Up until now, the word of this forum has spread pretty much by word of mouth. It appears obvious, to me anyway, that for whatever reason the current group of COCA officers, all elected volunteers, do not want anything like this forum to infringe upon or take away from whatever they think they are doing with the club. I think current information and being able to communicate with other coin op enthusiasts in a timely and efficient manner is a good thing.
There are currently about 635 members of COCA worldwide. There are 102 subscribers to this forum. So there is room for improvement. I think it is time that we generated a little forum membership drive. If one or more of the current COCA leadership doesn't like it, the hell with them. I appreciate the fact that they are volunteers, but it is not their club, it is the member's club. Maybe the new group of officers will have sense enough to listen to their members and do things which improve the club and don't hold it back.
I tried to send the following email out to all of the COCA members last fall. A lot of members did not get it for a variety of different reasons. I asked the current COCA President to put out the word in a mass email which he is capable of doing and he refused. So I am going to try a different approach. I am going to ask all of the forum subscribers to forward my email or the word of this forum on to at least 5 other coin op friends. The more people who know about this forum and use it the better.
What follows is the email I sent out last fall:
Up until now, there has been no quick or easy way for COCA members and/or other coin op enthusiasts to communicate with each other as a group.
If you had something you wanted to sell, you could put an ad in the COCA Times and wait for the next issue to come out, you could haul whatever it is to Chicago or one of the other shows, you could put it on eBay, or do whatever you have been doing. But if you are looking for a part or want to buy a particular machine, eBay won't let you run a "want ad" and not everyone can go to the shows. So you are back to putting an ad in the Times or Gameroom or The Antique Trader or you could take out the COCA membership list and start emailing the members one at a time. Not very efficient to say the least.
One enterprising COCA member paid his teenage son to load up all the other member's email addresses and fix it so he could email all of the members at the same time. Better, but some people don't like to receive "unsolicited" emails and there is no need to bother someone who is only into slot machines or trade stimulators if you are looking for a part for a jukebox or old pinball machine.
Well now Dave Burritt, Vintage Slots of Colorado, has created a coin op forum which could provide a new resource we can all use. You can check out the forum for yourself at www.IBuyOldSlots.com/forum I have listed the current forum categories below, but I am sure that Dave can add more is there is a need for them.
What is different about this forum is that it can be automatic if you want it to be. Registration is currently open to anyone who wants to join and it is free. Once you register, you can sign up for as many of the different forum categories as you want to AND you can receive an email each time anything is posted in that category if you want one. I think this is great. You don't have to wait for some want ad to come out in a magazine or post something to some chat room and hope that someone sees it. You can post a "Can anyone tell me where I can find a ........" or "Can anyone tell me how to ......." or "I have the following parts if anyone needs them ....", etc., etc., you are only limited by your imagination, and everyone in that forum category who has asked for one will receive an email with the new posting. There is no filter process. Everyone gets the same email at the same time. Think about it. There is nothing like this out there now that I am aware of.
We all owe Dick Bueschel a debt of gratitude for doing the research and writing the books. We may all owe Dave a similar debt of gratitude for coming up with the way we may all communicate with each other one day.
Up until now, news of the forum has been by word of mouth. This email is for all of you who aren't in the loop. Ric Gandy