Mechanical Memories Magazine

To recap, I'm looking at a quite rare French game that is locked, of unknown
completeness, with monkey parts put on by a now dead man who also glued a particle
board backing to an historic game of 100 years of age. Why aren't I hearing alarm
bells? To make things even more interesting, over the short course of our discussions,
the seller, out of the blue, informs me that the auction is going so poorly that he
intends to stop the auction and sell the game to a local party who has offered $650 and
will pick up the game in person, relieving the seller of any packing obligation. Finally,
he informs me that if I'm interested in the machine, it might be mine but only if I
"show him the love."
Love. In my dictionary, a synonym for ' love' is 'trouble.' The only real question
running through my mind at this point is: how much trouble? There is the trouble of
physically picking up the machine, an eighteen-hour round trip from my house. There
is the trouble of getting into the locked cabinet. Then there is the biggest potential
trouble of all ... what exactly is the completeness of this game? There are cardboard
cards covering the painted panels. It's a safe bet the pictures on the panels will have to
be reconstructed. But what else? It is, to my mind, a pig in a poke. Should I bite?
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