How many locations has an average cab had do you think?

[Sbdesign]

So I’m staring at a cab, thinking about how many times this cabinet would have been pulled out and moved .

Then it made me question what would be the average number of times an arcade machine had switched locations.

Pre and post collectors.

Some guys have great knowledge in here, and maybe give details of the second hand market for venues.
I bet some are just 1 owner before collectors. But more will have multiple owners.

 

[eliotcole]

I'd bet that you're bang on the money with 1 careful owner ... probably especially into the 'multi' / candy cab era ...

 

[Flyback2021]

I am always happy to hear from the seller where cabs I pick up have been sited during their lifetime. From my experience it seems a word of mouth thing now rather than something which is logged on paperwork inside the cabinet. I always like looking at the coin counters as gives an interesting insight into the popularity of cabinet..
I have a couple of Electrocoin cabinets - spectrum and a xenon that have sited information / maintenance logs between 1991-1993 which are quite extensive . Will try and upload a picture as on the service hatch.

 

[69er]

Many of our dedicated video cabinets owned along the way were probably just 2nd owner and the majority perhaps 3/4/5 owners in all … not many survived to further owners as they frequently got played to death literally!!!
However as a lot of you know we were 1st owner of our own 20” pedastal jamma cabs none of which originally carried coin count meters…
Meters were only important for big companies to report income and check honesty/reliability of collection and engineering staff on pub or other leisure sites,
Of course fruit machines by law must have meters and will not function if they are disconnected.( if on mpu controls)

It sure is interesting to note how many 10p units have been clocked on some video games both dedicated and interchangeable jamma cabs tho the latter does not show games per pcb just total coin plays.

I occasionally wonder where all the income got spent????? Many were single site on 50/50 share or similar with the location.

We had a couple of hundred which over their life travelled the Cheshire and Flintshire youth clubs often swapped a couple of times a year to keep them fresh to players and allow best games to go to as many good earning clubs as practical while new enough to command plenty of plays ..

Some estimated perhaps up to 20 different sites some stayed in one or two arcades and a few doubled back and did same site more than once or twice especially bigger cabs like pole position or twin Daytonas , op wolf and sit down ridge racers ,sit in Firefox , air hockeys etc as the sites changed patrons year on year so still had top income potential? Small mini cabaret cabs went to sites with limited space or upstairs access…. We didn’t site many cocktails as it was quite common to get them stolen in the 80s if they weren’t chained to pipes or wall bolts…


Our 7.5 ton tail lift van could load up with 6-10 game cabs and set off maybe twice a week sometimes and head off around our sites swapping maybe one or two .. or perhaps no change but empty cash boxes and quick clean and test etc… A chain of changes would occur picking up odd breakdown casualties and dropping a suitable update or working cab … or even supply a new machine to a freshly acquired site , increasing our estate….. or moving from site to site to maintain peak interest.

It was fatal picking up a machine working warm and sticking it on the van on colder winter evenings as by time I drove to the next site it needed towel and 20 minutes of hair drier blast to get rid of dripping condensation off the monitor screen …
Hard work making a living sometimes?


We also supplied pool tables pinballs and juke boxes which didn’t get swapped so frequently just repaired / new records/ lost balls and broken cues replaced…

Some games earned mega money while odd ones did disappointingly small amounts and some got forced open and coins robbed due to the poor supervision and high risk location to start? Then the car body filler was occasionally needed to patch the chipboard … especially on fruits in quiet corners of the arcades…. Or locks got prized so needed swapping… we did have ‘motorway bars’ or hasp padlocks fitted to many of them for that reason.

Occasionally the streetwise players would find a way to strim the coin switch free credits so counted much more than the real earnings if we checked any fitted meters?
( termed strimming due to glueing a coin to a strimmer line and bouncing it or just melt a loop in the end of strim cord to simulate a coin on the switch?) some early mars mechs allowed coins to credit and return while others accepted big 10p with thin cigarette packet foil on one side worked as a big 50p commonly seen on fruits early/ mid 1980s and some mars mech fag machines.

I have machines still, I have owned for three-four decades or longer…. A couple of em pinballs here were bought 2nd owner from associated leisure over 40 years ago. Sadly not many now but still have my first jukebox bought 1977 and a penny bandit bought in 1974 I think was perhaps 2/3 previous owners.. still works (both).. each just 3years old at time of my purchase

 

[Sbdesign]

Very interesting!
Thanks for sharing

 

[Bods]

Was only saying yesterday to mate at work it's a shame they didn't all have a sticker on back or inside machines with name and place it was in, he was heading over southend way and I was trying to remember where the Turbo Outrun Cockpit came from, think it was Clacton Pier
was also saying It's nice to pickup machines from where they were last operated but would be nice to know where they all had been over the years

Turbo Outrun was from Clacton
Chase HQ I picked up from Skegness arcade
Track & Field came from Blackpool Cafe on edge of Coach Park before they closed down
Rail Chase I forget now, the Arcade owner posted on here or J+ and offered some really nice machines for sale and I bought that from them, south west area or wales, should have the details somewhere, got a feeling they owned that machine from new so probably the only arcade it was in, decent condition also and damage is more likely to occur on cabs if changed location a few times so condition could be a factor of same sites
Star Wars cab was originally sold by a big supplier in Canada as it's stamped on inside Laniel Automatic

Wish I could remember exactly the months/years we visited local arcades, the smaller one I don't remember them changing the machines over at all the time we spend in there every Sat but that may have only been a few months or less than a year probably, Crystal one had changed a bit in the early 90s machines wise