While John Weeks bought his first game as a teenager and opened an arcade in Long Beach in 1979, Campbell always had the passion but came to the business later.Īfter working his way up to operations manager in the logistics industry, Campbell found himself at an arcade auction in the mid-1990s and – being a “forward looker” – realized he could improve things and began helping buyers and sellers ship games across the country, he said. This is where Campbell – the “captain” of Captain’s Auction Warehouse in Anaheim – comes in.Ī couple years younger than the elder Weeks, Campbell also grew up playing pinball and arcade games. They knew exactly who could handle such a unique collection, Weeks said, adding, “you’re not gonna call Sotheby’s.” The unlikely auctioneer So they picked out a few games to keep – including some the father and son had bought together – and decided to sell the rest. They’d already leased out the Banning museum building and faced a ticking clock to empty it, Weeks said. They’d planned to move the collection and found a space in Palm Springs, but the costs to fix up the new location were exorbitant. Then the pandemic shut down their income from events – but Weeks said that was just one element in the perfect storm that swamped the nonprofit museum. They opened the place a few weekends a year for tournaments, private events such as weddings and baby showers, and just to invite people to do something fun – but it cost as much as $2,200 a day to power all those flippers, flashing lights and “pew-pew” noises, Johnathon Weeks said. John, 58, and Johnathon, 38, Weeks opened the museum in 2015 to share the games they’d been collecting since the 1990s. While Campbell laments the breakup of what may have been one of the world’s largest privately owned pinball and arcade game collections, he said the machines are not all going to other collectors – many will find homes in someone’s rec room or mom-and-pop business and will be “out in the wild for people to enjoy and play.”
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