It's absolutely no fun to browse US Ebay, see all those very nice classic arcade cabs, for very pleasant prices, and to know at the same time that they will most likely never shine in my gameroom. Shipping cost, Insurance premium and duties are real funkillers. 

yes, fingers crossed

Muerto, how did this work out for you?

Nice pics, good atmosphere. Actually, when I was a kid I almost never went to Arcade halls, they didn't exist in my town or in the nearby towns. I always played the available games in a few pubs and cafetaria's.

The disadvantage was of course that there wasn't much of a choice at any time, you had to wait until the pub owner changed the game. And there were sometimes long waiting lines. On the other hand, you had the chance to become pretty good on a game. I rememeber playing Donkey Kong (actually it was Crazy Kong) for hours a week, during a few months. Oh god, I love that game.

I read that story a while ago. Very amusing, especially the girl at the cash desk 

But I might do that in fact, better than chipping of some wood of such a beautiful cab.

Hi,

I'm Erik, from the Netherlands and 44 years of age ( ) In my childhood, the late seventies, early eighties, I used to play the common video games in pubs. I liked them a lot, especially DK, Galaga, Pacman, Gyruss, Phoenix, MoonCresta, etc. You could say that I'm a SHMUP fan.
 
From around 1984 until 1997 I wasn't involved in gaming (school, work), but in 1997 I read an article about Mame, which ignited the love for arcade gaming all over again. I built my first mame cab back in 2003 from a junk cab and since then I bought another two generic woody cabs (very ugly, but very useful) and a few Japanese Candy cabs, like New astro City, Egret 2 and Egret 3. I have most classic game boards which I used to play as a kid, but my PCB collection also contanins some nice other classic and modern SHMUP's from Konami, Psykio, Toaplan, Cave. Although I love my candy cabs and my PCB collection, I never lost my dream of owning some original classic cabs like DK, Ms. Pacman, Phoenix, Galaga, and if they were not so expensive (importing etc. costs a lot of money), I would have pursued this already some time ago.

But now this dream could still become true becaue I have a possibility to buy a nice DK cab (see my post in the technical section), with only a little restoration work.

I'm sure that I will have a nice time on this forum.

Here is a picture of my Mame cab (you love it, or you hate it):

Hi Joeks,

it's a small world after all, isn't it? I really love this DK cab, and if I'm honest more so than the Japanese Candy cabs I have.

So you think the bolts are original? In that case I don't have to remove them after all, which makes life easier. Although cosmetically the cab would be nicer without them, if they are original, they stay.

The idea of taking a little wood chip for color matching is a good idea, thanks.