thecoin-op community got together in Mesquite to sell and trade at Super Auctions.

The one thing I've learned from these events is there is a bunchof money still changing hands with coin-ops. This is a sellers market. If itmakes money the prices go up. If it doesn't, to the collectors it goes. Severalcollege kids were there who purchased pinball machines to put them in Hotel'saround, say, Austin and make enough money not to have to work. Sounds like agood plan to me!

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Pictures are not usually allowed at Super Auctions, but I had on my DP T-shirt giving me mad press props! The reason for the no pictures is that these are not home owned coin-ops where one would clean the dust off with silk and many are used and horribly abused cabs. Super Auctions doesn't control what is brought in the door. There were two Tron conversions there that I saw. One you could see the Tron inner cab artwork and the Black light but it would be a Golf game of some sort. I almost shed a few tears.

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This last Saturday you could find pretty much everything that made money in the last 10 years. Plus anything else that has to be moved out for whatever reason. Lots of coin operated Pool tables, Air Hockey; Dart machines were lining the usual right side of the warehouse. Table tops and Cocktails right next to the concession stand. And big ass driving/dancing/specialty games in the back.

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The first rows are the "Collector" cabs. There were several noteworthy items this August 16th. There was a German mini-Frogger cab (interesting seeing Frogger instructions in German), A couple of Bubble machines, a Joust 2 and Dig Dug 2, a Space Wars cab, Breakout and the like. Auctioning was a little out of control though. The first auction was for a Ms. Pacman that wasn't even mint, side art painted poorly by hand, almost going for $1000! There were a couple of nice cabs to be had for cheap though, an Escape from the Planet of the Robots for $225.

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Darren Sulfridge gave me a play by play of each item as we passed them.
"This used to be a Joust, you can tell by this corner of the cab."
"See the inside art? Tron."
"Man, this stick is shot to hell!"
He would tell me what it would take to fix an old Arcade game, "This needs a new CPO and the side art is messed up." I must admit I am a quite clueless to the coin-op scene beyond my personal holy grails (Tempest.. you will be mine!) so it was good to be surrounded by experts in the subject.

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