Here I am standing next to the first Playmatic Fiesta that I restored

At the 1997 Chicago Expo  there were two of these in the Dead Zone. When the bidding was finished I laughed that someone and bought both of them. My friend Don came over and told me he had bought them. Earlier when we were checking the games out he had understood that I said I would take one if he bought both. I must have had a few brews in me because I didn't remember making that deal! We then made another deal that the first person to get theirs working could take the other one if he wanted it. I had to practically rebuild all the relays on this game. Someone had stood inside the backbox and bent 1/2 the relays so they didn't work. Inside the game 25% of the switch stacks that were held together with rivets had come apart. I had to fix them all with a screw and nut. Playmatic must have used the cheapest light socket supplier on the world because next I had to replace 50% of the light sockets. I don't know how many hours I put into this one, but when I finished it was a real nice working game. The playfield was flawless. It is coated with something that is as hard as a rock. It's too bad that Bally, Gottlieb, and Williams didn't do the same thing. If they had, we would have alot less talk on the RGP about playfield condition and restoration. The art on the backglass is beautiful. I hated to sell it, but my sister in law wanted it and I had decided my collection was going to be early 70's Gottlieb, Williams, and Bally. Two years later, Don still didn't have his working so I picked it up. All of the problems were exactly the same. It took at least as long on the 2nd game. The 2nd game was in even better condition when I was done, but I couldn't get a couple of problems fixed. I ended up getting a Spanish schematic from someone in Portugal that I used to debug the game. My sister in law bought this one too and gave the other one to a friend as a gift. The next time I get a chance I'm going to get some better pictures of this game to post.

The 1997 Expo was a real good one for us. 

1997 Trip to the Expo:

Dave: 
Little Chief  (auction)
Yankee Baseball  (auction)

Me:
Knockout
Fiesta (2)  (auction)
Jack in the Box