Ventex game watch

Ever seen this one before? Nope, me neither.

I saw it on eBay, non-working, for a steal of a price and of course was beaten to it. Disappointing, but Seth, a US collector and highly talented repairer of old and corroded LCD watches, was the person who won it so I figured I’d at least see it working at some stage.

I was pretty sure it was another version of the Juggler watch – having seen this one on Facebook a few years back, same Time / Game graphics.

So I was surprised when Seth got this one working to see it was a totally different game, and once I haven’t seen before.

UPDATE: I’ve since discovered this is one of four games in a series.

It still had some issues, no sound being the main one, and the battery connector was a bit temporary, but I jumped at the chance to buy it when it came up for sale.

The trip from USA to NZ was a bit rough and it literally fell apart when I opened the packaging but in the process of making the repairs more permanent I was able to fix the sound and make it a bit more bulletproof.

The acrylic crystal was quite scratched, but only lightly so, so some Polywatch and a bit of elbow grease and it came up very nice. Added a strap from the right era of watches to it, and it’s set to entertain for another 20 years.

The game itself is more like The Pagemaster Richard watch, where books fall from library shelves which you have to catch. The Ventex game sees spaceships dropped from a mothership which you have to catch.

There’s a second game, too, similar but different – making this a very unique watch indeed.

For every new watch I find, I wonder how many there are that haven’t made their way to Facebook, eBay or collector websites yet. This one nearly slipped through the net too!