For a lot of folks the repair and maintenance is a satisfying part of the hobby but I can see that being frustrating with a collection the size of yours.
I like working on games also but wish I knew more on the electronics and monitor repair end.
When I lost interest in (2013) it seemed every time I’d host an arcade meet, a game or (2) would fail, which was frustrating as so much effort, time and $$$ had already been spent gone getting all the games fixed and restored. There was (1) brief moment in time where they were all operational.
Experienced several setbacks before I called it quits for awhile.
1. Got a new job that was extremely demanding on my time and became the OCD obsession for awhile.
2. My kid’s soccer club ran into trouble and needed me to step up as a volunteer board member while managing both of my son’s teams. Did this for (4+) years. Same as above.
3. The $2k wall AC unit crapped out and had to replace with a better AC mini split unit… but that took time to decided whether or not to move forward. Got it done about (2) months ago…
4. The garage roof developed a leak and rain water dripped onto this Pole Position cab, ruining the artwork and killing the game. This one incident probably was the nail in the coffin at the time as had to push all the other games aside to save them from the same fate.
Now that I’m back gung go and all, spent the entire day going through it cleaning out all the mold that accumulated. Replaced ruined artwork and began reattaching T-molding. Good news is after the T-molding is done, all that is needed is a working PCB and the game will be fixed ready to go, so I’ll be down to (9) non working games from a high of (21) just a couple months ago, heh.
Best of all, the games have been holding up well over the (5) meets I’ve hosted so the workload isn’t increasing. Knock on wood haha