2009: Raid @ a recycling plant in Finland

[ttcaven]

First part of my biggest raid so far

I was first bitten by the arcade bug in late 2008 when a coworker and a friend of mine, Cipi (his demoscene alias), asked if I was interested in a cab his friend was selling. It was a bulky wooden two-player sitdown cab called Royal Video Special and it came with a Neo Geo MVS motherboard and Metal Slug 2 cartridge. After that, there was no turning back

I soon contacted Cipi's friend again in order to deal some more in arcade machines, since somehow he seemed to have gotten some machines in his garage (Roadblasters, Michael Jackson's Moonwalker, Pit-Fighter, etc) and they were for sale. We basically did a deal for Pit-Fighter for 50€ because back then, I was eagerly planning on converting it to Gauntlet (my grail cab). When I got to get the Pit-Fighter, the seller showed me a small and blurry picture on his cellphone, saying "what do you think of that "scenery"? " I was OMG, there were some cabs there (couldn't make out what) and behind them was a treeline of a forest visible - so they were outdoors!. He obviously didn't have any idea in how the machines worked, since he was very surprised when I told him that I could probably fix them all and would love to get them. We agreed that he would try to arrange so that I can get to see the cabs and I'd buy the cabs from him as the mediator between the owner of the cabs. I got home with two of my friends (Cipi & hunteD) and waited anxiously for a call or SMS from the seller.

Two or three hours passed and the SMS came. It simply stated that the seller can't be arsed to be as a mediator between us and the owner, so "here's the owners details and phone number". With shaking fingers, I dialed the number and talked to the owner of the cabs. We found out that they were remnants of an ex-op's inventory and when friends of the ex-ops (one of which is Cipi's friend, my Pit-Fighter-seller) were going through the cabs they dismissed these since they either didn't do anything when powered or didn't display picture. The cabs were now situated in a recycling plant getting ready to be torn apart to recyclables / burned.

First I have to tell you that since 2008 I got bitten by the bug, I was anxiously trying to find more machines here in Finland. There seemed to be none. I phoned around, put ads on the net and on finnish forums etc etc to no help. At this point you should've seen my face when I learned that all of the cabs were located in a recycling center in my home village (of population around 3500), right in the neighbourhood of my friend's, Cipi's, parents house! Oh well, if my fingers were shaking before, at this point my hands were earthquaking and I was full of adrenaline, walking around the room thinking to myself "what's possible - what's reasonable - what's sensible and most of all, what's doable!" We came to the conclusion that we would try to get every single cab possible, rescued from the doom. I phoned back to the recycling plant owner and we negotiated a deal!

Next day, I took sickleave from work, lied my a$$ off to my boss and in the morning we drove to the recycling plant. Cipi's father came with a tractor and a huge load of pallets to help us move the cabs.

-- End of part one -- (pics coming in the next part!)

ttcaven2012-02-17 16:39:28

 

[ttcaven]

Aaand here's the second part



This was the scene we landed upon after driven into the recycling area.

(In Finland it's common that joe public doesn't get to have anything from the recycling sites. Luckily this owner was pal of Cipi's father since they're neighbours

Pictures open bigger when clicked

When I saw the sight you see in the picture above, I nearly hyperventilated for the next 8 hours trying to cope with the sight. Whenever I moved, I tried not to walk but run in order maximize the time we had...








Nope, we didn't get the rocket since there was no space. Also the Point Blank was left behind





The Chase HQ is much better looking these days, I've given her some TLC upstairs of our house

to be continued....

 

[retroshaun]

Wow! What a sight!

 

[stevearcade]

So how much of this stash did you get? Did you have to leave much behind aside from the rocket obviously? Can't believe you left the Point Blank too, that must have been a tough decision.

 

[DataEast77]

wow great story mate!

 

[ttcaven]

stevearcade: We had to leave about 5-7 RAY AR-1100 (made in Ireland) JAMMA -cabs (the ones with the rainbow sideart) since we were exhausted at the end of the day, it was completely dark and they were heavy as hell

The Point Blank was one of the toughest decisions, yes, but only second toughest compared to the Virtua Racing cab I left, man I felt bad leaving that. But more on that later.

And the pictures continue






This one we left behind






This one was left behind, too. I rescued the med-res monitor from it, though.






This one is safe, upstairs @ my mothers






No money-changers were saved










Most of the cabs were taken to Cipi's parents houseyard, behind the barn and covered with a huge tarp strapped to the pallets. Some cabs were taken to a nearby half-empty barn and covered in tarps. At this point the clock was around 22:00 and it was completely dark with the only light being my car's headlights and a flashlight. We went through all the remaining cabs and if possible, unscrewed all the gameboards and a couple of infamous Hantarex PSU's etc to safety.




For example, I got the complete Virtua Racing PCB set still screwed to it's wooden casing/base. PSU of the Virtua Racing had to be left behind as we simply didn't have the time to start dismantling it from the cab. The Virtua Racing cab was one of those cabs who didn't make it to safety. It had a broken tube with smashed chassis electronics and the steering wheel had been ripped away without mercy...




The raid-day's total was:




3x Midnight Run sitdown

1x GTI Club sitdown

4x Final Lap upright

1x Final Lap 3 upright

1x Chase HQ upright

1x Space Gun

1x RAD Mobile upright

1x Top Speed upright

2x Jaleco Cisco Heat upright

1x Jaleco Rally Big Run upright

1x DoubleAxel upright

1x NeoGeo cab for 4 games

2x Klax cabaret cab (about 150cm in height)

1x Neogeo cabaret-style white cab

1x Generic RAY Jamma cab

-----------

total: 22cabs and some various PCB's etc.

(Amongst the PCB's where: Sega ST-V motherboard, original Raiden II, Gaelco Bang!, Road Riot 4WD etc)

Then a few days passed, don't remember if it was a week or two.. BUT...

I just had to go back. I made a few phone calls, took time off work for a couple of hours and drove back (it's about 160km there-and-back-total from where I live) and rescued a couple of PCB's more, control buttons and Royal Video Special 4-button CP's (my RVS has only 3-buttons per player), some misc looms, the PointBlank lights and the lightgun for it, a misc monitor chassis with the neckboard, and the Virtua Racing -cab!




Then time passed... And I just couldn't get my mind off the whole thing. One day I found myself on the phone again: After making another set of phonecalls and thinking things over, I found out that all of the cabs left in the recycling plant were still there (!) The guys who were supposed to recycle/burn/destroy them weren't in such a rush after all, but nobody bothered to tell us about it. Or they just messed up their schedule, who knows.

I thought that they were most likely beginning to be in a bad bad shape because of the rains and alternating temperatures around the freezingpoint, but I still managed to talk my girlfriend to come and help me for the final & last[/b] rescue mission, on next Sunday.

And we went, and unscrewed all the parts we could. It was a rush job but well worth it:



4x of WG 19", 1x of WG 25" and 1x of tube by Samsung, chassis manufacturer unknown, size 12", 13" or 14"



Some switchers - every one I've tested so far has worked





And I thought that was it.




To be continued for a final bit

 

[ttcaven]

Here's the final part (might as well write it up right away since my fingers are already hurting

)

So, as you might have guessed it already, I went back for the fourth and this time for really the final time.

It was a sad sight, seeing those cabs we left behind couple of months back. There was a PitFighter when we left but now there was two halfs of PitFighter. Somebody had gone and cut the whole cabinet with a chainsaw, horizontally right through the middle. The upper part was on it's side on the ground and the bottom-part was filled with rainwater since the swelling chipboard kept it watertight. And then there was this Super Marksman game, on it's side, head down (with the CRT) in a mudwatery grave, slowly swelling. I feel so depressed even writing this now, couple of years after. I have pictures of them too, but actually don't want to dig them up.

We left behind also a Virtua Fighter -cab, an Electrocoin-cab (it was swollen and bursted into pieces hanging by a JAMMA-loom), they were sad things to watch rot.

I rescued some PSU's, misc looms, coin mechs and one more 19" WG monitor:





Truly speaking, I went back for the fifth time but it was near Christmas since I was visiting my father who lives in my birthhome, 6km away from the recycling plant. No cabs were there anymore. There was only a big industrial waste unit, filled with chipboard chunks the size of a matchbox. From one chunk a face of Wayne Gretzky was still recognizable...

This text was mostly written from my memory, and partly copypasted from the J+ -forum where I first wrote this a couple of years back, long before I'd even heard of this forum. If one compares to the text I wrote then, there most probably are some inconsistencies thanks to my memory

Between my returns to the recycling plant, me and my friends Cipi & hunteD, we transported the cabs to my dads place (a small farm) where the cabs reside even now as I write this. They're in the cold, but dry and well protected from the elements. My plan is to go through them one by one and find new homes for them; I've already sold a couple and there's one deal going down next week or the week after so life is looking good for the cabs

If you wish, I can put some pictures of the transporting of the cabs, there's a small story to the day as it happens.

Thank you for reading.

By the way, you might wonder what we paid for these cabs, since after all, a deal was made with the owner of the recycling plant. We paid absolutely nothing, got them all for free. The only things that were lost were many many hours and dozens of litres of juice for the cars and the tractor

I think I'm never going to get this kind of deal ever again in my lifetime.

Cheers,

-Toni

ttcaven2012-02-17 21:00:44

 

[DataEast77]

Great story man.thanks

 

[stevearcade]

Wow! Got it all for free! Bargain! Great story man.

 

[Superully]

wonderful, almost incredible story, BUT it really breaks my heart to hear that you left those change machines behind (or did you grab them on a later run?). i've been looking for a rowe change machine like that over here in europe FOR AGES - and there were at least two! damn, that makes me cry ...

nevertheless, amazing catch - congratulations. the spare parts alone are worth a lot, good thing you decided to go there multiple times!

 

[ttcaven]

Sorry, we didn't grab any of the exchange machines IIRC there were 4-6 identical exchange machines such as those pictured. There also were bottom and top parts of jukeboxes, separated and scattered around the area with vinyl-mechanics etc all in. It was a "heaven" and a "hell" for me, that first day there.

 

[Bensonrad]

Cor, great reading about this one again, I can't believe it was so long ago now! how long had the cabs been outside before you rescued them, they look to be in fab shape on your first visit. Rad Mobile too, how cool

 

[ttcaven]

The cabs had been outside for approximately 3-4 weeks or so. Luckily it was a very dry autumn and the rains began after we had rescued the main bulk of the cabs.

 

[Superully]

Sorry, we didn't grab any of the exchange machines IIRC there were 4-6 identical exchange machines such as those pictured.

oh no, i should never have read that thread ...

 

[smidsy]

Great story, would love to do a cab raid myself one day.

Craig

 

[ttcaven]

I did some research yesterday, the "Neogeo cabaret-style cab" I listed above was indeed an SNK SCB-U4 !
http://flyers.arcade-museum.com/?page=flyer&db=videodb&id=2289&image=1

Now that's definitely going into my gameroom before summer!

 

[Alpha1]

EPIC THREAD!!!!

 

[imaji]

Holy cow!

Wow, excellent work saving all those cabs

 

[Bods]

Thats is so cool

So pleased you managed to save such a huge amount of machines from one place, I can imagine the excitement seeing the initial pictures and being able to go and get them

And for FREE awesome

 

[ttcaven]

I stumbled on the pictures from transporting the cabs to my storage, so thought of adding some of them to this thread

We didn't have a trailer big enough for transporting more than 1-2 cabs at the time. Since the distance between the location of cabs and the storage was around 4-5 kms, it would've accumulated into a lot of time and some km's spent unnecessarily unless we could borrow a bigger trailer.

The good thing was, we found a bigger trailer and got to borrow it, for free. The bad thing was, it didn't have it's tires attached as the owner had ordered a new set of tires (had not yet received them) and had already taken the old ones off. So, on the condition that we fit the tires back ourselves, we could borrow the trailer. And so we did. Here in Finland, it's mandatory by law to change car tires from summer-type tires to studded/friction-type tires for winter. It's not forbidden and certainly not abnormal for the car owners to change their tires by themselves and save some money twice a year. So there shouldn't have been any problem installing the old tires in.

However, something went wrong and after driving about 1.5km, the other tire fell off, in the speed of 50km/h and passed our car from the left side, the opposite lane of the road! Fortunately, there was no other traffic at the time, and the tire soon rolled to the side of the road. We fetched the tire back and took notice that all the bolts used to attach the tire were missing. All of them had "simultaneously" got loose. By backtracking on foot for 100meters, all the bolts were found from the road, intact, and within 2-4 meter distance from one another.

Since we didn't have a "jack", we had to lift the other side of the trailer by hand/armforce, and have one of us fit the tire and roll the bolts in, all by hand. It took around 45-60 minutes of trial and error to get the tire back. We then slowly drove off to our destination, where we had the necessary equipment to fasten and verify all the bolts on the trailer.

Here are the pictures from transporting the cabs (just image one tire felling off the trailer while driving with this load on...

)

















Since the weather was nice for the whole day/night, we didn't have to cover the cabs at all. People gave us a lot of funny faces and long looks when cruisin' with our own arcade