# TNT Amusements Presents: Avoiding Lemons When Buying Coin-op Machines **Source:** Pintastic New England **Type:** video **Published:** 2022-02-02 **Duration:** 105m 53s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl_QYNGw2iE --- ## Analysis Todd Tuckey and Frank Lindemus of TNT Amusements present a consumer education seminar on avoiding poor-condition pinball machines ("lemons") when buying used equipment. Through video case studies of heavily damaged machines (Kiss, Flash Gordon), they demonstrate inspection techniques, common problems (rust, rodent damage, battery corrosion, cold solder joints), and the importance of hands-on evaluation before purchase. They emphasize the shift in the hobby toward wealthier collectors, the need for buyer diligence, and practical restoration skills. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] The pinball industry has shifted dramatically to become a hobby for wealthier people due to price inflation, particularly after the 'Banning California auction' — _Todd Tuckey discussing market changes and affordability_ - [HIGH] Battery corrosion from leaking batteries has destroyed many pinball boards, sometimes causing failures even after repair — _Todd Tuckey identifying battery corrosion as the #1 problem with modern machines_ - [HIGH] A buyer purchased a Flash Gordon machine on eBay for $800, which required an additional $4,200+ in restoration and parts sourcing, costing over $5,000 total — _Frank and Todd recounting specific Flash Gordon acquisition story_ - [MEDIUM] Bally's Motor Dome was the first pinball game to introduce selectable skill levels (1970s), followed by Sega's Frankenstein 10 years later — _Todd Tuckey discussing game design history; dates approximate based on context_ - [MEDIUM] Steve Young at Pinball Resource is the only person in the United States still rebuilding mechanical pinball motors — _Todd Tuckey citing Steve Young's unique specialization_ - [HIGH] TNT Amusements no longer deals with pre-1977 mechanical games due to the high labor costs and specialized skills required — _Todd Tuckey explicitly stating business decision regarding mechanical games_ - [HIGH] Original game prices in the late 1970s: Black Knight $550, Future Spa $450, Evil Knievel $300 — _Todd Tuckey recounting historical pricing from his early career (1979)_ - [MEDIUM] Data East games with rotten dog boards are unreliable; some work in certain game models but not others, with processor type (Motorola vs. Siemens) affecting compatibility — _Todd and Frank discussing Data East board issues; Joe (TNT service technician) observation about processor differences_ ### Notable Quotes > "don't buy the lemons okay" > — **Todd Tuckey**, early in seminar > _Core thesis of the seminar — metaphor for avoiding damaged machines_ > "it's become a hobby for wealthier people" > — **Todd Tuckey**, market analysis section > _Identifies major shift in industry demographics and accessibility_ > "you're going to have to tighten all the little screws on the switch stacks and you're going to have to bend the emery paper in half and clean the 1500 little switches" > — **Todd Tuckey**, mechanical game restoration discussion > _Illustrates the intensive labor required for pre-1977 mechanical repairs_ > "the shiniest broken game in your collection" > — **Frank Lindemus or Todd Tuckey**, restoration vs. repair discussion > _Describes cosmetically restored but mechanically non-functional machines_ > "digital pictures lie they really do" > — **Todd Tuckey**, buying advice section > _Warning against sight-unseen purchases; emphasizes need for in-person inspection_ > "you got to buy a whole other game" > — **Frank Lindemus**, Flash Gordon case study > _Describes extreme outcome of purchasing heavily damaged machines_ > "there's something funky about a pinball machine" > — **Tom or Tim (TNT Twins)**, personal conversion story > _Reflects the hobby's inherent appeal despite practical challenges_ > "you would think somebody wouldn't buy that but they did" > — **Todd Tuckey**, Flash Gordon analysis > _Expresses incredulity at poor purchasing decisions despite clear warning signs_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Todd Tuckey | person | TNT Amusements co-founder/operator, content creator, pinball restoration expert, seminar presenter | | Frank Lindemus | person | TNT Amusements co-founder/operator (~25 years), specializes in board repair and restoration (battery boards, Frankenstein boards) | | TNT Amusements | company | Pinball restoration, refurbishment, and sales company; YouTube content creator; operates arcade/venue | | TNT Twins | person | Tom and Tim, Todd Tuckey's associates/family; operate their own YouTube channel; helped set up Pintastic New England booth; 49 hours without sleep at event | | John Fanboy John | person | Attendee; first-time pinball show visitor; helped with seminar as example naive buyer; purchased Fire (1987) as first game | | Pintastic New England | event | Pinball show/expo where this seminar was held; large vendor show in New England | | PinFest | event | Major pinball show in Allentown; TNT Amusements attendees visited and took fans to dinner | | Steve Young | person | Specializes in mechanical pinball motor rebuilding; operates from/affiliated with Pinball Resource; described as only person in US doing this work | | Pinball Resource | company | Pinball parts supplier/retailer; Steve Young associated; mentioned as source for System 3 boards and motor repair services | | Automated Mike | person | Attendee at seminar; described as having contributed to booth setup; 49 hours without sleep at event | | Jack Canary | person | Attendee at seminar; treated TNT staff to dinner the previous night | | Stern Pinball | company | Major modern pinball manufacturer; mentioned for problematic plastic washer design on slingshots | | Jersey Jack Pinball | company | Modern pinball manufacturer; produces games primarily for home sale rather than vending locations | | American Pinball | company | Modern pinball manufacturer; produces games primarily for home sale rather than vending locations | | Bally | company | Vintage pinball manufacturer; produced Motor Dome (1970s) and other classic games | | Sega | company | Pinball manufacturer; produced Frankenstein with skill level selection feature | | Data East | company | Vintage pinball manufacturer; known for unreliable 'rotten dog' boards; cold solder issues documented | | Williams | company | Vintage pinball manufacturer; produced Fire (1987); subject of processor compatibility discussion (Motorola vs. Siemens) | | Docent Electronics | company | Edge connector manufacturer; resuming production of System 1 edge connectors for retro restoration | | X-Pinball | company | Aftermarket parts supplier; manufactures keypads for vintage games (e.g., Motor Dome replacement keypads) | | Joe | person | Service technician joining TNT Amusements; experienced with vintage game repair; identified Data East processor compatibility issues | | Steve | person | Large New Jersey pinball collector; frequently visits TNT Amusements; encountered rodent-infested games from barns | | John Sheen | person | Former TNT Amusements employee; retired at age 83; referred to as 'dead engineers' slang for rodents by him | ### Topics - **Primary:** Buyer education and machine inspection techniques, Common pinball machine damage and defects (rust, water damage, battery corrosion, rodent infestation), Restoration vs. repair: cosmetic vs. functional restoration, Battery board failures and lithium battery alternatives - **Secondary:** Mechanical game restoration and motor repair specialization, Vintage board reliability (Data East rotten dog boards, solder joint failures), Industry market shift toward wealthier collectors and hobby consolidation - **Mentioned:** Personal stories and conversion to pinball hobby from video games ### Sentiment **Mixed** (0.55) — Seminar is educational and supportive toward new buyers, but tone is cautionary and often frustrated/sarcastic about bad purchasing decisions and industry damage. Positive sentiment toward community and hobby growth, but negative toward irresponsible sellers and buyer naivety. Humor and ribbing of attendees lightens mood but underlying message is serious. ### Signals - **[product_concern]** Battery corrosion from leaking batteries identified as #1 problem destroying pinball boards; sometimes unrepairable or recurring after repair (confidence: high) — Todd explicitly states battery corrosion is the 'number one problem with pinball machines especially now' - **[operational_signal]** Emphasis on hands-on inspection before purchase: check back/underside, look for rust/water damage/rodent droppings, test mechanisms in person, never buy sight-unseen (confidence: high) — Entire seminar structure built around inspection checklist and warnings against digital photos and remote purchases - **[product_concern]** Data East games show widespread cold solder joint issues; some boards left with entire rows unsoldered that still functioned by marginal contact; processor type (Motorola vs Siemens) affects compatibility (confidence: high) — Todd and Frank describe opening Data East games with unsoldered parts; Joe identified processor variation in Williams boards - **[manufacturing_signal]** Vintage games designed for 5-year lifespan and discard; manufacturers did not provide long-term support; modern games hold up well if properly maintained (confidence: high) — Todd contrasts 1977-era Evil Knievel (5-year design life) with modern durability if properly rebuilt - **[product_concern]** Games frequently arrive non-functional or partially disabled after transport due to loose connections, ball impacts on plastics/targets, and improper handling (confidence: medium) — John and twins report discovering non-working features after delivery; advice to remove balls and check all board connections after move - **[restoration_signal]** Steve Young at Pinball Resource is sole US specialist in mechanical pinball motor rebuilding; no replacement motors available for vintage games like 1949 Gottlieb Crisscross (confidence: high) — Todd states Steve Young 'is the only one left in the world' and motor replacement impossible for many vintage titles - **[market_signal]** Industry shift to hobby for wealthier collectors due to price inflation; 'Banning California auction' cited as turning point for dramatic price increases (confidence: high) — Todd describes hobby now 'become a hobby for wealthier people' and references specific market event - **[business_signal]** TNT Amusements ceased dealing with pre-1977 mechanical games due to labor costs; focuses on electronic games with electronics-only reconditioned sales model (confidence: high) — Todd explicitly states business decision to stop pre-77 games and describes 'as-is' sales model where buyer handles playfield work - **[product_concern]** Games stored in unheated/unair-conditioned sheds or barns susceptible to severe rodent infestation, creating health hazard and restoration nightmare (confidence: high) — Kiss example stored in unheated shed; Flash Gordon had 'biggest mouse nest on record'; multiple attendees confirm encountering infested games - **[content_signal]** TNT Amusements conducting buyer education seminars with case study video demonstrations of damaged machines to discourage poor purchasing decisions and new buyer FOMO (confidence: high) — Entire event structured as educational seminar with video case studies (Kiss, Flash Gordon, Data East Star Trek) targeting 'naive buyers' - **[community_signal]** Emphasis on hands-on skills and self-sufficiency; buyers expected to perform flipper rebuilds, light bulb changes, rubber kit installation; technical knowledge barrier to entry (confidence: medium) — John's learning curve described as 8 years in; advice to expect non-functional machines and perform repairs; flipper rebuild skill highlighted as essential - **[supply_chain_signal]** Edge connectors rare/unavailable; Docent Electronics resuming System 1 production; lead-free solder supply chain operational; aftermarket keypads and battery alternatives emerging (confidence: medium) — References to edge connector sourcing from Docent; X-Pinball keypad manufacturing; lithium battery System 3 boards as alternative to Data East --- ## Transcript i'm todd tuckey and this is uh we caught this is john but we call him fan boy john hello everyone so he kind of started watching our videos i hooked him and his wife but his wife couldn't attend she had to work yeah she had to go to work yeah and frank frank lindemus you know him from his battery boards and his tommy boards and his frankenstein boards and he sold a lot of them brought a lot of frankenstein's back to life because nobody does that board and the twins the tnt twins which now have their own channel and it's a good channel isn't it they do and we have a lot of our fans my pinball sisters are up here and we went to the uh the uh oh gosh the pinball what was the show in the allentown i come free i get to see pinfest we went to pin fest and then afterwards we took them out to dinner and we stuffed them we like hacked we do a lot of eating yeah we do a lot of eating i'm gonna move this a little closer because i'm already losing my voice um there we go clean it up and we're good to go uh jillian are we ready okay can you oh do you need to okay so todd said can you bring in an audience full of naive buyers who don't know much about buying pinball so if you think you qualify for that then you came to the right place here they are todd tell them about how to uh buy right uh when they're buying fruit right you don't buy the lemons don't buy the lemons okay and i was going to have jillian put the first slide up which is just a slide jillian just so you know everything else is a video and there's a five second gap in between each okay okay good we are ready and the boys microphones are on too right good good because everybody's gonna get a chance to be insulted so we'll have some fun especially you especially me well um how many in the room do not own a pinball machine yet oh good we do have it put your hand down back there that's a good number jack you don't qualify and mike has more pimples than anybody automated mike is here mike dedona he's in the center [Applause] and jack canary right next to him and we had a great time last night they treated us to dinner we had a great dinner didn't we the twins set up automated's booth today and as of now they've been 49 hours without sleep now this miserable john only had 36 hours without sleep so he had the creep went and dozed he yeah he did it's a lot to set up a show you know a show like this takes a lot of preparation and you'll notice everybody notices that the industry is changing rapidly rapidly i think it all started with the banning california auction i think that's when the prices started to go completely insane but we thought this might be an important seminar this was planned before banning uh to introduce people that have no idea what they're buying and what to look for um frank and i have seen a lot of ghastly things come through in 42 years of dealing with this frank's been with me about 25 one and a half about 25 or a long time too many years but uh we've seen a lot of stuff come and go and we've seen a lot of rigging on pinball machines to get them out the door now it's one thing if you're buying a pinball machine for are you counting the rigging that you were doing to get the rigging well we all rigged i mean i you know we used to sell the black knight for 550 and that was back in when i started selling them out of my driveway and future spa was 450 uh evil knievel was 300 i mean i sold all these games we did not put 600 worth of work into the evil knievel we wiped it down we changed any rubbers that were black or dirty and we put bulbs in now back then we still came across games that were rusty and problems like that and then we blew them out at auctions back then they had auctions where you could get games for next to nothing boy oh boy the good old days that will never ever come back because now this industry has changed dramatic turns it's become it's become a hobby for wealthier people i think that's the best way i can say it uh you just can't buy a special game unless somebody comes along and wants to give it to you or donate it to you i just got an email today from somebody who bought games for me 20 years ago a berserk a defender and asteroids and a phoenix he says they're done with him he says come and get him you can have him he's but i'm sorry to say only the phoenix works the other three games are dead and he just said come and i can get him i got the email this morning so i emailed him back and i said i'll give him a thousand dollars credit have a party at tnt amusements parties are help what's going to help you guys if you open up any kind of a store or an arcade that will help all of you help your hobby and help the growth of pinball that's like a whole nother seminar i think so let's keep we're going to keep to the topic how do you buy a coin operated arcade video game or a pinball machine so we're going to do video games too we decided we do both frank and i worked with this and we thought it was good um right now when when i got into business in 1979 games were 99 and a half percent in stores making money when they made evil knievel back in 77 it was designed for five years of use and then to be discarded or parted out that's it five years miss pacman five years of use everything was five years that was the that was the time period where the manufacturers would support the game then they were done they wiped their hands of it try to get your fast and furious fixed you can't get a lot of the games that we think are new fixed now because they're uh past the five year mark but now those very same games are holding up great a lot of you that own games no they they run really well unless they're dropped into the swimming pool for a day they they hold up great over the years and especially if you rebuild them correctly but what about the people that are driving by this show and they see the sinuses pinball fantastic and they stop in their first time coming to a pinball show and they see acres of room yeah we have some people they're first-timers they don't own any games but maybe this is your first pinball show suddenly you decide hey you can buy these things a lot of people don't realize that and once you play and have some fun you say we'd like to get one for our house well that's the whole the whole point of doing this just pick the microphone up it's easier slide that baby out yeah we need to keep new blood into the hobby um i see a lot of familiar faces which is great but we need new people and so i think it's going to keep it alive kids youngsters new families like you said doesn't know that you can buy a game and have it in your house and you know you can go out and buy a game that looks great and you get it in your house and it's a piece of [] take for example i had a guy i had an adam's family do you remember that that was about nine years ago a guy called his didn't buy from us one adam's family said the flipper didn't work the thing flipped didn't work so i go out and look at it and looks great nice and clean shiny leds new rubbers yeah lift up the playfield it was dirty as all hell they didn't rebuild any flippers that's why it broke so they polished it and they sold it but didn't fix anything so the guy couldn't play the game he didn't want to tell me what he paid for it that's for sure tell me where he got it but we want people to avoid that because you wouldn't believe the things people buy and bring to us and expect us to fix where the only way we can fix is they have to buy a whole other game which has happened which you'll hear about the flash gordon story well the a lot of times people call me they want us to come out and fix a game and i don't know how many of you have service games but how many of you have heard the famous line i think it's just a fuse yes i said well then change it are you blind or you know i come up with some corny stuff but it's you find out that it's more than just a fuse mechanisms are missing uh wires are cut rust is a big factor as you'll see today the thing is is what makes this hobby really neat is now you can buy brand new and the pinball manufacturers that are left 99 and maybe in a half percent of everything pinball manufacturers make jersey jack stern american are going right to the home they're not going into vending places and sometimes vending places mean they're a dollar you know player 50 cents to play a lot of the arcades that are opening now are flat rate arcades and the person can stand in front and play any of the pinballs or video games as long as they want as long as they play the flat rate price so they're not dependent on money going in and that may get more used than usual but it's it's restricted to how many hours you play in your house what are you going to really play your pinball machine first month is the heavy wear so that's when everybody plays the hell out of them and that's when brand new rubbers will break when we sell a game we give them extra rubbers we give them fuses and we give them light bulbs even if we put leds in and we give them light bulbs so they can get the thing up and running right away because we'll never give them the right color led anyway so we said put a light bulb in for now that usually is sufficient we used to give them a solder pencil and when the solder pencils hit seven dollars each i decided not to anymore plus we opened got a lot of games traded in the solder pencil was never even taken out of the box so we decided uh at frank actually you pointed out that people might burn their fingers yeah you know so most people don't hear the solder iron it's hot so you have to get in to service your game so why not look at it now before you buy it and once again if you decide to buy you used a used game you have a lot of options a dealer a business that refurbishes game or from a private seller who is liable not to give you any warranty so if you go to a house to look at a game make sure you've lifted the playfield and you bring a light because they're usually in a dark basement or dungeon and you can't see anything a lot of you know what i mean about the dark basements people come down here the seller the root seller if you buy from a dealer you can buy it reconditioned or as is a lot of you watch our videos we sell games as is we do all the electronics but you do the play field you rebuild the flippers i'll take a thousand i'll take 1500 bucks off the price and we'll dump it and then you take care of it you fool with it but at least you know the electronics are 100 we've been doing that a lot except for mechanicals we decided not to deal with the pre-77 games now that's a big decision a mechanical game made before 77 can be fixed in almost every instance without any parts all you need is fingers you should have 10 and you may need a soldering iron and the biggest thing you need is a flat screwdriver and blue emery paper because baby you're going to have to tighten all the little screws on the switch stacks and you're going to have to bend the emery paper in half and clean the 1500 little switches if you want the thing to at least start up and be dependable and it's true a mechanical pinball should be played at least once or twice a week to keep everything running because you got this old motor spinning in there by the way if you have a mechanical there's only one place in the united states that will fix the motor steve young at pimple resource loves rebuilding motors he loves bringing him back to life he's the only one left in the world nobody wants to touch motors they want to say a new one but can you get one you know for the uh 1949 gottlieb crisscross will you be able to get one i don't think so so he's he's a good person to keep in mind you have to be hands-on on your pinball machine you have to be able to do the small tests like cleaning bulb changing rubbers and if you're comfortable working on machines you can find deals on the fixer-uppers that's what we're going to discuss today the fixer-uppers try before you buy if you're buying your first game you should not buy it sight unseen digital pictures lie they really do how many of you looked at the scammers it opens up the door for scammers yeah people that you know will take a paypal or something they never hear from them again you know buying a pinball machine is like buying a car you know i guess todd said you can buy it new or used private dealer some dealers are going to do some work to them some aren't private sellers probably not going to do anything unless you got a guide it does it restores them and sells them but everybody's idea of restoration gone through repaired restored is different so like i said them might clean it up put some rubbers and bulbs in it and then that's it you know it's gonna be the shiniest broken game in your collection because they didn't fix any of the things that really need to be tended to rebuilding the flippers uh checking to make sure the mechanisms work servicing the electronics you know on and on now john here in the end him and his wife started buying pinball machines they fell in love with pinball just like you did and they decided what was your first game john it was fire by williams uh fire 1989 87 88 87 you know what that was right after tomcat so it must have been 87. yeah we um we went to there was a local show in ohio that was once a year and uh we went for two maybe three years before we bought our per first game and it was nervous uh and scary experience because i didn't know anything about them but eight years later i'm still learning and uh we're hooked we absolutely love it we've made so many great friends along the way and you've learned how to rebuild flippers haven't you yes i have yes yeah that you got to learn how to do that baby yeah now tim and tom for instance they were buying uh uh your first game was from me right the sorcerer well yeah well they made a change they started with video games and they loved them they were greatest things in the world i used to say uh pinballs are pieces why are you bringing that in here toddy and then uh bring the mic close to you baby we used to uh all the time and say oh that piece of crap but then you know the rarest of the rare games were around us that we didn't even care about we'd have just whatever arcade games whatever boards were in there and then slowly but surely we start playing the pinballs and then i give a let's but about uh arcade games i hate them i don't really care i like i mean and what happened to them is what happened to all you you all got bitten by the bug there's something funky about a pinball machine i can't play i never could play i'm fascinated with the mechanics and the beauty of the whole machine if some somebody sat down and designed this whole thing and they got all these other skill people to to do the music score the game rules pinball every pinball every single pinball machine you go to has a story it has its own play it's unique there's not one single pinball machine made that doesn't have something wonderful about it except valley's motor dome oh god is that a turd what a horrible game however bali's motor dome did one thing that not one other game did until let's see 86 uh frankenstein sega's frankenstein does anybody know what bali's motor dome did that no other game did no no that that was a stupid keypad by the way um they make x-pin makes the keypad now so you can buy a keypad because there's stupid little buttons it's like that your door that opens your garage door the buttons go bad motor dome was the first game and they waited 10 years before they did it again to have a skill level selectable when you started the game and the rule card was right there level one had simple rules level two the rules changed level three they changed again level three was like impossible the game was so awful anyway but you play level three you're not going to play for long you're dead so selectable and i think uh god i think frankenstein was the first game that you could select your novice or they only had two skill levels but they waited 10 years it was a great idea but apparently nobody understood it they started the game and they didn't see select level it was actually blinking at you and nobody did nobody selected the level and of course so everybody knows i i did a green screen with tina turner i call it the motor you know instead of thunderdome motor dome so i i couldn't resist that but what killed it we we sold five one christmas we had five of them to get ready and that horrible system the 6803 system turned on the flashlights and locked them on and all the jewels would melt and we had to come up with all kinds of ways to fix it we were only selling them for 13.99 or something back then but it was uh for christmas and i stayed up very late to make sure we didn't ruin any christmases there's nothing like getting a a phone call one christmas day on our phone machine you've ruined our christmas but it does happen it does happen so we are going to we we've covered uh some material some ways but we're going to try what we're going to think to cover is to look at things before you buy i have to look at my cheat notes here look at the back of the machine before you even open it walk around the back of it and look and see if there's chunks of wood missing or anything that you see that may be out of the ordinary look under the cabinet to see if in fact some creep at the last location that was in chopped a hole out to get to the money look inside the coin door look for signs of rust water damage sloppily installed mods mods and famously rodent infestation have you all encountered a game with mice in it there we go steve steve has a huge collection he lives in new jersey and he comes over to tnt and annoys us all the time i mean he he comes over and entertains us a lot and he's you've come up with it especially if the game was in a barn so you know that that's something that happens and of course the number one problem with pinball machines especially now is that old famous battery that leaks all over the place the battery corrosion has destroyed so many boards i mean unrepairable and sometimes you fix them and they work good for six months and then they fail again fortunately there's there's alternatives now not many there's a man that's selling system three boards in the other room but the system three used a lithium battery so it's usually not a battery problem with them it's just that no one wants to fix them but the system nine through elevens try to buy a board the rotten dog boards half of them work and half of them don't i found one rotten dog works fine in tic tac strike shuffle alley but it won't work in alley cats it's a freaking year apart they don't the boards are very very fussy that's the best word i can say however i did find out from joe who's moving into tnt he's a service man has been around for years he said the processors were different on williams certain years williams used a processor and some worked better than others the motorola processor runs better than maybe the siemens so he said before you you give up on the rotten dog switch the processors and see if it'll it'll work on that particular game i think they want to see a video we're going to frank you want to tell them a little about the kiss before we run the video this was precious a guy called me on the phone and he said i have a kiss pinball machine and a pacman and i was going to restore him and i took all the parts off of it and then i lost interest and then he took all the parts off the top and i lost interest anyway we realized how much work it was going to be yes he didn't and what he did is he put the kiss in a shed of course it's unheated and on air conditioning a one of those sheds you put your lawnmower in and then everything inside is wet and musty so as a result we had this lovely thing happen uh can you kick on this video all right i told johnny to call you with pictures before you bought it so don't worry he was going to restore it little buff now look he took him look at these beautiful little baggies look he even saved the the rubbers look he's got that he's look he put that in i'm gonna i'm gonna put things in bags as i fix it you put the whole game in a bag oh god what's this smell [] don't touch it but frankie told me it was nice he said he wanted it restored surprisingly it's not the worst we've seen frank look this doesn't move little wd-40 on it doesn't move well these move i wonder if it fi what else i'm surprised it's got displays on it the displays don't look too bad it should have worked out yeah and clean up in a flash should we try power you should put this glass on steve's bench and tell them to paint it and have a camera set up to see him screaming no you're not that stupid you're not going to go someplace well wait a minute and see this and buy it wait wait that's happened yeah ask about the flash gordon story well you know here's the prompt we bought this so we could show it to you as part of the seminar frank should we tell him about the front the flash board frank how about wait a minute the only difference between this and the flash gordon is the flash gordon wasn't taken apart i'll tell you what frank i'm going to let you start but you're you're out in the show now so you want to tell yourself to start no i'm not doing that nonsense though i'll start i can follow he's going to start so he found this flash cord on ebay rented a u-haul truck at about 89 cents a mile three hours to get this game brought it back and it basically looked like that kiss you couldn't do anything with it it was completely rusted and sat in a barn for at least 20 years so after he left we actually looked up the listing on ebay and you could see the coin door open in the rat's nest inside the coin door but he bought it it cost him five thousand dollars for a 2500 game at the time because he had to buy a whole other game for us to put together plus the restoration right yeah well so but i mean it was the whole point is that you would think somebody wouldn't buy that but they did sad we're going to say don't buy something like that regardless of what it is you know it's all chewed up and rusted just just pass on it it's just not worth it well we we call the the rodents um dead engineers say that's what john sheen he used to work for me [] retired at 83. i was very upset and wallace left me he was 83 too can you imagine we have mandatory retirement at a hundred that's when my pension kicks in so i keep the money since they retired early but anyway clip two is the flash gordon that was probably three years ago frank maybe four somebody bought this on ebay and they paid 800 for it eight hundred dollars i want you to look at this rust and the plastics um and although they vacuumed it out you can see the aftermath a huge mouse nest was right here the biggest one on record right there isn't that something the rainwater and or piss whatever it was looks like it's gotten in here and damaged this well i don't know this is it's pretty sad frank couldn't i we just told him really sorry and then frank what did happen he bought another game yes he had to buy a whole other machine get to the mic he had to buy a whole other game well he did but he found it local it was actually local and the guy had already thrown the cabinet away so we in fact bought the playfield and the electronics the other cabinet was worse or something i think so we had to piece it together but and what did he pay for that do you remember no i think it was eight or nine hundred dollars like i said i think the whole thing ended up costing them five over five grand with the restoration buying the two games all the time well we had to buy playfield overlapping we had to buy it like yeah it can be well this will give johnny as in mike and the twins there and mike say each other now this is before john the flash gordon and the kiss before john i would i would venture to guess that the average person wouldn't purchase something like this but he really loved flash gordon i mean flash gordon's a great game but not like that now the interesting thing is the end we have a later clip this happened again with a data e star trek that you'll see soon but we're going to finish here the we want to go back to the kiss um we're going to show you the underside of this beautiful kiss these will be things you can look for even if the top of the play field's good could you do the next clip three three your flash gordon that guy flashed that money out of his wallet fast well i mean let's face it that that's what happens to flash gordon sometimes let's see what's in here the rest of the parts oh look wait so there's a lock there's a new lock grab it let me i'm not touching anything let me put this up here let's see we've got the bow tie look it's home to someone kept them coded on drawing for a while oh it doesn't do lock frank there's a key two keys gosh and wait a minute what did he pay for 5.99 i'm gonna fix this that's what the guy said it's an infection frank look he did put these in the bag oh god frank the original oh no that was yeah it's not without any gloves go get some kitchen gloves or something cleveland what's these are these more parts anyway it's a project folks at least all the parts are here yes it's of course i guarantee you he will have this thing in the shopkins wait a minute wait a minute he will solve this game got a couple cobwebs i wonder if these are moving look the drop target bank goes up i don't see why not he's going to plug it in it works got a logic board too it's a miracle it's the switch [Music] [Applause] [Laughter] do you see what you're missing see you should be a tnt now not sitting in this room that's empty nobody came to our seminar crying well i guess we should get back to the live and you be very careful and you go around we use lead free solder you don't have to you just got your last free dinner out of jack he's pissed jack well i said a couple pins jack not the whole machine well we we actually opened up some data east games and we found like whole rows unsoldered parts like the whole corner of the board was unsigned the game worked for years and it made enough of a connection and uh we just got another 10 rolls of lead free solder we go through so much of it because the guys are breathing in the fumes it takes two hours to reheat a board all the boards stephen you've reheated boards right now scott leaves don't have much i love got leaves for that reason there's not a lot of header pins and gold leaves and we find the system threes are the most you know reliable and don't have cold solder connections but yes edge connectors edge connectors yeah there's not many places that have the old edge connectors anymore docent electronics is starting to make them again if any of you are looking for godly system one stuff i just ordered a pile of stuff and they're starting to make them again he's not feeling well he's not doing well but he promised to get my order out you know i forgot some kiss footage i just forgot about it the cabinet we didn't discuss the cabinet can you run the next clip please well i i realized we didn't show the back i to do the back look here's the back of the kiss do you see once again you got planking you got all this stuff coming loose we only have one bolt in it but the bottom here is pretty solid but this is a project frank you gotta calculate all that in the offer you're making if you really want to deal with a thing like this yeah this is this is something for for somebody who wants to spend a lot of time yeah i mean some people might want to do that but you gotta have the resources you do this is what happens there you go i showed you the back i showed myself the back yes thank you one thing you should know if you go and buy a game from joe blow in this basement when you get it home there's a good chance it won't work right or work at all so expect you have to do something it has something to do the move our reconditioned games happen all the time the twins have delivered games and once they got them set up they found out one hole wasn't working or something they had and john you've had that happen where you bought a game yeah there's a lot of basic things even though you tried to uh break it down to transport it to your home the best you can you always want to go over and check all all the connections on all the boards because they can they can work themselves loose or off from the move remove the balls before you transport it yeah so they don't bounce around and break targets off exactly especially if they're old targets and no one told me that in my first game it was after a couple and just meeting and talking to people like yourself uh yeah i think i did plastics yeah plastics are notorious that's why you got to buy the round spacers the protectors for your slingshots especially now stern puts those ugly metal washers on them we take them off and we use them someplace else in the shop and we put the clear washes on so you can see through them but stern had the right idea with that and jack your games have the washers too right i'm trying to bring you into the conversation anyway uh what follow me before talking about connectors so when did what's your fun house like your third game or something uh funhouse was my second game so he gets a fun house i was at us out at his house a few months ago and we did a video with his wife we're putting her putting the battery board in but they get the fun house and it wasn't working right half the lights were off and it was in a foreign language yeah when i purchased my fun house it was only about 50 percent working because i at the time i couldn't afford a nicer one that worked and for the first six months i played the game with the glass off uh every time i'd shoot the ball it would always get stuck in uh rudy's hideaway and i'd have to take a i always kept a ballpoint pen by the game i would be able to just reach down in there with a pen knock the ball out and keep playing and you know it was a learning process early on and then one day the display all suddenly had a bunch of gibberish in a foreign language i'm like oh no no i can't play the game at all a lot of you encountered the foreign language stuff so i went to my friend google and it said you might have a loose ribbon cable somewhere or the ribbon cables also deteriorate go bad over time but they're easily replaceable so one at a time i disconnected all the ribbon cables moved them back and forth a couple times trying to clean the connection and after that i turned the game back on and voila the game worked 100 percent instead of 50 of my lights working all of them worked and everything worked on a game i was i was just amazed that on a fluke i fixed my game and i've learned a lot since then marco's specialty sells all those ribbon cables brand new if you have a wpc game you have to buy a new ribbon cable between the logic and the driver board now you can get by by reversing it you flip it around but you need to put a new one and treat your game it's six bucks i mean buy a new one i we we had a at christmas time we we were so busy we were selling between 150 and 200 games the month of december we had outside uh trucks drivers that would come in we packed the truck and the truck the two guys would take off at seven in the morning come back at seven at night with the empty truck we had two or three trucks on our busiest times and uh i never forget i got a phone call from [Music] uh one of our customers he just dropped off a miss pacman and plugged it in this screen was scrambled and uh he's the guy actually said to the customer don't worry just has to warm up and he left and that was it so i called the guy on the truck says you go back there and take the back door off and push the boards in don't walk away and drive down the street it's an hour drive so they went back and of course it was a loose plug or a loose connection just like john found you have to try to solve the problem without sending a guy out for service but since then the phrase has stayed with us you know listen to them say it yeah it just has to warm up no it doesn't have to warm up it comes on and it works however that's a good point though if you're moving games in frigid air the electronics games will run fine in 30 degree weather but if you bring it inside a warm house and continue to play it you're going to have trouble so get a hair dryer put it on high and heat up all the boards if you have a video game heat up the monitor in the boards so you don't have a service call i was talking to you about star trek the 25th anniversary it's a wonderful wonderful game a man uh called me and he wanted to bring a game in for an overhaul and i made the mistake of not asking for pictures detailed pictures before he drove it from minnesota and he showed up with an atrocious horrible machine it was absolutely atrocious now apparently the guy that sold it to him fixed it up by putting in a brand new and pinball pro speaker at the bottom yes i'm gonna put that speaker in it and it'll be as good as new and then he painted the transformer to cover the rust uh can you run that clip please well well frank the hell are you talking to me i was talking to us that's so weird that's yeah but it's part of it we're here that's why there's only five if we got that's why there's only five people there's a whole bunch of people out there yeah believe me they're talking about dinner they're not thinking about this stuff it is dinner time it's six o'clock that's why there's only five people it's actually six money now but listen we just got this uh star trek in it's 25th and well no what happened is it's i we have to fix this and i promised the guy that sounds like we would retain it so i was going to show it to stephen here now steven do you think you can you got to be [] kidding me yeah you can't say in the video wait wait but you can't you understand there's children out in the audience no i guess there isn't all right look when you buy a game look at this so you see the planking uh this obviously was sitting in some kind of water but i looked either humid basement somebody painted the transformer it looks like they started to work on it maybe some new new bolts unless that's a whole different transformer i think stephen can make actually we had to order we had to order new art now stephen smart steven uh if you look here at the head see what are you gonna do to fix it call out sick that week actually let me show you gonna be a lot of bondo on this game also another thing too is the rust under here well we took the rails off this now you know you have eyes if you're buying a game and it has this you know you're going to have issues especially under here and the mechanisms are all rusty surprisingly we have rust on the plunger itself so what we'll have to do i want to give you my two weeks notice i promised he'd get it by thanksgiving thanksgiving 2022 maybe now here are the bolts that came out of the coin door okay so you got to price it accordingly or just 10 million just stay away from a game like this if you uh well don't want a project that's great this would be a beaters so somebody could buy this but the customer really wants this game he already bought the subwoofer i'm wondering if he bought that what else do you say oh everybody look here is the plastic even rusted too i didn't even look at the boards frank did you look at the boards you know what one good now he did send us stuff to put in it sent us rubbers what's in this oh this is the lighting well that'll fix it oh that's for the subwoofer by the way let those rubbers fix it well everything else well it could be the board was ruined that's going to be replaced you should have to put a new one in yeah this was replaced oh that's what these are these you can't use those words that you're upsetting look at the guy in the front row he's really pissed the red shirt of the blue shirt no the green shirt this is what we call a polished turd well i wonder what it'll look like when steven finishes it do you see what we put up with well okay all right let them let them take you just runs and hides in the office we're done we're done finally you are done the pinball that ferocious machine it's actually coming along it won't be ready for thanksgiving uh we've encountered more trouble with it with a transporter oh my god what a mess and uh but we're going to try uh you how you have a star trek a transporter well he was working on it when i left we we have a lot of projects and who knows i may need it i think we can buy the motor though so we're not sure what's going on with the transporter it's a great game when it works but anyway we wanted to dip down and since a lot of you guys have video games in your houses and your collections we thought maybe we should show you some ideas give you some ideas about video games which have the same problems rodent infestation water mold there's actually only four major components in any video game all of you know them the logic board the monitor the power supply and the controls and then if that's the components in it and then you have the cabinet itself if you're making one game out of two you pick the best cabinet and transfer stuff we do it all the time especially in games like defender the williams games were the bottoms all rotted out because they were in luncheonettes and they were swapping the mop up to the machine every night and before you know it the things off the casters are now sitting on the wood and the wood gets all crapped up sometimes you can't bring them all back to life you just can't video games are more prone to um hack work a lot of them are converted oh gosh how many of you have stumbled across a rare game like a liberator an atari liberator and somebody put a trivia whiz in it oh god and you want to bring you want to convert it back if you're lucky somebody left the harness in there for the old game but many missed pack bands i mean they made thousands of them but a lot of them got converted to capcom or i call crap comboing trivia whiz uh other games arkanoid which is a pretty good game if the conversion's done right um a man sent us this is really really nice because the man the other man sitting right here this is steve a man sent us his favorite game his favorite game on planet earth he paid a thousand dollars for this four player atari football and i'd like to show you because this is tim and tom involved in this here we go see so this has actually puffed out look it's swollen it's swollen out look so the wood has expanded wrap this way and the bottom is literally not really there it has a key yes so it was obvious it was outside its whole life or at least the last you know like the time or the other way young man there we go there we go gentlemen that dork is about to fall off okay so you can see now look at the color the water damage right so the transformer is a rust bucket so the board's intact we turn the game on and we actually get somewhat of a picture uh the monitor is there but you know the transfer it's a black and white monitor i just don't know what to tell you because the cabinet is so poor and uh you know we're dealing with something like this and this shape what could be done with something like that what the cabinet was beyond hope got off the roof maybe yes that was a good contender that's right actually uh this is steve in the front he he lives about about 40 minutes from tnt he came over one day and he happened to see it he said what are you doing with the football i said this guy wants me to rebuild it i can't touch this and stephen said i can make you a new cabinet yeah sure you can yeah sure you can and do you know the top of the game by the way the whole formica top was perfect we lifted the top off we took everything out of it and stephen took the cabinet to his house and he actually made including artwork and absolutely carbon copy of that machine that looked like a tory made it right down to those little side rails that this logic board slides into it was perfect the coin bucket to hold the coin the box it was perfect it was the most incredible transformation and we put that top that you saw on top of it and we've changed the monitor uh we got another black and white monitor out of another game uh we got the logic board repaired uh the power supply was rebuilt but the harness still it still has plagued us to this day so i ordered a harness i sent the old harness to a man on facebook he calls himself arcade harnesses travis he's made battle zone bellows he makes atari parts all kinds of stuff and he's building us in a custom four-player atari cockpit or cocktail harness for steven's game i called steven's game because he did such a beautiful job and i don't have a clip because i we wanted to wait until it was done because i plan on combining that footage with the finished product to show you uh the transformation and bringing back another four player atari so we got a game almost ready but we'll never take a project like that one again i'm done with waterlogged stuff the only reason i bought that kiss i actually sold the kiss that one you just saw but the only reason i bought it was to use for the seminar believe it or not because we wanted to have all of you avoid this kind of crap crap we had a flood tnt at the area we were not flooded but a tornado passed through and knocked down a lot of trees a lot of flood happened and the scoop hill river which runs through philadelphia over flowed its banks and we got a phone call from a company that had a game room for their employees sadly it was in the lower level and he said we have a lot of games a lot of games and we want to sell them we want to get rid of them can you want to come out and see what you'd like to pay for them and i drove out and filmed i had actually believe it or not i had decided i probably wasn't going to buy anything but i said boy i could use it for the seminar so we came up with this video for more stuff that you could avoid there's three pinball two pinballs and i'm going to say 12 or 14 video games and that is this clip here set it up to pick it up tuesday week after he accepted the thousand dollar offer on tuesday my truck was not coming back anytime soon i called up and said we're going to do it wednesday morning instead now wednesday morning three of my guys two guys in our big truck and my one guy that was going to take all the boards and parts out headed out to this place and he calls me on the phone he says we kept the two pinballs and the turbo but we threw everything else in the dumpster i said what well we only have the dumpster here one day so i told him well i'm not going to pay a thousand dollars but the guys were on their way anyway so we went there and we got the two the medusa the um mechanical i don't remember the name of it groovy did the glass show or did you just recognize the playfield okay and the uh turbo i bought the turbo mini so i could test turbo boards i was sort of hoping i could plug turbo boards in it and test it um kurt jumped into the dumpster and rescued the circuit boards out of several of the games any of the boards that were in the machine sideways there was a miss pacman and a junior pac-man for instance were okay after the water came off they moved the games up out of the water area and let it they put it in that warehouse where they dried believe it or not the junior pac-man and pac-man board worked and i actually already sold them and shipped them the uh he couldn't get to any of the others he got a control panel any of the boards that were flat were beyond repair so he couldn't get a whole lot out of the dumpster he wasn't too happy about digging any deeper which was fine i told him to leave him but a hazmat suit well actually we would need it we may actually need the hazmat because um wait a minute let me just see because the next clip is actually the advertisement for the fantastic show so this is two mystics one is a prototype that i just took back and trade we had restored this uh two years ago and the guy traded it in and uh and the mystic that you just saw and the most amazing thing about the mystic you just saw is this hey guys hey it's fantastic and we're gonna be there for a special seminar on how to avoid buying a lemon no pieces wait frank you can't say that but look nice game not nice we don't want you to buy this and believe me we've had people buy these and bring them just to fix it we're gonna have fun seven o'clock friday and we can go as long as we want so if you have questions we're going to have some fun videos all right well i'm going to cut it off at 2 a.m so but if you want to stay late make sure you bring plenty of pizza and quality feed us and we'll keep on going he eats a lot so if you got a lot of limit on your credit card see ya at fantastic panel of course you saw that um the i i couldn't believe the thing powered up none of the mechanisms wouldn't kick any balls out because every single mechanism was a rust bucket solid and rust we have a live video where we open the game up on our channel i'm sure a lot of you watched our shows our videos we have almost 1800 videos up now and uh it was interesting to see that that machine actually fired up we ended up it had an all-tech board in it it had the water came up to the bottom of the head we took all the boards out we took all the displays they're now going to be going into other games and maverick the sound board went into a silver ball we you know we burned a silver ball rom so we have that mystic available somebody wanted if somebody needs a bally head it's in great shape the body isn't so much it's black mold black mold it's pretty bad i was thinking of putting it making a wall decoration wall art and i was going to sign john it will blend in with all the molds behind him maybe it would make a great home for uh tnt's uh newest addition uh everett mousey everett yes we have a we have a um what would you call it we have a a troll on the channel mascot hoops yes hoops oh my gosh that's a story on its own it is a story we're not ready for that clip but i do have hoops coming uh what about the odd things that you find inside the mods here's a a stern striker extreme uh yes striker extreme can you run the next clip i gotta show you how this guy he fixed it i just thought this was the cutest thing what this idiot has done i i just can't believe somebody could be this stupid he's put in he's actually to get it to fit he actually had to cut the fixture he went to home depot and bought this and he actually went out of his way to purchase this 40 watt bulb isn't that clever and rather than fix the fluorescent light i mean what could be wrong for goodness sakes the ballast the starter the ball what what the heck could be wrong but no no he just went out and put this stupid light bulb up here he just he must have thought he was the greatest vendor on planet earth and just to show you it isn't as clever let's not put the right drop targets here let's just put in see the right drop targets on the far right the wide one but could he be bothered to put the right drop targets and no he put skinny ones in and then stuck the old stickers in front of it yes that was a vendor it was actually vending and it doesn't make any money anymore i said yeah i guess not broken targets ball get stuck doesn't make any money it doesn't it won't it won't but you guys can fix all that because everybody can buy the targets but see when you were a vendor you had to look what was in your toolbox i have any of you have purchased a pinball machine and have discovered that the knocker coil is missing the mechanism's there but the coil isn't how many there's a few people yeah because they use the coil to fix the pop bumper ah there we go fix this who needs a knocker you know they had to fix it didn't have a coil with them whatever they like you can't go out to a service call and come out with five screwdrivers and some nut drivers and a few fuses you got to bring parts with you nothing was going to save these games i got it i've sold three machines to a store a little corner store a hoops by got laid one of the great games of all time a data east batman and a um a road kings but the phone call came in that was very odd because i finally researched where they came from man called me and he said he had three games in his warehouse and they're going to renovate the warehouse the basement i i only have a still from it but uh the i well i i don't i didn't do because see originally i thought we were going to run out of time so i didn't i have a video online showing the whole pickup he said he had a lord of the rings yeah he's like hurry up he had a pokemon you gotta get here we gotta get down there we're gonna miss a deal it's a little bit i have to get down there we jumped in the truck and we filmed the live video going down walt smash and we drove his face we could because he wanted some sheep so i'm thinking lord of the rings wow he says i don't think he said there was really anything wrong he said they were in a warehouse and had to get them out well the warehouse ended up having dirt floors now who has a philly warehouse with dirt floors and it wasn't lord of the rings it was road kings and as the nfm may quote him lord of the rings road kings same thing almost stellar game a pole position there was a pole position too and the data east batman the problem is one game had broken in half literally broke in half uh uh if you could start this this is just a still we have a full video available and i i knew we wouldn't have enough time for everything but you can see in the picture uh if you freeze it for a second uh the top is the road kings that literally broke in half um uh the hoops uh it was in pieces the playfield broke in half it was amazing the batman backlash so at least the backlash looks nice and it was fully intact but when we got the backlash back to tnt amusements the next day all the paint fell off and there was a mirrored finish and peter bought it on my best all for sale but what was unique about it it was actually really beautiful because if you put it up on the wall you could still see the mirror that stayed on it and peter loved it didn't he that's why he's not here tonight is he but you got to watch this video because um they stored it for we sold them to them in 2010 and we picked them up was about three years ago right because it's about when you started about two years ago tom you weren't with us right i told you it was me it was just us three so we took back the pieces now timmy has on his facebook page a um a video is it still on your facebook page okay you need to go on facebook and friend timmy timmy timothy roth he's on facebook and you have to go on their channel if the twins arcade and subscribe that's not on twitter's arcade that was all that was just right that was a video we filmed him taking parts off the playfield we sold the ramps we sold a lot of stuff on it but the playfield was completely rotted through it was really sad and we don't like to see that happen and we don't want you to buy anything like that because you won't be happy timmy and tommy have been involved with me for three years now uh timmy watched one of our bargain basement videos i don't know if a lot of you have seen them where we unload garbage we have great deals on split stuff you're right the first time garbage and they bought a time killers for 500 and that was his first dealings with me and i sat there for months before the payment pick them up but then they started coming regularly well at one of my early best offer sales we run these sales now about every month we're up to bestow for sale 45 if you can believe 45 of these sales where we sit there and unload stuff good stuff only the best and i have this clip of timmy and tommy that was i it was a riot and i said you know what we got to use this clip you haven't seen it for ages either now if you can run the next clip you get an idea maybe you want to attend our next bargain basement sale which in fact it won't be this good well of course you'll be there you have to be there so this clip we're going to see is a piece from that bargain basement video and this will show you why timmy and tommy were professional wrestlers for two years right three years back when they were younger and a little thinner now according to this um where were we doing tommy next uh tommy yeah i know i know what were we doing tommy oh you changed it we have a change we have a bidding change um what's this people are bidding on the tommy thing right now roller disco why is why is the beautiful roller disco covered by these horrific no wait a minute that's mine at the moment what my poacher you can't they're beautiful they're gorgeous they're the most beautiful hookers i've ever seen because the next time they did that was with this clip here uh which surprised me too and this was live wasn't it yeah that was live this was a live uh footage that's always fun to get to live we have unnumbered live videos folks you go on our channel and you click on the live part we have a whole bunch of videos up that have no numbers assigned to them but they're still a lot of fun so we'll run this clip real quick this is a short one yeah what do you think what do you think it's limited there's only 50 of them ever made is this an l.a yeah yes brought this in trade it for the radical right yeah they got the radical yeah let's try this one it's loading player that's button i did select level where do you put the quarters all the way to the left that's very left yeah it did it's loading and then you just do nothing here we go it's a maximum soundtrack you couldn't even sell this and get french fries at applebee's hey phil phil says hello like everyone knows wallace ever coming back now i think wallace is retired yeah i think it's slightly off level but it's got sweet leds it's really it's worth another hundred dollars just for the leds todd's gonna put his legomatic buttons on it this is better this is better than godzilla better than that anyway i'm bored good yes yes things should be destroyed okay yes we already thought about that go ahead let's step back okay that's it yeah we're gonna destroy it all right i don't know you were shushed but we're gonna destroy it good now wait a minute wait a minute what are you doing that explains why it was on that mat that was a good one there's that concrete you think that sauce is going to take a bump on it oh god you ruined it it's the good one i honestly was afraid you weren't going to get up after that like i was going to set the trade in now don't don't try that at home they understand how to do the move so they don't get hurt what i thought he did about when robbie smashed you in the head with the bottle oh you're talking about getting hit with a point of glass somebody sent us a fake bottle and it was designed to smash you can buy them on amazon i think he paid 15 to one of our fans and we get a lot of stuff in the mail and he sent us a fake bottle i i forgot all about that yeah you were a little bit surprised with that yeah it hurt a little i mean it did explode and went all over the place but that was pretty shocking what you can buy uh we did have fun with that though that was the boys surprised me they came up with that whole routine and surprises that made a lot once again the live videos we're actually getting more views for them and our regular edited ones which is kind of interesting now of course this all leads to green screening everybody says they love it when i do green screening and a lot of people say they hate it but i decided i'd run you one of my favorite green screens one big bang bar okay a lot of you have not seen it and i decided to delve into an old jane fonda movie called barbarella because barbara ella fits big bang bar amazingly well and i decided to green screen myself i did three or four scenes but i'm only going to run you one but i thought i did a pretty good job of this putting this into the film here we go [Music] oh hello pretty pretty [Music] make it i had to drop right and oh gosh what a mess to put that up but uh it was fun but watch the big bang bar video uh we go into details and game play really rare game you rarely see it anywhere it's not around uh by the way i meant to mention something the best offer sales i set up that you saw were all the brainchild of jillian right there and it's her birthday wednesday was her birthday and she at no charge set my whole auction thing up she did everything she planned it she executed it she got it to work and worked all the little bugs out and the auction website works great she did a wonderful job and i've centered some things here and there but what makes today special is because jillian owns a williams roller games she loves it and her roller games has suffered a sad fate it has a broken main ramp the ramp at the top it's huge it's curly cues and all kinds of crap and years ago i was offered package deal on dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of brand new williams and data east ramps tons of them most of them i sold the marco's specialties and they've sold most of them i had 25 batman main ramps 25 of them i'm never going to use them i kept two and i sold them the rest we did a barter so i sent them four or five pallets of ramps because i would never use them i threw out all the metal ramps i threw them in the dumpster because when do you need a laser wars metal ramp when will you ever need a metal ramp because they never go bad and if they do you can usually spot weld them but i kept one ramp and for jillian for her birthday i have a brand new giant and i mean giant fully populated with all all the bells and whistles it has the labels the switches the flash lamps this is how williams used to sell them and frank will drive out himself when he's sober when he's able to and install jillian your own ramp and i'm going to give you this box to take it home i i told him to wrap it up but not this well god he's i'm trying to open this up i should have opened it up in the hotel room but i wanted a surpriser but this is what they used to sell i saw i had two marco specialties i charged them 350 dollars for this ramp marco about eight years ago isn't that something everything including the coil that so it moves in and out all the flashlights the works even still has the sticker on on the side the the part sticker happy birthday happy birthday [Applause] all three all for my jillian jillian is i've told her this too but she's the smartest woman i've ever met and i i i swear to god she's amazing thank you very much for all your help you've given me all these years so yes yes and and she does have the program for sale if any of you want to do sales she can sell you the program and then stand behind it so if you want to do best all for sales yourself you're certainly welcome to contact jillian that's it yeah i built this prototype for todd at the beginning of the pandemic when tnt was shut down and my business was family i had a restaurant which right closed and i understand what business overhead is and he was taught being the person that he is the businessman he is he was trying to make sure that his employees kept their health insurance and um some trolls in his chat room were making it so that people couldn't bid if he couldn't make money and i decided to just use some of my software skills to kiss off the trolls they did we were on facebook and we had some problems and things and so jillian kind of brought us back from the dead and kept us in business and so did mike dedona who has h elped me out immeasurably i appreciate that sir mike by the way mike mike is the man jersey jack and stern pins call him on the phone he actually answers the phone himself extension 16. well i'm not going to give his cell phone number oh i'll get the whole phone i'll get all the calls so michael take care of you he has a big booth in there he's got some games he does have games here he'll sell a lot of the games you're playing in there he can't sell but yes oh he's got wizard of oz signed playfields jack himself and the new owner signed them the owner signed the jersey jack playfields it's your signature jack and who else the wizard of oz playfields on mike's table what's your signature for sure anyway somebody else have been okay i didn't recognize the signature i'll sign the play field greg ferris you think it was i'm not sure and that's something o'connor is out there signing pictures and he had me make a video because his granddaughter's five-year-old granddaughter is a big fan of mine so i made a custom video talking to her about he's fascinated with pinball so we hadn't we made a nice little video with him so it's kind of interesting uh all the people you run into here you know john borg is here uh yes make the joke about it you can fill up jack's face and buy a stole ah jack has his stool here for sale and we have a special sale price on them how much are they jack stool you can own jack's stool it has a cushion on it don't worry but in my doughnut spot there's only uh there's only 15 left now and that's it they're not going to make it right on his face yes for the rest of your life the twins set up the automated booth they got all that stuff set up and as you heard earlier they've not been asleep for over 48 hours and still go still functioning that's really hard you gotta stay awake a little bit longer i i gotta run you uh we just overhauled a stars the stern stars for somebody and he already picked it up but we had this it was just so outrageous a flipper repair that kurt and i found i have to run you this next short clip could you start the next one please okay curtis started working on the flippers on the stars and we wanted to point you at this wonderful repair now this is probably what happened he was in his house and the wire broke so he found the only available wire he could find and it is the 300 ohm antenna wire and he obviously cut it off the family antenna on his television set oh smack stairs is what he said later at like six doesn't work curtis please i love it i showed that video in chat premiered the other day but i had a panthera that came in where someone had done the gothic ground quads using coax cable coaxial kit i like it nice and stiff wow you know you do find a lot of crazy stuff um i know you don't want to stay too much longer we're actually mods are absolutely crap junk waste to time nonsense gottlieb issued a single bullet and everybody threw out if you ever got the system 80 starting with panatera right i call it that because this this guy at this place i used to buy them from it's panthera yes i know but he would call it panetta and it just drove me nuts so i just picked up one it goes back 30 years so it's now panetta but between the logic board and the driver board got leap had one single ground wire on the far right there's a hole on the opposite side of the board of the connector to put a second one in because it's ground on both sides if you have two in it it grips the board tight because you've got two grounds touching stripping the pin you will have no more ground problems oh but no everybody scrapes the green away from the logic board and they run aground from that to the driver board and then they ran in they were disassembling it no completely in sane no no i've sold 30 000 machines it doesn't i no i've sold i've sold plenty it says i've sold more system 80s than everybody in the room combined you can jump out of an airplane with one parachute but every time i've done it i have a reservoir i'm sorry well i'd need two parachutes it won't dumbo drop i did i did jump out of a plane i have a video up with me skydiving just to prove i could do it the plane was going down with it what's the name of the crater do you hear this do you hear this now people always i always get this question answered why all the three stooges humor and laughs because i always loved the three stooges ever i think pretty much everybody in a room has seen at least four five three stooges and is that your phone or my oh no it's chatty kathy here chady kathy he's got a date a date on the phone yes or one of those dates you want to go in the closet okay anyway um of course there are three stooges sound effects i i took off the internet and lobbed them in and i put the eye pokes and all that stuff in i found a really odd clip and i want to run it for you because i find it very humorous everybody said don't include it but that you know colombia made 193 stooges shorts but most of you aren't aware that colombia also made a hundred more short subjects with the same producer the same directors and a lot of the same co-stars the same 18-minute length shorts they were called columbia comedies they had a comedy department in columbia but most of them never got caught on but i found this one short i i sell 16 millimeter films that's my other hobby and i ship them all over the world i've actually sold films to quentin tarantino martin scorsese steven spielberg mel blanc used to buy cartoons from me because he couldn't get them on film you know it's hard to find film so i've done a lot i'm still selling films i still go to film shows a lot of you have watched some of the videos that we do so we're still running film and so are all these big directors they want film they don't want digital you all have digital because it's cheap films are not anyway i had a short that came in and had one particularly odd sequence in it this woman appears out of nowhere three different times in the short has no bearing to the story of the comedy that's this next clip so i put the three clips in and you'll notice the sounds the effects and the direction is just like a three stooges and since none of you will ever see this short it's called ain't ain't life cuckoo ain't with love cuckoo may 1949 i i assembled these three things because i said you know what this is a chance to show people something they've never seen go oh boy ahead boy how dare you look like somebody i hate [Music] now wise guy take that you got enough it [Music] oh i i loved it and i said you know what i like it when i read this synopsis they said they had no rhyme or reason why that woman appeared and apparently there's the two comedians that did these shorts they made ten of them for columbia and that was the only time they did something odd like that that's what the information i dug up about the short but does anybody have any questions because we don't want to get into the nine o'clock because i understand there's some kind of thing planned at nine did anybody have any questions about buying stuff or uh yes oh there's a microphone set up right over here i forgot they set up a macaroni phone right there for you to talk to okay i have two questions hopefully useful uh you talked about how people need to inspect these machines yes i know in my area there had been a local distributor who used to distribute machines would it be a good idea for people thinking of buying a machine in an area to see if they can contact an oh a distributor and see if they can go and make a bit you know see if they'll make a house call for them for forty fifty dollars take a quick peek at a machine that might be on the net is that something that would be worthwhile that that's a great idea but i don't think the distributor will go out for 40 or 50 bucks well whatever it is they charge i mean if they're paying 3 000 for a machine if they pay even 150 for some guy to check it out like a mechanic pretty good insurance that's an interesting idea i i guess something like that could happen mike do you think that's going to happen with you i already know the answer it is a good idea but most uh distributors jack is having a stroke oh my god jack is having a stroke that's the second big laugh today young man at the party he spit out the water no time earlier it was gonna be like roger rabbit member and roger rabbit where they keep laughing until they pass away yes jack get come to you no i get i i guess jack doesn't agree i i don't know i guess we've been asked to come out to do estimates on flood damage and the bottoms of all the games had two inches of water i mean you can't fix that i mean and then they've asked us to do it and how much is the pack being worth when the bottom dries out it's okay i guess it's hard to to see if there's a local distributor so that is something you could try you could always call oh you could call what are your friends one of your new pinball friends somebody that owns pinball machines would be a better choice because you might be able to get them to come out and look for it and then you know buy them lunch yes pinside.com join it immediately so if you're going to collect games join pinside.com right away okay that's a good point what but what's your next question the second thing is you talked about regular maintenance on machines you know so many people buying from the home and doing needing regular maintenance have you thought about putting together a seminar saying all right if you're a pinball owner come down to we'll do this maybe four times a year come down to new jersey we'll have a class here are the basic things you need to do basic maintenance that you would need to do on a machine put out a couple of machines say all right these are the machines these are the things you want to do maybe once every two years or once every five years and basically teach owners who might buy a machine and think oh i can just leave it sit there forever and have a have a class like that that may be a good topic for next year uh we could do possibly as a seminar but the sub your thing you're suggesting that a a company like maybe mine or somebody could actually have a class and advertise a class of uh service general service on a pinball machine yeah so for people who can take care of their own and if you have guys from like the various pinball sites who get some training then they could take care of local areas in the same way that may work with especially with all the pinball clubs uh the pinball tournaments they're having now there's a lot of people that play pinball every month they get together every month and they may just play but some now own so that is a good idea i mean that may maybe that'll spark some interest to advertise on pinside about doing a seminar of some sort on basics two years ago we did a seminar on bringing a silver mill six million dollar man six million dollar man back to life and the site the video is on on your channel right derek is the video on the channel no not my video okay okay i actually have all the footage and i've been meaning to put it together along with about 25 hours of footage i never edited we're just so busy now we don't have time to put stuff together but um that this that seminar showed how a rebuild was done but last year's pinball expo we made frank and i made a one hour video on how we restored a cyberknight a bally cyberknot from beginning to end very detailed close-ups uh some some corny gags but it's a lot of fun so you could watch that to get a lot of basic information on restoring a pinball machine so we go from top to bottom how to take the flippers apart that sort of thing but thank you thank you for the question did you have a question too young man we saw a lot of good uh extreme examples of damage on tables um but do you have like a kicking the tires checklist for say a first-time buyer going to look out to kind of know what they're looking for you know if i'm a little mechanically inclined but like what should i be really looking at to get a good idea of the tables condition you know we were going to make a list and we never did we'll have to work on something yeah you know we you know that actually completely slipped through our mind because frank and i actually listed uh things to look for cabinet condition number one the board condition number two uh the condition of the play field and the paint and of course the cabinet paint too they're gonna influence the price looks look at uh if you look at all the boards all the serial numbers match it just kind of indicates that it really hasn't been molested um that's why i said look inside the cabinet look underneath because if it's really nice and clean it's probably had a really good life but once again that adams family looked beautiful until we lifted the playfield up i suggest when you're gonna go look at purchasing a game take a few minutes look online see what parts are available for that game is is there a lot of parts available ramp or it or is there very little available because you don't want to purchase it you want to get parts in the future and find out the they're no longer available but also to elaborate that yeah look at look at pictures of the game get some ideas of what it's supposed to look like and then when you're looking at it look for wiring that doesn't look like it's supposed to be there like a big red wire draped down the play field because they have alligator clips to a light socket to put a mod on it's just asking for trouble all the time anything that doesn't look like it should be there should raise a red flag in the old days we put on the left wall of the cabinet of a pinball machine it was in a flood we had a lot of flood games we put a letter f in black magic marker meaning flood and that's how we knew if the game ever got traded in or we were looking at it we'd look for the f now i probably put an f on 40 or 50 games over the years now those games might work fine we had a brand new water world we sold to somebody and we got the i wish i kept the picture the water was right up to kevin costner's eyes it was unbelievable but it was clean pretty clean water they took it outside they opened the machine up and they let the sun dry it and we went over and we picked it up the game worked i put the letter f in it glean as clean as a whistle it looked fine and we took it to the auction and dumped it now back then we got eight hundred dollars for it but the uh pittsburgh show that their 200 and some games were all under water right up to the circuit boards right up to the bottom they did the same thing they hosed all the machines off because that was muddy water and all those machines went up into the home market they washed all them off and they worked and out they went so that's the rust is the big telltale machine the rust factor that really is it's uh um yes try to look inside the game at the auction before you bid on it and the prices at the auction like the banning auction my gosh do you know i priced a a tractor trailer will hold 45 pinball machines folded i got a price of 8300 to bring them from banning california to tnt amusements from precision moving and storage i had to pay 125 to captain's auction to wrap each machine and wrap the legs to it so i was set up to buy up to 45 machines i ended up buying zero i said especially when nightmare in elm street sells for six thousand dollars i'm not going to pay that and nobody but a lot of people did though didn't they i think what tommy's also trying to say is that auctions where people usually dump their junk so that's where stay away from auctions unless you know what you're doing yes auctions are buying from a home is better but remember the homeowner may have gotten it from the auction a good telltale sign is when they never scrape the auction sticker off the clear glass that's a good sign and we've seen a lot of them come in i have one final clip to run and it's the boys we filmed this i guess over the last two nights oh wait a minute one more is it one more question go ahead i didn't see you hiding hopefully quick i'm small um if you have an older game that's picked up some basements smell some must to it do you know anything they can knock that down a little bit yes two things febreze you febreze is wonderful febreze is one of the safer clothes but use it for games but get a tray from borrow a a cookie sheet not a cookie sheeting a tray from your wife and put two boxes of baking soda in it slide it in the machine and close the coin door and wait two weeks and you won't believe the difference now you i suggest you stir the baking soda maybe halfway through the baking soda is amazing it just sucks up that and then if febreze helps and sooner or later the samoa will be gone piss is a different thing yeah i purposely don't pee in any of my games anymore anymore because the game we talked about earlier todd had me we we febrezed it for about a week and then just let it dry out it took about maybe three to four months before you can't smell piss anymore yeah febreze will work with piss but you know there's also something called urine extractor it actually says that on the bottle and you can get that and squirt that in too it actually doesn't smell that bad but i use it for my underarms too but uh that's another thing you could buy but it's sold in like a it's not on the shelf but kmart you'd have to kind of get to a cleaning system jillian asks what letter goes on the piss-filled machines piss-filled uh i actually threw them off the roof uh i did video back in 2004 and we threw some piss and fire damaged equipment off the roof it looked fine in the video but they the games were junk and they they exploded too and that was the end of them but uh you can't sell a piston encrusted last action hero the cats literally made a home on top of the play field because the glass had broken years ago and the guy just left the game in the basement and it stunk oh that was awful toddy you should tell that story about the the guy that um had you working on the you it was you and kurt down in the basement and uh we had a good customer i'll tell this last story but yeah that's a good one it's amazing we had a very good customer that had a lot of money but he lived in a small house with his wife and they had a big giant dog and he bought the newest games we had and traded in the games he got a year before and we would give him pretty good trade-in when we ever did a trade-in now we had to figure we had to fix the bottoms of the legs even if the game was brand new because his lovely dog peed in the basement where they played pimple and the the piss i went over to do the move he was trading in a pin bot and he was getting a last action hero no no he's getting a lethal weapon it doesn't matter but we we're picking up the one game and trading the other and my my i was crying the tears were rolling down the piss smell was so heavy and to get the game out the door we had to take the head off the pin bot because that's a little wider than the lethal weapon and i had to move this big 50-pound bag of dog food when i tried to move it the bottom broke out because it was stuck to the floor with the piss the tiles in the basement were all loose and if you stepped on the tile the pee would spread out so anyway we finished the job and i'm i'm doing this oh my god i couldn't see and he pays us and he comes down the steps in his socks i swear to god in his socks he said he had to throw his shoes away well we did we he came we came in two separate vans because i was coming from one job in another and we got in the car we rolled down the windows and we threw our shoes out because it just soaks into the sneakers we went we drove home in socks that was that was an experience loyal boy but that's what happens when you deliver games up we heard stories similar to that last night with um jack jack was telling us some of his delivery fund used to deliver he used to deliver the games himself in the good old days right jack ah we let we leave it to the younger kids now don't we that's not a that is not a bad story is it's disgusting okay then you have a piss story too it does todd loves a good golden shower see my twins are very coarse and gruff but they're very strong and they'll do anything in the world for you and so will johnny and so will frank but i pay frank the sweetest family ever he so we'll end our show tonight with this last clip uh our guys at the shop wanted to say goodbye well kurt yes the seminar is about over did you enjoy it didn't you have fun making all the clips what are you talking about so confused well the boys aren't confused let's let let's see what the boys have to say well boys this is the end of the seminar don't you have anything to say to all your fans hi that's it chris anything nope jonathan anything nope you know this is the only time you'll see a star wars comic pin this is the standard artwork star wars and a star a brand new star wars premium possibly the last one on the planet that still has the blue sticky stuff on it the only time and the only time you'll see my face in so many places poor people those posters are for sale folks do you think you'll buy my poster jonathan you'll get a piece of junk right here careful and make careful fire starters look at the screen that's a telescreen wait a minute there's gotta be more people one of those posters i don't have any on this and stephen can you touch these up for what they're perfect i know i'm just perfect i'm just having some fun can i have a little fun in my dump here nope aren't we missing some people you don't have anybody else you probably ate their cheesecake too they will come in he's upset because it had one slice of cheesecake was it yours it's in my see this this is my refrigerator everything in this refrigerator is mine refrigerator everything in there is mine by all the work of us everything that's how you afford it everything in that is mine nonsense do you see the rudeness [Music] good night now get out [Music] _(Acquisition: youtube_auto_sub, Enrichment: v4)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: aed83130-8c36-4809-ad65-f319a6f681bb*