Arcade woes...

This post goes out to all American collectors! I'm a bit jealous of you, so please bear with me.

I was looking at this arcade auction video on YouTube last night:




It got me thinking.. You guys are so lucky! I live in Norway. That's in the far north end of Europe, not the small town in Michigan. The arcade situation here? If you can imagine old Russia or North Korea, you're starting to come close.
I guess a lack of market can be blamed, to some extent. We're a small country of five million people, and I think you can count the number of arcade collectors on two hands. Okay, maybe you'd need to add a couple of toes, but you get my point. There were quite a lot of game arcades in the eighties, but nowadays the games are nowhere to be seen. For some reason, pinball is much more popular and available. There's an abundance of 90s pinballs, and quite a lot of people collecting them. Including me. We even have a great local supplier of parts and games. Classic golden era arcade games on the other hand... not so much.

I thought I'd write a little post about this, to put it all in perspective when you read my blog. It's strange to see the auction video with numerous Ms Pacman cabs, or people having all the Donkey Kongs lined up. I saw an original Donkey Kong cabinet here in Norway last week. That was the first one I've seen since the eighties. There's supposed to be one more, a mythical one that was sold recently. The guy got 2500 US dollars for it, and it wasn't even restored. That's right! Even though there isn't a big market for these games, a handful of collectors desperately want them, and due to non-existing supply, they fetch big sums.
I was offered a Spy Hunter in average condition for about a thousand bucks. Too expensive? But really, I felt lucky just to see one within the borders of my country.
Back to the Donkey Kong. It was in a shop in Oslo, and it looked like it was imported from the states just recently. So why don't we all just do that then, instead of complaining? :-) Can you imagine the cost of shipping an arcade cabinet overseas? You're looking at a thousand dollars just to get it to the pier. And then there's the taxes, trucking ++.

The same goes for parts. The US prices are reasonable, but the shipping more than doubles the cost. Then there's the import restrictions. You see, for all goods valued more than 33 dollars, we need to pay a fee. It's something like 25 dollars plus 25% of the value of the merchandise, including shipping. And that is if the seller is even willing to ship overseas! I was looking at this control panel on eBay the other day. 50 dollars plus shipping. I figured the final price would be three times that before it reached my door, so I just let it rest.

There has never been a game auction in my country. The occasional game turns up on the local Craig's List equivalent, but they're honestly few and far between. Now that I think about it, I wonder if there's ever an arcade game auction in Europe at all.

I was incredibly lucky the other day, and picked up a Missile Command control panel and board. It must have been pulled from an original cabinet, but that was long gone, and so is the wiring harness. I haven't seen a Missile Command cab for the last 25 years, so I guess my only chance is to build my own. It's strange to see some of you trashing water damaged cabs or replacing close to perfect sideart. I'd gladly take them if I could! :-)

Well, enough whining. As I said, I just wanted to put things into perspective. When you see my tired games and shake your head in disbelief, please give them some love. We don't have much choice! :-)