This Gotlieb ‘Baseball’ pinball machine will be sold at an auction by Pook & Pook Inc. in Downingtown, Pa., Sept. 7. Image courtesy of LiveAuctioneers.com and Pook & Pook Inc.
Nearby, Eric VanDommelen is eagerly repairing and polishing a 1995 “Jack Bot” pinball machine.
The identical scene will soon play out in Green Oak Township, where Harrell next month will start moving his massive pinball collection to the vacant Hamburg Veterans of Foreign Wars hall, which he recently purchased, according to the Livingston County Daily Press & Argus.
His project is labeled a “private museum” for local zoning purposes—it is located in a residential district—but will basically be a self-funded hangout for Harrell and his friends willing to pony up a small donation to help offset costs of running the place.
“Nobody’s paid, especially me,” Harrell, 52, said at his Novi rental space.
“A lot of guys buy like ’70s, ’80s cars and they fix them up, or even ’60s cars. This is all a much cleaner hobby,” he added.
At his Novi rental space, whizzing, whirring and ringing sounds, along with the snap of wrist-fueled pinball shots, bounce off the walls.
Harrell occupied the roughly 3,000-square-foot storage area two years ago. It is about half the size of the 6,600-square-foot VFW building in Green Oak.
Harrell, originally a video game fanatic, buys and repairs pinball machines but isn’t an avid player.
His first pinball machine purchase was “The Amazing Spiderman,” which he bought used in 1988 for $100.
“I found them a lot easier to repair than video games. The architecture on pinballs is somewhat consistent,” Harrell said.
“Learning to fix ‘Space Invaders’ didn’t really guarantee you a lot that you were going to be able to fix a ‘Pac-Man’ or a ‘Tron’ or a ‘Joust’ or a ‘Defender’ or any of that stuff,” he added.
Harrell accumulated much of his collection from those looking to get rid of their old machines, sometimes offering for them up at no charge.
The age of the Internet, and eBay, specifically, meant owners could sell their machines with a few clicks of a mouse from the comfort of their home.
Harrell also wrote pinball machine repair guides and posted them online.
“It’s kind of like a snowball. Once you start buying one game and you learn how to fix it, people start calling, ‘Hey, I heard you can fix games?’ ‘Do you want this one?’ ‘Here’s one for ya.’ ‘I bet you can’t fix this one,’” Harrell said.
“So there was a lot of that going on. That’s largely how all this came about, how I ended up with so many machines,” he added.
Harrell, a self-employed computer repairman, recently bought a home in Green Oak Township just down the road from his new pinball space.
Some pinball repairs are not immediately visible to the untrained eye. VanDommelen demonstrated how touching up lettering on a “Guns ’N Roses” pinball machine could make a world of difference to enthusiasts.
Touching-up a rusted machine would likely be more evident.
“There’s a lot of little details, and I have to catch him a lot because sometimes he misses the details,” Harrell joked as VanDommelen repaired the “Jack Bot” machine.
Harrell digitally recreates pinball machine artwork using original designs as a guide to repair damaged artwork.
He looks forward to owning his own facility rather than paying up to $1,500 monthly to lease and pay utilities for his Novi unit.
The Green Oak facility will not be open to the public as an arcade.
Members of the public could get a glimpse of Harrell’s treasures, however: His local special-use approval allows him to open it to “public displays” four weekends per year.
The project will make Green Oak a part of pinball lore, said Bob Moran, chairman of the township Planning Commission that approved a special-use permit for Harrell’s project.
Moran said Harrell will make use of a building that is otherwise deteriorating while vacant.
“When you stop to think of it, he says he has over 100 pinball machines going back to 1930, and it’s a way of keeping part of that nostalgia, history going because there’s not really many” pinball manufacturers left, Moran said.
___
Information from: Livingston County Daily Press & Argus, http://www.livingstondaily.com
Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WF-08-19-13 0812GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
This Gotlieb ‘Baseball’ pinball machine will be sold at an auction by Pook & Pook Inc. in Downingtown, Pa., Sept. 7. Image courtesy of LiveAuctioneers.com and Pook & Pook Inc.
