Pick Date: 3/04/10    The story begins in the year 1995. I walk into a Warehouse of Games near Page Ave. in St. Louis looking to buy an arcade game. At the time I was unaware of the exhorbitant prices that resellers where charging, and walked out of that place shaking my head in disbelief at the $1000 price tags. The itch and the hunt had begun.

Fast forward to the present. Warehouse of Games had closed up shop many years back and the final bit of their inventory was kept at a storage facility for years. Finally, the warehouse owner asked them if they wanted to keep renting storage space on dead inventory or if they wanted to let it go and let him liquidate what was left. They let it go, and the warehouse guy posts an ad on Craigslist.

Myself and Todd, a fellow collector, show up bright and early at 9:30AM to check out the games. We meet the guy and apparently Todd had raided this guy's warehouse (different inventory) over a year ago. The guy let us know that we had 30 minutes to get what we wanted because a local reseller was coming with a trailer to haul off what was left for a lump sum. This didn't give a lot of time to think and plan, or come back for stuff. We had to cherry pick what we wanted and fast. There was a lot of bad conversions, a lot of broken stuff, and a lot of stuff that had been dropped from a forklift. He did try to sell us a nice Seeburg jukebox in unknown working condition but I was not in the market for one. What I picked out was a beautiful untested Qix cocktail, and Todd picked out an untested Crystal Castles cocktail and a Point Blank 2 gun game. We pay the guy and start loading up.

It was at this time the local resller had showed up to haul away what was left. To our surprise it was Dollar Dave, also known as Dead Row Dave. He buys arcade games wholesale and resells them or else breaks them down and resells the parts. We always see him at the arcade auctions and have actually bid against him many times. He's a nice guy and said hello to us. However, I can tell that he wasn't too thrilled that we just cherry picked his "catch" by 30 minutes. Yes, we finally beat Dollar Dave.

As we get ready to leave Todd decides to call out of work the rest of the day so he can play with his new games. I was already on vacation. We head back to Todd's house and unload his games. At this point they are now taking his wifes car park spot in the garage and there is no where else to put them. I don't think she's going to appreciate that when she gets home. We turn on the Point Blank 2 game and it comes on immediately. We play a few games and the guns have realistic recoil on them. This one was a winner. Next we turn to the Crystal Castles cocktail. It starts up to a white screen. We pull the power supply and the ARII board was toasted. After further research someone had stuck in a Centipede board. We test out the monitor and a good ARII and the board definitely needs to be replaced.

Now that we finished that we head to lunch. As soon I parked the van to eat it started smoking. I open the hood and antifreeze is leaking all over the place. I let the van cool down, get a water jug from Todd, and attempt a 1 hour trek home with leaking antifreeze. Luckily I make it home without the van overheating. I unload my game and plug it in. I'm not as lucky as I seem to have a board issue, but I have ordered another board at this time. The power supply did test out good. The cocktail and artwork on the glass is in fabulous condition. Qix is an addictive and very fun game to play. I can't wait to get this one fixed. All in all, it was a good warehouse raid for both Todd and I. Anytime we can beat another buyer to the punch by 30 minutes is a good day. Another warehouse raid in the books.

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