What’s in those boxes you ask? Monitor Chassis (uhh…chassis’s?), all freshly capped and ready to go into games whenever the need arises. Do I need this many monitors? No, but one can never be too prepared. This is actually the result of something that was set in motion back in September.Back when my friend Art and I bought out the remaining inventory from a retiring operator we inherited about 70 monitors that lined shelf after shelf. the bad news, all of them had issues and none were working all the way. I can fix a monitor, but I had neither the time of the space to deal with 70 different monitors. Luckily Doug, the operator, said he would allow us to keep the monitors where they sat for up to one year until we were able to handle the workload of dealing with so many heavy, bulky beasts.
After several months, I finally found a way to get rid of most of these monsters. A KLOV forum member that happens to repair, refurbish, and resell monitor chassis was low on inventory. Realizing the profit potential of buying so much inventory at a bulk pricing, we were able to strike a deal. I would strip all the chassis off the tubes and send him all 70 via fedex for a fair price. In addition to the money we agreed upon, part of the deal would be for him to repair and recap 10 of the 70 for me to keep. In total I sent him five very large boxes full of monitor parts.
I ended up paying a little extra for the operator to take the tubes we didn’t want to the dump. I kept several of the low-burn or zero-burn tubes to be able to reattach most of the newly refurbed circuit boards to. I was able to sell a few of the zero burn tubes to some locals, but most of the burned tubes and frames went to the dump.
Recently, I got the last of the shipment of repaired, fully working monitors. What am I going to do with them you ask? Well, right now nothing besides box them up in free, conveniently-sized priority mail boxes and place them on a shelf. In due time, I plan on replacing my Galaga’s fading 4600, and basically just being prepared for any game that comes my way that needs a new lease on life.
This deal is a total win-win for everyone. The operator got rid of his stock for his requested price and now has a nice empty basement again. The KLOV monitor guy got a ton of new inventory to resell for a great deal. Because of that, there will now be an even greater availability of affordable monitor chassis for other collectors to pop in their games to bring a classic back from the dead. And I was able to make some money (almost 1/3 of what we paid for the whole operator buyout!) and have plenty of parts ready for the next restoration or emergency fix.
