Lexington, KY - With a storefront teeming with pinball machines, vintage neon bar signs, a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Elvis Presley, and other venerable kitsch, Kentucky Game Exchange has been a landmark on Winchester Road for about 15 years. Home to hundreds of arcade games, slot machines, pool tables, foosball tables and jukeboxes, the shop is a game enthusiast's playground, and according to owner Stan Fish, with the exception of the refrigerator and a nostalgic family photograph, "everything is for sale." In addition to selling coin-operated items of all sorts, Kentucky Game Exchange also specializes in repairing these items, operating under the motto "If it takes a coin, we'll fix it."
With a mechanical engineering background through the University of Kentucky and more than 20 years of experience, Fish has obtained a wealth of knowledge on repairing this equipment, boasting one of the "most extensive manual libraries east of the Mississippi." The slow decline in the arcade business (due to the rise of the home game systems) has caused a shift in Fish's business - where he once dealt primarily with commercial dealers, individual home owners are now his No. 1 clients.
"Mostly what we do is sell and offer support, but we'll fix anything that anyone brings in," Fish said, adding that pinball machine repairs make up the bulk of his work. "We still do repair work and sales to guys who are in the business, but there's just so few of them anymore."
With so many arcade dealers and repair shops having gone under in the past two decades, Fish's shop fills a small niche not offered anywhere else in the state. He said he's been continually surprised in recent years at the distance clients will travel for his products and services.
"People in Lexington, I honestly believe they think there's a place like this in every town," he said. "It isn't like that."