Custom Pin of the Week – Halloween Edition
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Remember this picture from the original flyer for Bram Stoker’s Dracula pinball? Well, a guy named Dennis Dodel decided to build his Bram Stoker’s Dracula into a coffin, just like in the flyer. With a demon monster thing holding the DMD. Here is the story: Dennis had wanted to build a BSD into a coffin since he saw the original flyer. For nearly 20 years he travelled the country picking up and delivering pins to people, and at a stop in Colorado, Dennis found a BSD with a lot of water damage on the cabinet, but a nice playfield and good boards. He later found the coffin on eBay and bought it from a girl who was using it as a coffee table. About a month later, Dennis found an old ornate funeral home coffin stand. Now he had everything he needed to start on the project.
The playfield fit almost perfectly into the coffin, with just a little bit of shimming here and there. The start button and flipper buttons were then moved to the frame of the coffin. The boards were mounted under the light board, in front of the demon monster (see below). To access the boards you could just lift the light board, and the boards were fitted to two shelves. An exhaust fan was installed keep everything cool.
Dennis visited a Halloween costume store to buy the demon monster which would hold the game display. From there it was time to work on the coffin lid. The translite was designed and printed out on plexiglass. The printing process took about 25 hours.
The game stayed in Dennis’s warehouse for several years to be played and also to startle people who saw it for the first time. It was a project for fun that Dennis decided to do, not meaning for it to be a professionally built game, just a fun project. You can see a video of the completed project here, along with some footage of how to break down and reassemble the game.
Eventually the warehouse was sold, and the game was put up for auction on eBay and sold to a pinball retail shop in the Denver area. After spending about $1,400 building the Bram Stoker’s Dracula into a coffin, the sales price from the auction was nearly $5,000. Thanks so much to Dennis for sharing this unique project!
