I attended my first Super Auctions this past weekend. I was very pleased to be able to attend and that it happened to be only a twenty-five minute drive for me. This was the first auction I have been able to attend since I became aware of their existence. The last auction held in the Atlanta area was last February (’10), but it just so happened that there was a severe ice storm and I didn’t want to risk a catastrophic car wreck just to bid on some crappy games.  I was very excited to be able to attend.

The auction was held at Cherokee Music, which despite the name, is actually an amusement company that sells Jukeboxes (where it got the name from originally), arcade games, and pinball machines along with the random neon sign or two directly to the public. One of my old operator contacts told me that back in the day Cherokee Music was a distributor and would also take your old arcade game that was no longer earning and convert it for you using one of the out-of-the-box conversion kits available at the time. Tired of Pac Man? Just have them put some laminate on the sides and install a big quarter-eater like ghosts and goblins.( All for a fee of course) Throughout my buying experiences I even came across a box of unused control panel overlays that had their return address on it, essentially confirming this story.

In the past couple of years, I had stopped by a few times and looked at their extremely nice collection of pinball machines they had for $ale. VERY PRICEY. I was actually concerned that due to the economy and the high price of their inventory that this would be a liquidation sale, but in fact, they only had a few items at the auction and everything else was on consignment from the public. There were two large areas that had game for auction. The showroom tended to have the higher-value items like pinball machines, sit-down drivers, redemption machines, modern shooters, etc.  The other area was the warehouse. This was where my kind of games were – old beaters, arcade work horses that have earned their money and are now being put out to pasture.  All told, there were HUNDREDS of games.

The auction started in the showroom as they want to get the “big-ticket” items out of the way so people spend their money on those items first. I didn’t record prices, but they were surprisingly reasonable for what I thought would be an auction-starved audience. The two classics they had (that weren’t mulit’s – Burgertime and Joust) were in fantastic condition and went high at or just over $500. The pinball machines went for average auction prices with a couple of buy-backs like Attack from Mars.

By the time they got to the warehouse, I’d say over 2/3 of the audience had left for the day. They moved through the warehouse fast and furious. These games hadn’t been turned on during the preview and so there were a surprising number of games that were working that went cheap. By the end of the day they were selling working Ms. Pacs for $75 and some games like a working MK3 that nobody picked up for even $10. Totally unbelievable!

All-in-all, I had a great time catching up with old friends, meeting some new ones, and watching some unloved games find new owners. I picked up a game, but for that info along with a full list of pinball prices, you’ll have to listen to my new podcast – GameRoom Junkies at www.gameroomjunkies.com .