I drove back up to Allentown, a few weeks after I drove up to get my Lord of the Rings, so attend the Allentown Pinfest Pinball show. I was supposed to be heading up with a friend but I ended up going by myself. Nothing with the show but it was kind of sad heading up alone. I didn’t stay all weekend, I arrived on Friday, May the 20th and left at 4:00pm on Saturday the 21st. There were a lot of games there to play and Friday was the best day based on the crowds.
Ivan, the show’s organizer, did a great job with injecting some new features into the show’s arsenal. The most impressive were the changes to the tournament area. They put up LCD TVs connected to cameras so those behind the lines could see the action unfold.
There was a really nasty looking Lord of the Rings in the tournament area, I wonder what happened here:
I got to play Stern’s new Rolling Stones pinball. I’m not a Stones fan but it was a fun game to play. There were plenty of vendors selling parts which is part of the reason I love going to shows (being a shopaholic and all). I purchased a few things for my Twilight Zone including some LED lights for the star posts and a controller board for those LEDs. There were some beautiful EM pinball machines including this rare beauty:
If I had sold my LOTR by the time I went to the show I would have bought this Gottlieb Home Run. It was in stunning shape, it had to have some reproduction parts installed. There was also this Bally Eight Ball with what appeared to be a reproduction playfield installed:
You’ve gotta love some of the “assets” on the backglass:
All in all a fun show but it would have been more fun if I wasn’t walking around by myself. I got to meet the infamous Grover on RGP who sold me a screen for putting the warning text on a backbox. This was a project of mine that Grover finished way before I could. He did a great job on getting them done and now I can screen the backbox on all of my Williams/Bally late model restores.
I don’t think I will get a huge amount of usage from this so if you are in the Richmond area and would like your backbox screened let me know!
