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Owner: Patrick Store and service manager: Mike Head field technician: Jeff It all started in 1971 with the purchase of an old pinball in the newspaper. After weeks of finding parts and getting it to work, voila! There was one of the most beautiful and fun to play pieces of furniture I had ever seen. It was a 1962 Sun Valley. Several months later, someone was over at the house playing the game and offered to buy it. I looked at my roommate…..and a week later we had two pinball’s in the house. Two years later, we had a cab company and delivered pinball’s in the back seat of a checker cab. We eventually had to get #7, that was a checker wagon for juke boxes, bowlers, and airport runs. I would run up to Milwaukee in the morning, pick up a Palace Guard for $75, and have it shopped and delivered by the end of the day. By the end of 1973 we got our own building and officially became “The Home Fun Company”, home sales and service in Chicagoland. As the 70’s went on we kept expanding, the taxi company shortly took a “back seat” to the game business and was taken over by our head driver, “The Ace”. He could often be found at the building between trains at 7:00 a.m. ready to play you a game of Snow Queen for a buck. No one could beat him on Big Indian; he was just too good at that backwards “B”. We started buying machines that were brought back from overseas. When the container arrived in New Jersey, one of us would fly there and hand pick our games. It was a $50 airfare at the time and it was well worth it, being able to pick out the best 8 out of 20 Fireballs, the best 10 out of 30 4millions. Other buyers around the country, who ordered over the phone, got the rest. These machines are still popping back up regularly, covered with laundry or the kids have moved out a long time ago. Sometimes the machine broke and they never got around to getting it fixed. I remember a couple of years ago, trying to fill a special request, calling all the people who had bought a particular game from us in the past. I had this lady on the phone, when I asked her if they still had the game, she yelled, “Hey Harry, do we still have that pinball machine in the basement?” Then came the new world of solid state, a whole new concept to learn. At this same time distributors warehouses were stacked up with Grand Prix’s and Captain Fantastic’s, only out for 6 months, being traded in for new Night Rider, Cleopatra’s and Hot Tips. We bought 50 Grand Prix’s in time for the Christmas season of 1978. Not to discourage the serial number bean counters, but when I was in a warehouse with a dozen Capt. Fans, the best playfield went to the best cabinet and I was out the door. When Stern bought out Chicago Coin on Diverse Ave., we jumped at the chance to clear out the junk. Several 24ft trucks worth. Yes folks, we do have numerous Chicago Coin coils, also gun game parts targets, etc.,etc.. I spent a lot of time in the factory in those days. I had the pleasure of seeing San Stern and Harry Williams strolling down the isles, like kids in a candy store. Sometimes in their own world, probably devising the Big Flipper on Hot Hand. I had visions of framing and selling all the old Chicago Coin back glasses. They were stacked on pallet racks. One night, Gary locked me in the factory and I spent all night taking inventory and photographing all the glasses. I was there till morning. It turned out it was too expensive to build frames good enough to hold the heavy glasses and still be affordable. So, as it was, that never got off the ground. Two years later, I offered many times to bring my own men and trucks to get the glasses out. Then one day, as I pulled into the parking lot and made my usual check of the dumpster, there were all the back glasses, dropped in by forklift. There were 29 Apollo’s, 43 Big Flipper’s, only 14 Hee Haws, etc.. It seems their insurance company wouldn’t let them take the chance of someone getting hurt. There’s a tear in my eye to this day. There was another time when Gary called, a train car headed for overseas, was full of Tridents.it had derailed and fallen on its side. We won the bid and even though 20 or so were pulverized, we managed to come out with about 60 games that were completely fine. They were new, in the box, we just needed to convert back to 110 volt. In the late 70’s, we also acquired the PINBALL phone number. At this time we also started “Chicago Fun Co.”. This was the first attempt at computerized distributing. We realized that in some parts of the country some games would do well and not in other parts of the country. Also with so much changing to solid state, many operators and distributors were still sitting on stock piles of games they didn’t know what to do with. The old “what do you got, what do you want” concept came into play. An operator sitting on 10 Sea Wolf’s was glad to find a buyer even on the other side of the country. As well as providing a service, this also aloud us to come across a few “sweet deals”. As the decade was coming to a close, my brother Mike came back from school in Paris and joined our team right away. I had played my first game on a Mata Hari with him on the Champ Elysee. It wasn’t even out in the states yet. Mike caught right on, and to this day he will still drool when a Magnotron comes through the shop. By that time we had too much stuff. As the regular home sales were keeping us busy, we were collecting at the same time. Our front room at the building had a 27ft. Brunswick full bar. We had every 78rpm Wurlitzer juke except one, the 950. We had 200 wood rails sitting around, not really for sale. Reality came down hard. You can’t keep it all! We took a semi trailer full to the Bon Adventure Hotel in L.A. for a large auction. We also had a big sale of our own at the building. 1980 brought a fresh start of Star Amusement “The Pinball People”. When home sales were slow we looked to operating games in locations. I had previously dabbled in it for a few years on the side as Penny Lane Amusements. My first game in a bar was a brand new, out of the box, Space Invaders cocktail table. Now it was time to get serious, Pac Man was hitting the streets. Starting a route then wasn’t as hard as it is now. There were a few toes to look out for, but when you know your stuff, people trust you. It was fun, what other business can you take a girl out to dinner and pay for it with $100 worth of quarters you just collected from the place next door. Every Friday night on Lincoln Ave. and Wells St, I worked so hard,collecting the money and making sure all the games were ready for the weekend, sometimes I had to sleep in the van that night and go home in the morning. The 50’s and 80’s clubs were coming on strong by then. We helped put together a half dozen Juke Box Saturday Night clubs around the country. Along with a couple Blues Swede Shoes and a Peggy Sue club. We sold them antique juke boxes for décor as well as wall boxes by the dozens, which we had to convert over to 110 volt and install around the places. We even installed the first front end of the 57’ Chevy’s in the place. Then we put in old arcade games for coin play, Whirly Bird, a Ringer, a Chicago coin Pro-Basketball with a dollar coin slide that made $100 a week. My favorite is still the Golden Arm. A $50 shock absorber that took in $16 dollars a week for eight years. About the time of High Speed and F14,home sales really started picking up. Parents would put machines in the basement just to keep the kids at home. Others would come home from work and play five or ten games to unwind before dinner. Often we would deliver a machine on one street and later that week , a couple of other family’s on that same street would call up to find out what we had. Some were even competing for who’s had the best machine. It wasn’t long before we needed more help. At this time Jeff joins the team. He has been an enthusiastic partner for 14 years. Jeff is not into the old stuff but give him a Twilight Zone and he’s all happy. The other day, he was in a home doing a service call on a Silver Ball and a wood rail. He calls me up and tells me that the people are tired of fixing the old game and would we take the game as payment for the service call. I said, of course. It was a Gottlieb Knockout. The 90’s went by quickly. We took time to do things we loved to do. We did complete restorations of Ball Bowlers, it took lots of time and labor but what a beauty when it’s done. We do wood rail restorations too. We no longer do juke box restorations, there’s plenty of other people doing those. Now we’re finding 60’s and 70’s electro mechanicals that need full restoration. By the mid 90’s, operating the route became a headache. If you were making too much money you ran into the toes (remember the toes). The price of new games was going to the ceiling, while the return on investment was going down. The location owner had to have the latest game he saw at the place down the street. Even if it only made $20 a week in his place. There was always a cut throat ready to do for him it if you didn’t, even if he took it out a month later. The little operator with 100 games on the street couldn’t afford to compete with the 800-1000 piece operators. CD juke boxes cost you $8000 to put into a place. And even with $50 a week guarantee, by the time you get your money out of it, the place is either out of business or they want a new one. Eventually I got tired of getting beeped at 11:30 on a Saturday night and having to drive 45 minutes to un- jam a pool table because the place is open till 3:00 and they don’t want to lose all that money. Now you can give me a hot dog stand with 3 video games any day. Also, if the game is in a home and they call you on a Saturday, we make an appointment for the following week nice. In 1998 we moved into a new store front in Libertyville Ill. We changed our name to “Chicago Pinball Co.”. We now do business worldwide and with the internet, we needed a more savy title but we are still the “the pinball people”. We do party rentals as well as prop and photo rentals, this has become a business all its own. We have props for sets or convention displays, hotel seminars, and business meetings. You can rent a Golden Tee and dart game for break time or we can set up a whole arcade for you. Coming soon “Pats mini arcade”, a collection of cabarets or mini’s for the day or by the week. These we can put into your basement and take them back out after the party. The nineties also brought out the guy that sells games out of his garage. Every telephone repairman I’ve ever run into thinks he can fix a pinball machine, until he looks inside. By the way, we do charge extra if you’ve had a telephone repairman look at the game first. On that same note, why is it so hard to find someone who hasn’t had a relative that worked at Bally? We charge extra for those guys too. Anyway, with no overhead he can afford to sell the games a little cheaper and play his game until it sells. Remember how he was waving when you left with the game? That’s because that’s the last time you’ll see him. Then of course, now there’s E-Bay. That’s were the games we can’t fix are going (just kidding). There aren’t any games we can’t fix. This does bring up the thought that Jeff was at a house the other day to fix a game that was bought on E-Bay. The game started and you could shoot the ball. The owner had three hand written pages of thing to be fixed. Another thing I noticed with E-Bay is that the games are never really shopped out. They may have a couple of the important rubbers changed. When we go to fix a problem you can almost bet they’ll call back a week later with a different problem, because now the game is being played and things are falling apart. Because it was never shopped out in the first place. Whether you buy your game from the guy out of his garage or on E-Bay, we will still fix your game. We still haven’t arrived at “we only service what we sell” concept (not yet anyway). Our customers do come first. Service after the sale is most important. When our customers call, we jump. Others ASAP.
1. If you’ve got an old electric pinball, sure we’ll fix it, but it probably needs a complete overhaul. That was when we walk away, it’ll be like brand new. 2. Got an old video game? Get a cap job. Do it every 20 years. How old is your TV? 3. Have an old Jukebox? That’s nice. Reminds me of the lady who called because her Jukebox was playing too fast. She had tied dozens of knots in the line cord to slow it down.
We also have file cabinets full of just about every schematic since the early 60’s. It helps us in our work and you are welcome to copies if you work on your own games. We also have a lot of scorecards, but by no means all of them. Let us know what your needs are, we’ll be happy to take care of you.
Sincerely, Patrick Hamelet Chicago Pinball
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