What's new

Gone to Ebay Bally Skateball project.

pintableuser

pintableuser

Registered
Joined
Apr 4, 2013
Messages
310
Location
Glasgow
Hello guys,
Just had a call from a friend in Doncaster, there is a Skateball project for sale in Harrison's Antique warehouse S63OBJ. In Lidget Lane Doncaster/Rotherham border. Not working but reckons most bits there..... Mr Harrison is looking for £250......... If your local and lookin for a project...... May be worth a run over. He also had a couple of us army jeeps.....but now sold:). Let me know how it goes....... May need a big favour one day. ☺️
 
pintableuser said:
Hello guys,
Just had a call from a friend in Doncaster, there is a Skateball project for sale in Harrison's Antique warehouse S63OBJ. In Lidget Lane Doncaster/Rotherham border. Not working but reckons most bits there..... Mr Harrison is looking for £250......... If your local and lookin for a project...... May be worth a run over. He also had a couple of us army jeeps.....but now sold:). Let me know how it goes....... May need a big favour one day. ☺️
Click to expand...

Oooo interesting... going to see if my spy is available for giving this a once over! :cool:
 
I have looked at this as I live locally.

It looks complete. It has been stored in a damp environment so every bit of metal is corroded. You would literally want to tumble or polish every bit of visible metal. Steel parts showing considerable rust. The fuses were so corroded my multi meter thought they were blown, but all were sound after being scraped with sandpaper

The gi works. But no sounds or scoreboards. The mpu only flashes twice. It has battery corrosion and minor visible hacks on the side I could see.

The backglass is shot. It is being held in place by two x 30cm wide strips of clear sticky back plastic. It is good enough for a garage player, but it is not really up to games room standard.

The playfield has full original factory mylar so looks good. BUT where there is no mylar the paint is flaking off badly. It just comes off if you brush it lightly by hand. There are also significant wear areas with no paint. And a bad paint job trying to repair lost paint in the bottom of the game. The actual playfield is quite simple blocks of solid colour so it would be one of the easier ones to repair BUT there are several square inches that would want doing.

Numerous plastics are missing including both slingshots. Two missing drops too. One pop bumper is cracked. All three pops are uv damaged and look off colour and brittle

The cabinet has been subjected to a bad paint job in a botched resto.

Lovely people who run the antiques centre, this pinball machine is not their day job. It is more a place for wardrobes, chairs, snooker tables, model trains .....

I went really wanting to buy this game. I thought of making a low offer - but so many game specific parts would need replacing. It needs an awful lot of tlc. Shot back glass maybe. Shot playfield maybe. Corrosion everywhere maybe. New plastics set, pops and drops maybe. Shot cabinet art maybe. But not the whole shabang.
 
Last edited:
DRD said:
I have looked at this as I live locally.

It looks complete. It has been stored in a damp environment so every bit of metal is corroded. You would literally want to tumble or polish every bit of visible metal. Steel parts showing considerable rust. The fuses were so corroded my multi meter thought they were blown, but all were sound after being scraped with sandpaper

The gi works. But no sounds or scoreboards. The mpu only flashes twice. It has battery corrosion and minor visible hacks on the side I could see.

The backglass is shot. It is being held in place by two x 30cm wide strips of clear sticky back plastic. It is good enough for a garage player, but it is not really up to games room standard.

The playfield has full original factory mylar so looks good. BUT where there is no mylar the paint is flaking off badly. It just comes off if you brush it lightly by hand. There are also significant wear areas with no paint. And a bad paint job trying to repair lost paint in the bottom of the game. The actual playfield is quite simple blocks of solid colour so it would be one of the easier ones to repair BUT there are several square inches that would want doing.

Numerous plastics are missing including both slingshots. Two missing drops too. One pop bumper is cracked. All three pops are uv damaged and look off colour and brittle

The cabinet has been subjected to a bad paint job in a botched resto.

Lovely people who run the antiques centre, this pinball machine is not their day job. It is more a place for wardrobes, chairs, snooker tables, model trains .....

I went really wanting to buy this game. I thought of making a low offer - but so many game specific parts would need replacing. It needs an awful lot of tlc. Shot back glass maybe. Shot playfield maybe. Corrosion everywhere maybe. New plastics set, pops and drops maybe. Shot cabinet art maybe. But not the whole shabang.
Click to expand...


Pretty thorough service report there DRD....... A garage player is a good start for some to experiment there skill-set on. We all know what a man and his tumbler can accomplish.
I would have loved to have seen the staffs facial expressions as you went about the task with your multimeter. Did you take any photos..... Would be nice to see.
 
I didn't take photos, I just have an aversion to them. Taking them and being in them.

I had a good chat with the staff though. Really nice people.

I asked permission before I did anything _ removing glass, testing fuses etc. There was a manual there so I could show them the problem with the mpu flashes.

The tilt switches were bent into oblivion so there was no chance they could ever be tripped. The rolling ball was missing. And the plumb bob was missing. Made me wonder whether a previous owner thought this was the cause of the trouble so he immobilised all tilts.
 
Thanks, @DRD, good write-up. I'm being pestered into getting a SKATEBALL, but this one sounds as though it may even be beyond my patience with the Dremel and polish. Sounds as though this could be the next "must-have" retro machine now that the crazes with CENTAUR and FLASH GORDON have died down a little (read there aren't any more left stashed away in garages).
 
Peter - you could sort game this with your skills. If you played the long game and waited for a back glass and playfield. Someone handy with a brush could sort the non mylar bits with relative ease as the colours are pretty basic - but at what cost ? The risk would be whether the mylar comes off ok given his flaky the paint is.

It was a shame to see a game in this condition, and it suspect it I'll just get broken up by someone. It would have been worth 100 to me to break it for displays and the like.

I think all pinballs (other than fathom) should be predominantly black. Personal choice I know, and many will disagree. But even though skateball is yellow and not really my taste artistically, I do like the gameplay. And like future spa, the art is so characteristic of its period

I would buy one if I could find a good one, or a salvageable one
 
Nedreud said:
Thanks, @DRD, Sounds as though this could be the next "must-have" retro machine now that the crazes with CENTAUR and FLASH GORDON have died down a little (read there aren't any more left stashed away in garages).
Click to expand...

Shucks.... Ahead of the curve again [emoji41] [emoji3] [emoji6] A Baywatch mini revival and now this.
 
I'm all for preserving pins rather than breaking but this one really does sound borderline. Like you said if it was one or two bad things, e.g., duff glass or knackered cab or toasted electronics or missing plastics, then it would be ok, but it seems as though there is almost everything wrong with it. Repro backglass and plastics are available (or at least were) but that's adding around £225 just for those. And for me it'd be a 400-mile round trip to collect it so at least £60 petrol on top. I'd be looking to pay around £100 tops in that condition, about what I paid for my dead GOLD BALL project and I got that playable in less than a week.
 
This is the game I viewed last week.

It is in need of SERIOUS time and money. The cab is even painted the wrong colour. I had to use a scraper to lift the light panel up so I could open it to see the boards.

I hope someone saves it, but it is arguably worth scrap only. Even if you bought three of these games, I am not sure what game specific parts you would use from this other than the few decent plastics to make a composite game.
 
DRD said:
This is the game I viewed last week.

It is in need of SERIOUS time and money. The cab is even painted the wrong colour. I had to use a scraper to lift the light panel up so I could open it to see the boards.

I hope someone saves it, but it is arguably worth scrap only. Even if you bought three of these games, I am not sure what game specific parts you would use from this other than the few decent plastics to make a composite game.
Click to expand...

Ahhh.OK ...makes sense now :D

 
Last edited:
DRD said:
This is the game I viewed last week.

It is in need of SERIOUS time and money. The cab is even painted the wrong colour. I had to use a scraper to lift the light panel up so I could open it to see the boards.

I hope someone saves it, but it is arguably worth scrap only. Even if you bought three of these games, I am not sure what game specific parts you would use from this other than the few decent plastics to make a composite game.
Click to expand...

Would appear The Boy from Barnsley has bought it for a quick FLIP.
It's such a pity it had not been snapped up by an enthusiastic member for the original price of £250. It was never a subject for a concours makeover..... It looks like a fun project for refurb and cosmetic tidying on an economic budget. Those who hesitate are lost or so my dad always said. I say there's always more fish in the sea :)
 
It's such a pity it had not been snapped up by an enthusiastic member for the original price of £250
Click to expand...

I offered the antiques place £100 last week and would have done a full resto on it but he wasn't interested. £250 was just too much once I'd factored in the cost of all the new parts I'd want to buy :(
 
Holy-Moly, that SKATEBALL is F*CKERED! £500 for that pile o'sh*t? And I'm well known around these parts for being a soft touch for old Bally SS pins and attempting to save just about anything. Sheesh. £100 would have been pushing it. I know @DRD gave a excellent appraisal but the opening photograph tells it all!

And whilst SKATEBALL has become the Pin du Jour a production run of 4,150 does not make it "ULTRA RARE" by any standards.

SKATEBALL.JPG
 
Last edited:
Most people wouldn't mind a fast buck, but I just don't see who's going to buy it? Anyone capable of restoring it will know how much all the spare parts will cost and the time/effort involved, so (like us on here) won't be willing to shell out that much on a junked husk. On the flipside, no cash-laden first-pin noob is going to buy it because it doesn't work and you're certainly not going to get away with "it's probably just a fuse."
 
I just know I'm going to shoot myself in the foot with this one and it'll be snapped up by the end of the day, and a new member will join Pinball Info who'll be really nice and write a fantastic shop log about a back-from-the-dead resurrection of an ultra-rare TOMMY. And because it's an old Bally SS I'll have nothing but the utmost respect and praise for saving such a beautiful and classic pin o_O
 
I spotted it at that price also.

Seller is obviously on crack if they think that's going to sell.
 
Even if you got your head (and wallet) round

New pops, drops, plastics - all available
New back glass - available

You would still have to fix it up electrically, deep clean everything, new MPU ? How many other circuit boards and display panels is anyone's guess

And then it would have a very tatty playfield where the was no Mylar and a truly disgusting blue cabinet that needed carpentry as well as paint. and I don't think decals are available even if you were prepared to totally re spray it.

So best case (with a lovely friend painstakingly repainting it off photographs or tracings), you have got a Gbp 500 game tops ?
 
A bit frustrating as I think a few of us fancy one of these. And even if we haven't got the bottle/ time/ limitless funds/ delusional tendencies to renovate it - it would be nice if someone else did
 
I costed this up before making my offer to the antiques guy and it came out something like the below. I've made some assumptions the big ones being that all of the boards will be knackered and need replacing where possible and that a repro backglass will be hard to get so I'd live with what's in it:
  • Cab stencils - £120
  • Paint - £40
  • Plastic set - £120
  • Pop caps - £20
  • Drop targets - £40
  • MPU board - £140
  • Solenoid Driver board - £100
  • Lamp board - £70
  • Aux lamp board - £85
  • Displays - £0 (I've got enough spares but if they need replacing then £35 each)
  • Rectifier board - £60
  • Playfield restoration - £150 (complete guess without seeing it)
  • All the other bits and bobs - £150
So your looking at over a grand before even buying the game itself. This is worst case scenario so say you get lucky and it's only the MPU board that's shot, you're still looking at nearly £800 in parts. For a nice restored Skateball I'd have been happy to be in it for £900 (accepting that I'd not make that back) but if it was worst case plus £250 for the game, I wouldn't feel so happy being in it for over £1300 :eek:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom