Arcade auction

So it was at some unholy hour on a warm Saturday morning back in early January that I found myself standing outside of an old office supplies warehouse in North Hobart along with a whole range of people from all over Australia. Why you ask? Inside was a significantly large assortment of pinball tables, jukeboxes and arcade cabinets, all for sale or auction by one of the oldest operators in Tassie.

Proof that we do get warm, clear days in Hobart!

If you’ve ever spent time in Hobart, you may have passed a building on the corner of Patrick and Campbell streets with a faded sign advertising “Pinballs from $400”. The building is home to Automatic Music, a local family-owned amusement operator founded by a guy named Erwin Boot back in the 1960s. While their focus now is mainly pool tables and jukeboxes, Erwin had kept a lot of the older and unused machines stashed away at various locations across the state. So with retirement looming, there was only one thing to do; open the warehouse to the public and sell, sell, sell!

I want a $400 Pinball machine!

Quite the line-up!

Jukeboxes were the major theme of the sale, with easily a hundred or more out on display, although it was hard to miss the entire wall lined with some 30 to 40 years of pinball history! With machines ranging from early electromagnetic releases like Sky Jump (Gottlieb, 1974), Sky Kings (Bally, 1973), Lawman (Gottlieb, 1971) and Super Star (Williams, 1972), through to more recent titles like Star Wars (Data East, 1992), Judge Dredd (Midway, 1993) and Dr. Who (Midway, 1992). There were definitely bargains to be had, although the cheaper the machine, the better your repair skills had to be!

Smaller than their solid state descendants, the electromagnetic Pinballs of the 60s & 70s are unmistakable

The most expensive machine sold on the day wasn’t a pinball table, it was a 1959 AMI Continental Jukebox that was snagged by a Gold Coast man for $6100! On the pinball front, Star Wars, Playboy (Bally, 1978) and Dr. Who all cleared the $3000 mark, with the cheapest going for just over $200 (for a mostly incomplete, non-working machine I might add).

The Doctor is in the house!

Given my holy grail was well out of reach (I’ll own Star Wars one day!), I was happy to just attend and spend time walking amongst all of the amusement history on display. Although there’s another long time amusement operator down here with an equally large warehouse of machines, so maybe we’ll see another sale sometime soon…

Oh my, $50 for a Taito Thunderbolt!