Collector Con 2025 - A&F Pinball Restorations

A couple of weeks ago, Fiona and I attended Collector Con in Minto. This is another great local collecting and pop culture convention run in the local area. While we like doing some of the bigger shows such as Collectfest and Pinfest, we also enjoy spreading the joy of pinball in our local area at smaller events, so we were happy to contribute three machines for patrons of Collector Con to enjoy.

Choosing machines for the event was easy: whichever machines were closest to the garage door! This included Judge Dredd (Bally, 1993), The Getaway: High Speed II (Williams, 1992) and Maverick: The Movie (Data East, 1994). We had a couple of issues with Maverick at Pinfest, but those were now fixed and it was ready to party once again. Judge Dredd and Getaway had been solid since Collectfest, so they were ready for action as well. We loaded all three games into the van and went to the Minto Indoor Sports Centre to get ready for the show.

Setup went pretty smoothly on Saturday night, and we were done within a couple of hours. We headed back in on Sunday morning just as the gates opened. There was a pretty big crowd this year, and after an initial rush where everyone headed straight to the trading tables to grab the particular collectable they were after, the pinball machines got a good amount of play.

Setup on Friday night...

...and testing on Saturday morning.

They were equally popular with kids and adults, with some kids hanging around most of the day to play the machines. As it turns out, the machines were acting as babysitters for the kids while their parents were off doing something else. I generally don't mind if parents leave their kids to play a few games, but I'm not a babysitting service. I'll be charging parents for this next time!

A lot of patrons enjoyed the games.

Lots of kids had a go too!

Otherwise, I spoke to plenty of people who were interested about the games themselves, pinball in general, or having their own games repaired. One of my favourite games is trying to guess the name of a game that people don't remember and I had to try and guess plenty! I got sick of writing my number down on Post-it notes for people at these shows, so I printed out some business cards to hand out at the event which were pretty popular.

New business cards (front)

New business cards (rear)

There were a couple of issues with Judge Dredd. The Deadworld crane was not working properly, and seemed to have "fallen" a little too low. This caused it to hit the ramp to the left of the crane, as well as the Deadworld plastic on the right whenever it moved. The fix was to loosen the grub screw at the rear of the crane, correct the pitch of the crane (raising it), and then retighten the grub screw. Not sure how it came loose, but it was an easy fix.

I also noticed that the "E" drop target was problematic. It would not drop. A quick look under the assembly showed that the target had snapped, and the broken plastic was propped up on one of the opto switch housings. I disassembled the mechanism, whacked a new drop target in, and it was good to go again.

Crane assembly in the "fallen" position (too low).

Broken "E" drop target resting on the opto housing.

I noticed one other thing while rebuilding the drop targets, too. The plastic target stop plastic, on which the targets sit when they are in the up position, was falling apart. It had broken and cracked in multiple places, and I'm surprised it was still doing its job of holding the targets up! So, I installed a new one while I was there (PSPA).

Damaged drop target stop plastic with the new one below.

We didn't run a competition this time around, and simply had the games on free play for people to enjoy. We had a good look around the show floor for pinball-related toys or collectables but didn't find anything this time around. Maybe next time! The show ran for the day and by 2:30 pm it was time to pack up. A short day, but a good one, as it was filled with pinball!

Two pinball tragics after a long day!