Our latest restoration project has us restoring a very rare only 120 made 2 player electromechanical pinball machine from Bally called Black Jack.
This is the 2 player version produced in 1977 not to be confused with the one year later produced 4 player solid state Black Jack from 1978 with a production run of 5,000 units.
The history of how this game found us: In late 2021, the owner of this game from a western suburb of Boston, Massachusetts called us with a game that was in his way in his unheated barn / garage. According to him it was a Bally Black Jack that “Sort of” worked.
When we got to the game’s location in Hudson, Massachusetts, we were fully expecting to find the more common solid state version. But as the owner led us to the game, I noticed that the back panel was off the rear of the game revealing score reels inside. “Score reels on a Bally Black Jack?” I thought. Clearly this owner was confused as he led me to believe he had a Bally Black Jack 4 player solid state pinball machine from 1978.
“What title was this game really?” I thought. Then it hit me: “ Black Jack EM???” “OH, WAIT A MINUTE! A BLACK JACK EM!!!!” Truly blessed to have this owner reach out to me and want to sell this gem to me! Now looking the game over and realizing that with only 120 of these made with no artwork sharing anything with it’s solid state counter part, I could be in a rough run of it trying to source any needed artwork like playfield plastics, the playing field itself, and especially the backglass of the game. The backglass had paint on it that was badly flaking off, and the cabinet head had a few dings and marks on the cabinet, the playfield, even though a bit dirty, was in remarkably pristine shape. I looked inside at the playmeter and it showed only 20,000 plays! Typical games from this era have anywhere from 60,000 plays to 150,000 plays.
We agreed on a price as there was no way I was leaving this game behind in that unheated barn/garage. It was a challenge to navigate the snowfall on this man’s side and back yard where we had to drive our vehicle over hill and dale to access the barn/garage door.
We broke the game down for loading into our vehicle. It sat in our heated storage until this past week when we finally had a chance to go fully through the game to bring it to A+ condition. Even scored a BG-RESTO backglass for the game.
In addition to the technical work on this game, we deep cleaned the playfield and buffed all the metal to a mirror shine, new premium white silicone rubber all around, fresh new incandescent bulbs all around except for behind the backglass where we added 2SMD warm white leds as the reproduction backglasses need a stronger light source behind them to show well. New legs and leg hardware. And a custom ringer bell to replace that annoying “Your clothes are dry” buzzer so many Bally games from that time period came with.
This title especially needed this upgrade since the main objective is to go into the award saucer when your hand ties or beats the dealer’s hand. The ringer we swapped in to replace it sounds more like a jackpot ringer from a 1950’s slot machine.
Far more appropriate for what this game’s theme is.