I know that the History Channel's, American Pickers, is a love 'em or hate 'em kind of show, but I still found one of their recent finds super interesting. The fellas on the show came across a 1974 Bally Slap Stick electromechanical pinball machine in a guy's old pool hall storage shed. Now sometimes when guys like this say that a machine is rare I take it with a grain of salt, but according to The Internet Pinball Machine Database or IPDB for short (my go to source for this sort of information) only 85 Slap Sticks were ever produced by Bally. That is indeed pretty darn rare.
The pin looks to be in pretty rough shape, but it is definitely salvageable. The expert who the show consulted pegged the unrestored value of this game at $3,000 and the host and the owner settled on $1,750 for it. Back in the day that would have been crazy, but given the recent inflation in the pinball market and the rarity of the game I'm not surprised at all by these prices. Pretty cool find. It's nice to see this piece of history being saved.
