Today, the game plan was to visit an operator in Western Maryland and buy some equipment. Before we left our warehouse this morning, we had a visitor. Steve Ebner came by with a beautiful, restored AC Sparkplug tester.
He also brought us a few copies of his book, Vintage Coca-Cola Machines.
He even autographed a copy for Lloyd! Coinopwarehouse is now selling copies of Steve's book for $22.00, so you can order one from our facebook page or email a request to us.
He also brought us a few copies of his book, Vintage Coca-Cola Machines.
Steve told us about shooting the photos for his book in two days, over the Christmas holidays while the photo studio was not in use.
After chatting with Steve, we headed up the road, Lloyd and I in one pickup, Ben and Amanda in a 2nd truck that pulled a trailer. What a gorgeous September day for a ride over the mountains! Queen City was waiting for us with a great haul, we hoped.
When you head up into Western Maryland or over into the mountains of West Virginia, you have got to get there before bad winter weather sets in. Those steep roads are treacherous for loading and unloading once it gets icy, and it can be hard to control a trailer on those slippery high mountain highways.
We were hoping to get some of the best equipment in the warehouses we visited, but negotiations were tough and the operator wanted us to take his less valuable video games before he will part with anything better. "I'll sell them to you," he said, "another day."
Lloyd and the operator made up a list of machines with prices for the first building, and Ben loaded those that would fit in Lloyd's pickup, up into the bed and cinched up the straps to hold them in place.
Poor Amanda! It was her first picking experience, and she didn't know what she was in for. It was chilly and she had left her sweatshirt back at our shop. Vending warehouses are typically damp with the suffocating odor of mildew, dirty and piled high with every odd and end imaginable. We are all used to it by now and think nothing of it, although I admit the mildew is hard for me to handle. But you just never know what you might find! Anyway, next time she'll be prepared!
After that, Ben and Amanda stayed behind to load up the rest of our day's haul into his pickup and trailer while the operator took Lloyd and I to two other locations. At the second location, we declined to take anything because it would have been too hard to get anything out.
The third location was really interesting though! We were fascinated by some old Sax Fifth Avenue or Macy's window displays there. I know it's not coinop, but we don't care. If it's cool, Lloyd will buy it. Unfortunately, the owner of these items was not the operator that we were negotiating with. Our operator was renting space in a building shared by others. We will talk to the actual owner of these window displays later.
When we returned to Coinopwarehouse, I helped to operate our forklift to unload the pickup, while Dominic used the dolly to put the games in their place. Lloyd put photos and prices of some of our new finds on his facebook page as quickly as he could, and we headed back to Germantown to pick up some fettuccine carry out from Milanos Pizza and Pasta for our dinner.
I would say that we all put in a good days work today!
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