WiffleGames is a niche store located in the small historic community of Chemainus on the South Eastern side of Vancouver Island, British Columbia Canada. This location (9756D Willow Street) serves well as an easy and rewarding detour just off the Trans-Canada Highway for customers travelling both North and Southbound. We have been in the collectibles business for over 10 years buying and selling, with deep roots anchoring our network and collecting habits.
Here at WiffleGames we pride ourselves on providing a great customer experience, atmosphere and expertise in all aspects of collecting. We specialize in Silver Age Comics, Retro Video Games, Rock N Roll Records, 80's Toys and of course Arcades & Pinball machines! Wizards Arcade presented by WiffleGames is open at the Chemainus Public Market. Located at 9790 Willow Street. Come by and drop a few quarters to kill some time and have some fun!
If you are unable to visit our local store we do have a an online store offering our products through the world wide web, just click the link above! Unfortunately shipping internationally can be expensive and we can only offer Tracked Packages Internationally to ensure arrival for both customer and seller. At this time we mostly only offer video games on the online store, however don't hesitate to contact us about any products you are looking for!
We Buy, Sell & Trade while also offering a variety of services like, grading comics, arcade/pinball troubleshooting & restoration, vintage console modifications and appraisals of singular items or entire collections.
If you are looking to downsize your collection, or sell its entirety please consider us! We offer a fair, honest, professional & competitive value for your prized possessions & collections!
Examples of items & collections we buy:
• Pinball Machines working and broken
• Records: (1960's/70's Rock N Roll, 80's Metal)
• Vintage toys preferably 80's - mid 90's
• Comics: (Golden, Silver, Bronze Age and 90's Keys)
• Nintendo: (NES SNES N64 Gamecube Wii WiiU)
• SEGA: (Master, Genesis, Saturn, Dreamcast)
• Xbox original
• Playstation 1 and Playstation 2
• Vintage Star Wars Figures
• 80's toys: (Transformers, Gi Joe, He-Man, TMNT)
• Magic/Pokemon Cards
• Arcade Machines working or broken.
• And much more...
We look forward to seeing you in the store! Thanks for reading and have a great day!
History:
My name is Shawn Orza and for over a decade I have been involved in the collectables market. Not only as a dealer but as a collector. I was a super passionate collector of older video games, primarily cartridge based like Nintendo NES, Super Nintendo, Atari and Nintendo 64 game cartridges. This spawned different avenues of collecting for me. As I was seeking to find these games I discovered Comic Books, Records, Toys and other nostalgic items. It was too much for me too collect everything and I had to start selling off pieces of my collections, I also had to stay focused because it is really really really hard to try and not collect everything cool!
Featured below are examples of what I could find on a weekend back in 2012 where I believe I was about 5 years late to the collecting game then. As we drift further from the 1980's and 90's bringing in large amounts of product like this becomes more & more infrequent.
While I was becoming a well versed online retailer I also fell for Pinball Machines. My first machine was a 1964 Bowling Queen which I stared at many nights trying to figure out how to make the relic work and one night “Eureka!" there was a small hidden fuse on the underside of the playfield that was blown. I swapped it out and the machine started coming to life. This set me off on a long wild rabbit hole of the inner workings of 1960's technology. Since this machine I now currently own 24 Pinball Machines and have either traded or sold an additional 26 machines, thats 50 machines that I have restored! (This does not account for the number of machines I have restored for customers). Not one machine have I purchased that did not need some form of restoration.
Shown below was my first pinball machine, a snap shot preparing my table for my first experience of the Cherry Bomb Toy Show in Victoria. Also the forever changing, renovating and adding of custom shelving in the garage.
After selling collectables for several years Online, at Toy Shows and Flea Markets, I was able to secure a location for my physical store in 2017. At the same time we found out my wife was pregnant with our first child so the race was on! I felt like if I didn't open my store before my child was born I would be working construction indefinitely. It took me 7 Months working a few hours a night after work and the odd day to complete the full renovation of what is now WiffleGames in Chemainus. From painting cieling tiles, removing walls, electrical, installing laminate flooring, building complete custom display cases and much more... I had finally quit my full time construction job and focused exclusivley on this new collectables frontier. I made my first sale out of the store in May of 2018, one month after my daughter was born.
Below shows my work shop before it expanded to other garage bays that were located directly beside this one.
The window on the right shows a slide show documenting the renovation process. Keep clicking on the right tab to view the evolution!
From the conception of my business to present has been a wild road. Each year I have been able to improve the business by something substantial. I started on my kitchen table 11 years ago, the following year was an entire office, the year after that was a 1 bay garage with a small office up stairs, the year after that became a 2 bay garage. Then a 3 bay garage. Then it was a physical store! Then it became a physical store with a Storage Unit which moprhed into a Store with a 20' x 30' work shop. The year following Wizards Arcade was born! Each year it seems like I am able to improve the business and currently working on just refining the mechanics that are in place right now but I do have prospects for a small additional pinball location that should be up and running soon!
Shown on the right is me expanding my 1 bay garage to the 2nd and 3rd bays. The second photo is a very early rendition of Wizards Arcade
This is just a small cross section of what the last 11 years has encompessed in the creation of WiffleGames. The last few years have brought some challenges but also opened up other opportunities. I have since sold off many of my big ticket games from my nintendo collections to fund my pinball adventure. Basically I have channelled my video game cartridge equity into pinball equity and I will continue to do so. My passion for pinball collecting supercedes all other collecting for me now!
Photos below show the contruction of wizards arcade in early 2020
Now coming up to the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024 I have plans to improve business in each respect, the online store, physical store and Wizards Arcade. We also want to grow the Mid Island Pinball League and our annual event VIPE (Vancouver Island Pinball Expo)!
I won't elaborate on what specifically will be done to improve each aspect here but stick with me and you will see! Thank you everyone who has supported WiffleGames over the years and I really look forward to what the future has in store for us. The future is bright!
Below photos are of the early stages of my work shop where over stock is stored and where my pinall restorations are executed.
WiffleGames business frontage Sept 2023
Work shop restoration of my Bally Skateball Sept 2023
Wizards Arcade Sept 2023