Coleco Tabletop Restorations

[moonchilddave]

I have a few Coleco tabletop games (Donkey Kong, Galaxian, Pac-Man) where the sticker artwork has become damaged due to the glue used I am assuming. Otherwise, they are in excellent condition. I was thinking that it probably wouldn't be too difficult to scan the artwork in and clean it up and then print it out on photo paper and laminate it.

But before I go through that, I thought I'd check and see if perhaps someone else out there had done this and I could just purchase them. If not, has anyone else done this who would be willing to share the scanned artwork or give a few pointers on how to get this accomplished?

[Kid Ice]

Yeah, a guy used to sell CD's with these on ebay years ago. Don't remember the name. Look up "restore Coleco" on google. If you can't track him down let me know, I have the CD buried somewhere.

[moonchilddave]

I couldn't track him down, anyone else know where I could find this artwork?

In the meantime, I recently aquired a Parker Brothers Q*Bert tabletop game to add to the Coleco collection. In the process of cleaning it up, I had wanted to preserve the artwork from it should I need it again - so I scanned it in at 300dpi. It's not in the greatest of shape but it's all there if someone needs it for their personal collection. I'm not so good with the graphics programs, but if you do download it and manage to clean it up, I'd love to get a copy. You can grab it at http://www.arlo.net/arcade/q_bert_artwork.png

[Blanka789]

Oh dear lord thank you! I'm in the process of restoring one of these and could not scan the images properly! Thank you so much for the q-bert scans!

[gonzo90017]

I'm also looking for the artwork. I have a couple were the stickers were in really bad condition and have since fallen off.

[moonchilddave]

I may end up pulling the stickers from both my Galaxian and Pac-Man as well as they are both not in the best of shape (but they are complete) and scanning them. The one thing I found with the Q*Bert was once I removed the stickers they did look a little better. I think them being on a dark background (the game) makes them look worse. I found that by placing the stickers on just a plain piece of photo paper they looked a lot beter and when placed on the game like that you could not see the darker background through the sticker hardly at all. So that is a partial solution until better or cleaned up artwork shows up. Just removing the sticker, gluing it to the photo paper, and then gluing that to the game does show some improvement.

For anyone interested, using a hair dryer on the sticker will warm up the glue, and then a nice sharp razor blade to pull up an edge and then just gently and slowly pulling you can remove the stickers in one piece. At least that is what worked for me.