Pachinko Stories
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Bill and Shirley's Story
San Antonio, Texas
We had pachinko machine when we were kids. So when our own kids started getting older, we decided to get a pachinko machine for our kids.
So we went looking at garage sales, thrift stores, etc. with no luck. But someone gave us a name and number and when we called the guy, he had several machines! We bought a few and fixed them up and gave them out to family members. They loved them!
So we went back and bought the rest of his pachinko machines. He had been storing them in a barn so you can imagine the condition some of them were in. But we took them apart, cleaned them up. We sold many of them on eBay and even had a guy in Japan buy one of them!
We started creating an Instruction DVD manual to give out when people bought one of our machines. Then we started selling the instruction Manual on eBay. We created a website and started answering people's questions about the machine they found at a garage sale, estate sale, parents house, etc. It was so much fun!
It didn't take long for people to start asking us to restore their machines. But shipping can be expensive and you need to really package them well so they don't break in shipment. So we began videotaping how to restore the machines so we could just sell the restoration manual to people who like to do it themselves.
Many people still prefer to have us restore their machine which we really enjoy. So what started out as getting one machine for our own kids to play has grown into small little hobby that my wife and I work on together. We still have our "real" jobs in addition to our hobby.