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Episode 7-The Pinball Place

THE PINBALL RESTORER’S PODCAST·podcast_episode·1h 44m·held·Oct 26, 2021
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.027

TL;DR

Pinball Place owner details hobby-to-business transition and the value of local service in a niche market.

Summary

Glenn Von Molesky of The Pinball Place discusses how he transitioned from a factory automation engineer into pinball restoration and built a business as a Stern, Jersey Jack, and American Pinball distributor in New Ulm, Minnesota. He and business partner John Vorwerk identified a market gap for local pinball service and sales in the region, emphasizing the importance of community knowledge-sharing, modern board replacements for preservation, and the rewarding customer-centric dealer model versus the transactional distributor model.

Key Claims

  • There is only one strictly pinball-only location in New Ulm and likely neighboring states

    medium confidence · Glenn Von Molesky describing The Pinball Place as a public play space and distributor

  • Williams 3-7 MPU boards are currently unavailable; Cohout will have new manufactured ones available in November

    high confidence · Glenn discussing parts scarcity for restoring Blackout

  • About half of CPR playfield runs are purchased by collectors as speculative investments rather than for actual restoration

    medium confidence · Glenn recounting conversation with Stu at CPR about limited-run playfield dynamics

  • In Minnesota, only one service person still does in-house repair calls for modern pinball machines; most others work on EMs only or games older than Williams 11

    medium confidence · Glenn describing his search for local service when considering purchasing an Iron Maiden

  • Modern all-in-one MPU boards will extend machine lifespan to 40+ years compared to original boards that fail after 5 years

    medium confidence · Glenn's argument for modern board replacements versus original component repair

Notable Quotes

  • “I bought that thing I bought that flash Gordon for 900 bucks and uh I still have it today I've re-stenceled it you know so now it's my keeper you know that's the first and it'll probably be the last to leave.”

    Glenn Von Molesky @ early in interview — Explains his emotional connection to pinball and the first machine that started his hobby

  • “So I go, holy shit, that's for the whole state of Minnesota? Yep. Okay. Well, that's not good. So I said, John, there's an opportunity, there's a market, there's a demand, so supply demand, right?”

    Glenn Von Molesky @ mid-interview — Identifies the business opportunity that led to founding The Pinball Place

  • “As a dealer, we are dealing with the general public, and that general public is many times a first-time pinball buyer, which is very rewarding, and it's fun to do a delivery, and the kids are all around you trying to help you set up a game”

    Glenn Von Molesky @ late in interview — Expresses the emotional reward of dealer model versus pure distribution

  • “If you can't get the back glass out, do not take a sawzall to the side. There is a video on YouTube that says how to remove a back glass. Look that up.”

    Glenn Von Molesky @ mid-interview — Practical PSA about pinball maintenance, reflects humorous horror story with a customer

  • “My background, I have a background in factory automation and robotics... When I started looking at a pinball machine, I'm like, oh, well, it's a CPU with switches and solenoids and wires. Oh, I can do this.”

    Glenn Von Molesky @ early-mid interview — Explains how his technical background accelerated his learning curve in pinball repair

Entities

Glenn Von MoleskypersonThe Pinball PlacecompanyJohn VorwerkpersonMatt ListerudpersonStern PinballcompanyJersey Jack PinballcompanyAmerican PinballcompanyChicago GamingcompanyStupersonCharliepersonRotten Dog

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Glenn Von Molesky and John Vorwerk established The Pinball Place as a multi-brand distributor (Stern, JJP, American Pinball) after identifying market gap in Minnesota

    high · Glenn describes COVID-era startup: 'during coven mind you so it would have been may of last year he like what do you think if we start a stern dealership yeah sure why not'

  • ?

    community_signal: Strong community emphasis on shared repair knowledge via Facebook groups (Pin Cities), repair forums, and personal mentorship to solve parts sourcing and technical challenges

    high · Glenn: 'That's why I think the pinball community has to be tightly connected. And that's when I immediately have seen the repair forums. And even the Facebook group, at least, has been pretty good about that.'

  • ?

    supply_chain_signal: Critical shortage of Williams 3-7 MPU boards; Rotten Dog units sold out at $600; Cohout reproductions not available until November

    high · Glenn: 'You can't get a Williams 3-7 MPU anywhere... Those things were fetching $600 in the end, and everybody is sold out.'

  • ?

    product_concern: Original pinball machine boards fail within 5 years due to component degradation and engineering oversights not foreseen in original design

    medium · Glenn: 'you've completely recreated an original and it's going to fail components are going to start failing in five years just like the original one did'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Rising availability and adoption of modern all-in-one MPU boards from Pinball Basement and others; address both scarcity and longevity issues

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.312

0:00
What are you buying? What are you selling? Muzzy Ball. The Pinball Place. Your premier retailer and authorized dealer for Stern, Jersey Jack, and American Pinball. Large selection of new and used games, parts, and accessories. Find out more at pinballplace.com. Welcome to the Pinball Restorers Podcast.
0:32
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Pinball Restorers Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Listerud, and on this episode, we have Glenn Von Molesky with The Pinball Place. He is our local pinball-only distributor for Stern, Jersey Jack, and American Pinball. He's become a good friend. He's also a big restorer because I take on used games as trade. But in this episode, you're going to hear all about that. You're going to hear some mentions of some of our friends' businesses, as well as the fact that there is a thriving pinball community where we're at. And he provides vital service. He's very customer-oriented. But he's going to give us just some insight into how a passion hobby turned into a business. So without further ado, it's Glenn Von Molesky. Okay, how's that? All right, that sounds a lot better. I just remember when I talked to Barry Osler, he was barking into his iPad.
1:26
Oh, yeah. Well, I feel like he's gotten screwed. I mean, so if you look back, Highway, at least they made a game.
1:36
Technically, you can say Deeper did, but I just feel like why hasn't, you know, I hate to say it, like him and Papaduke, like seriously, Why didn't they just hook up with Chicago Gaming? Papaduke could have helped them recreate Theater of Magic and maybe done a different version of it.
company
Cohoutcompany
CPRcompany
X-Pincompany
Marco Specialtiescompany
Pinball Lifecompany
Pinball Basementcompany
Ramp-O-Maticcompany
Shea's Arcade Groupcompany
BG Restocompany

high · Glenn praises Pinball Basement: 'I would rather have a brand-new MPU from Pinball Basement... I don't want to deal with a separate driver board and MPU and the interconnect'

  • ?

    collector_signal: CPR playfield runs see roughly 50% of inventory purchased by collectors as investment vehicles rather than for active restoration; collectors hold parts expecting future appreciation

    medium · Glenn recounting Stu at CPR: 'when they've done a run before, that about half of the playfields they'll make will get bought by people who actually are going to do a swap. The other half get picked up by collectors to sit in a room somewhere'

  • ?

    operational_signal: Dealer model (direct-to-consumer with delivery/setup/support) involves significantly more customer support and technical education than distributor model (B2B to operators)

    high · Glenn: 'As a dealer, we are dealing with the general public... Distributors don't get that call... I'm not going to drive to your house and I'm not going to get a ball unstuck for you'

  • $

    market_signal: Minnesota lacks local service infrastructure for modern pinball machines; only one technician offers in-house calls for machines newer than Williams 11

    high · Glenn: 'I called him up. I said, hey, are you surprised by this?... one of them was not... Three of them were dead, I think. And the last guy only works on EMs.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Debate within restoration community about all-original vs modern-component approach; modern boards preserve machines for 40+ year lifespan while original boards fail repeatedly

    medium · Glenn: 'guys who... they've been serviced periodically... it's lasted 40 years. Well, I'm 40 years old. If I put a brand new component, it's going to last another 40 years'

  • ?

    venue_signal: The Pinball Place operates as public arcade with flat cover charge and free-play model on weekends, plus private party/league/tournament rentals

    high · Glenn: 'John's open on Saturday and Sundays to the general public. You come in, you pay a flat cover charge, and everything's on free play.'

    • 1:54
    Or, you know, like, there are people that would, I mean, Haggis just did Fathom. There are people that would pay for a new pin bot. You know what I'm just saying? Well, yeah, yeah. And I think when they release those legacy games like that, they should add a little bit to it. Put some 21st century stuff in there, you know? fathom i mean add more to it add some modern stuff make it look original but throw a few toys in there that make it really like oh well this is much more fun than when they played it 40 years ago and and i look at the price points um yeah i once talked to when i was talking to captain retro he was like why is the why is the price still up there because he said there's no you know re-engineering here this is you didn't have to come up with a new rule set you didn't have to do any of this stuff the artwork was already made in fact me and him went back and forth on this like you want to build a fathom and i priced it out and this is including buying a 900 cabinet because there's a company that does make recreates them and using a cpr play field seeing jeff miller for the stencils everything it came out to um paying the premium because Remember, we're not manufacturers. We don't get the bulk discount. It came out to about $5,100 total to get all the parts. I'm pretty sure. And there are ways to get some efficiencies on that, too. You know, to get a new one from Agus, it's like, what, $9,000? I think it's like $9,000 in the end. I think the price has gone up, too. But that's a limited run. And, yeah, they could have got, you know, Greg Ferris is still alive. You know, like, these guys aren't that old. They could have gotten a hold of him. Well, yeah, I like the fact they made a mermaid edition for the people who really want to feel special, you know, and something a little bit different than the original. I like that. You run the pinball place in New Ulm. It is the state's, and probably I would like to say in the neighboring states, the only strictly pinball location. You're a public play space on top of the fact you're a distributor. How did you end up in this hobby to begin with? Yeah, so it was kind of interesting. I was just browsing Craigslist and you're sitting watching TV late at night and you're just scrolling through Craigslist, not looking for anything specific. Maybe it was fish houses. Maybe it was, you know, an old car or whatever. But you just kind of scroll through to see what's for sale. And as I'm paging down, I see a Flash Gordon pinball machine, a Bally Flash Gordon. And I was like, wow. And, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger goes through Total Recall, that movie. That's how I felt. So Flash Gordon connected with me right away, and I went back to the movie with Sam Hunt. And my dad and I used to sit. It seems like Flash Gordon would always replay during the Easter break, you know, when I was home from school. And my dad was a teacher. So, boom, I reconnected with the theme right away. And it took me back to when I was like seven or eight years old watching TV with my dad. I went, holy shit, that's amazing. you know and I get that same feeling with classic cars or music too it's like god it takes us back to a time when we were young and we have these memories that we've totally forgotten about it's amazing so I bought that thing I bought that flash Gordon for 900 bucks and uh I still have it today I've I've uh re-stunseled it you know so now it's my keeper you know that's the first and it'll probably be the last to leave. But no, people ask me, well, how'd you get into fixing games? And I just say, well, I bought one, you know, and that's all you have to do because you know, it's not, if it's going to break, it's when. So, and I laugh about Craigslist listings, you know, back even just the, even current ones or even Facebook marketplace where people owned these, they've held onto them for 20 years. They haven't worked in like 10 or 15 because people thought it was cool to get one. They had no idea how to fix it.
    6:04
    Well, right, right. Now, thanks to the internet, we now all learn how to fix them. It's been great in that regard. My background, I have a background in factory automation and robotics. So I moved to Detroit right after graduation. I started doing General Motors body shops, contracting and doing 600 robots at a time to make a new Chevy Tahoe to roll off the line. So I understood manufacturing and electronics and automation and programming. When I started looking at a pinball machine, I'm like, oh, well, it's a CPU with switches and solenoids and wires. Oh, I can do this. So I bought a few more. You had an unfair advantage. We have to, you know, link to things that we know in our real life. So, no, at some point I got in over my head, you know, Flash Gordon became a solar ride and a Xenon. And, you know, I was about four or five games into it by that point. Oh, Monte Carlo was another. And I'm like, oh, shit, I need help. I need help because I don't know what I'm doing right now. And so I started looking out in the community and I found in New Ulm, John Vorwerk. He was 20 minutes from me, and when I looked at his collection, he's got 125 games. I'm like, oh, okay, I'm going to go make a friend. Six, seven years ago, probably. Where did he even have that many? That's a pole barn. That's the only way this works. If they're in his house, that's in every room.
    7:39
    Well, yeah. So he had a few businesses and buildings, and they're spread out in friends' homes and things, too. But since then, they've kind of been consolidated.
    7:51
    And, no, I thought if a guy has that many games, you know, I need to be friends with him. So I went over to Noam and knocked on his door. I'm like, hey, you don't know me from Adam, but we have a common friend in pinball that lives in Mankato. I said, I just want to learn. So I'll be your free tech support as long as you teach me everything you know. And he goes, well, that'll take about two weeks. So that's everything I know. I'm like, oh, all right. Well, so then we've been learning together ever since then. It always helps when you're repairing games, like, to have someone to bounce stuff off of because you may have not known the answer ever or you might have forgotten it 10 years ago and be like, oh, yeah, okay. So it's always good to have someone to bounce things off of. That's why I think the pinball community has to be tightly connected. And that's when I immediately have seen the repair forums And even the Facebook group, at least, has been pretty good about that. Like, guys who have the same game, they've run into some of the same problems. And you're right, you have to reach out to the community. Pinball parts are not, how do I say this, they're not found in one location. You know, nothing against Marcos or Pinball Life, but they don't have everything. No, and the documentation is not always there to support it, you know. Like, the full-blown documentation. like I don't know if you look through a fishtails manual I'm looking for a screw right now I don't know if it's an m2 or m3 but it's the tiniest damn machine screw I've ever seen and I just don't know what the part number is and we have something called the database now you know Marco has done quite a bit with that and it's helpful but they really need to or someone needs to really dissect it who loves throwing together databases and catalog all this stuff as a reference you know of pictures and where to get it so yeah the the big thing right there it's the links of where to get it so just to give another example uh okay i have a williams blackout and i picked that thing up for nothing well it needed all the boards and everything else because it was it was pretty rough but yeah okay so i had to decide to get the power supply when i did that i got it from x-pen the main MPU is a Rotten Dog Williams 3-7. And just a side note, there's an issue with that right now. You can't get one. You can't get a Williams 3-7 MPU anywhere. You can get a remanufactured, sorry, reverse engineered, but manufactured new MPU, but you're going to have to supply the ROM chips. It's not an all-in-one. And Cohout does make that, but they're not going to be available until November. But the all-in-one Rotten Dog, it doesn't exist. Those things were fetching $600 in the end, and everybody is sold out. Aside from that, so I have a Rotten Dog MPU. I have an X-Pin power supply. I have a Cohout soundboard. And that's three different companies right there that aren't listed in one particular location. I had to get the, because the play field was really rough, you're going to get a hard top. You're going to get that from outside edge. Trying to find the back glass. Couldn't find it. It wasn't listed. A lot of people like to go with BG Resto, but if you want to wait eight months.
    11:09
    Found out that Shea's Arcade Group, he actually makes those. And so he has blackouts. But again, that's combing. That's research. Nobody, there's not one listing you can find. Okay, so here's all of your parts. This is where you need to get all of it. And it's the hardest part about all of this is the artwork.
    11:28
    And because they always do just limited runs. And it's frustrating when they sell out. And I've talked to Stu at CPR, and I think you've dealt with them too at some point. He was telling me that when they've done a run before, that about half of the play fields they'll make will get bought by people who actually are going to do a swap. The other half get picked up by collectors to sit in a room somewhere. And I'm like, what are you talking about? And he goes, well, yeah, it's a limited run. In 10 years when, say, we don't exist anymore, they're going to be able to brag and sell it for five times what they paid. And I'm just like...
    12:11
    I've got an Adams family playfield and a Williams Fire playfield. Williams Fire is new old stock, never even used. So it doesn't have the drill holes or anything. And I bought it for $75, not because I have a Williams Fire or I've ever restored one, but someday I'm going to need it. And $75 at that point might seem like a discount.
    12:37
    Oh, yeah, that's heavily discounted. Well, you helped me out because, you know, aside from me and you started talking because of, again, the Facebook group, you know, Pin Cities. That was where this started. And then I know after that, we all got on the repair forums and so forth. But you helped connect me to a new old stock play field for my Mario Andretti, which I bought from you.
    13:01
    Yeah. Was that a personal buy or did that technically come out of the business? I've always wondered that. No, that's personal buy. I bought a few other games at auction. and since I was paying shipping anyway, I had to fill the, you know, I like to buy three or four games at a time to maximize my shipping cost. So, you know, instead of paying $600 to get one game shipped, I'd rather pay $850 to get four shipped. Yeah, and I still appreciate the heads up because I did talk to the guys at Ramp-O-Matic. They can at least get that fixed.
    13:35
    I've already fixed that ramp because the main shooter ramp was destroyed. But I did fix that. I was able to piece that back together, but he said that eventually I can send that to him. He can actually make a new one. But you did connect me to a listing. I will say this. It's not just about the fact that it's your friend, but that you also take care of your customers because when the listing came up that this guy was selling these play fields, you sent that to me right off the bat because you knew that down the road I was going to need that for that game because that play field was rough. Oh, yeah, I bought it. That saved me 60 hours with an airbrush. I don't need to do now. So I appreciate that. Yeah, and that's the thing. The new companies who are coming out of the woodwork and the younger generation getting into this, you know, God bless, you know, Charlie at Pinball Basement and, yeah, Ramp-O-Matic, you know, the guys who are doing the back glasses and the decals. Like, I would rather have a brand-new MPU from Pinball Basement or, like you said, the Rotten Dog Combo Board. I don't want to deal with a separate driver board and MPU and the interconnect and all that crap. Get rid of that. Give me an all-in-one. And if I go to a gauntlet, you know, the all-in-one board, in this day and age, in this century, where my cell phone could do everything that needs to happen in a pinball machine, let's condense it, you know, and put it on a board that makes sense with 21st century components so these things can live on, you know, well past our years. Oh, yeah. I mean, most of these games, and they're guys who, you know, they've been serviced periodically, some of them, you know. like I've bought in games I've had to do no work to because the owner maintained it.
    15:16
    And, you know, it's lasted 40 years. Well, I'm 40 years old. If I put a brand new component, it's going to last another 40 years. I mean, I'll be, if I live to be 80, you know, I'm just saying, but if I live to be 80, these games are still going to be working.
    15:34
    And this is the argument for replacing with modern boards. Yes, you can repair them. And trust me, for certain games, I get it. You can't get a new MPU, but you can at least test and replace components.
    15:50
    But here's the problem. That's still the original MPU with original components. Well, with newer, you replace the components that burn up. But here's the problem. The issues that formed over 40 years that were never foreseen by the original engineering, as I said there are always service updates that have happened these brand new boards take all of those things into consideration when they make them and yeah that's the benefit so you're not going to have you know so your new new boards last 40 years versus you've completely recreated an original and it's going to fail components are going to start failing in five years just like the original one did.
    16:35
    You know, that's that. And the big thing with that is the rectifier boards. They, you know, sometimes they did not have large enough rectifiers on there. And so they would burn up. And depending on your manufacturer, they were terrible.
    16:51
    Atari being the biggest headache, and I do actually have, I have a Space Riders right here. The back glass is mint. The plate field, it just needs a lot of cleaning. uh here's the problem the mpu has damage and yeah you're right charlie's a we are spoiled okay because this guy has adhd ocd he he literally he a friend of ours dropped off a game plan mpu to him he's already got it mapped it's been 22 hours so he he loves it so he's going to do that so um not to you know not to be a shill for our guy here but he is going to be launching stuff that nobody has taken the time to make and so if there's a guy with an allied leisure board um if you have atari if you have uh astro is covered technically by Altec. Dave told me that if you happen to own a Black Sheep Squadron rare-ass game, his all-in-one MPU does work with it.
    18:00
    But having these boards redone and made available, this saves more games. Because I hate the idea that people used to throw these away.
    18:13
    Yes. And I've already pulled like five that have gone that were supposed to go to a dump. And, oh, there's one that I, that's my belly lost world. I really should not have restored that game because it was such a war of nutrition.
    18:30
    But I just, again, this is invaluable. So sorry, I didn't mean to get on a last-minute tangent there.
    18:37
    No, that's all right. Personally, you have a large collection. I've been in your basement. Yeah. Wait, your basement, garage, and I would say your family room?
    18:49
    Yes. Yeah, and I've got some overflow. So I've got a dead pool stored at a friend's house that, you know, we're not going to tell her unless she listens to this podcast.
    19:03
    She's a good sport about it. Oh, geez. My wife has got it. She hates pinball. She now counts the games. she's taking pictures of everything. She took a video of everything I got. If a different game shows up and she's like, where'd that come from? I'll be like, oh, a client dropped it off. She'll be checking the security system to make sure that a person dropped it off and I didn't just go and get it. It's like they're just going to leave it here.
    19:36
    That's right. Sorry, I distracted you. What were you asking? Oh, no, it's fine. I was just going to say, so your wife's a good sport about this. I applaud that. I feel like there needs to be a support group for all of our significant others that tolerate the fact that, yeah, you know, I'm going to get a pinball machine.
    19:59
    And then a year later, you own 10. And five years later, you have 40. It's like the coat. They are the coat hanger effect. You throw one in the closet, and you open it two days later, and there's six. um yes but yeah but at the end of the day we have to we have to be appreciative to all these companies too because otherwise we'd be cannibalizing everything and there are guys in the community that really do not think a game is restored unless you use all original parts and i'm just thinking to myself i'm like depending on the game you're going to sacrifice six to get one first off that's not good that's not that from a business standpoint that's insane From a hobbyist enthusiast standpoint, I'm not saying that they're wrong, but it's the amount of time and money invested. It's far cheaper to just get some recreation pieces.
    20:57
    Yeah, exactly. Aziz Light! Comet Pinball, the world's largest collection of pinball LED lighting. Back box and play field illumination featuring star post lights, flashers, blinkers, non-ghosting, matrix kits, button illumination, flex kits, and much more at comicpinball.com. Rated R News. Wolfpack Technologies featuring DIY LED display kits for Bally, Stern, Williams, Data East, and Gottlieb. Easy to follow instructions and designed with the novice solderer in mind. Find out more at wolfpacktech.com. Ladies and gentlemen, now back to the show.
    21:43
    So when did, okay, so you connected with John. Yeah. And he is your business partner. So when did it grow from the hobby to we're going to establish a business? And then when did you become an actual distributor for Stern, Jersey Jack, and American Pinball? yeah so we worked together for a couple years and again i was learning from him and you know we were kind of just help lift each other up right i mean he'd get frustrated with something or we'd both see something that we never have encountered or you know you're working on an em and you slam your head against the wall more times than you care to admit but we were kind of each other's support group to get through some of these restorations And so, again, I was independent contractor. I was traveling out of state for six months out of the year doing factory automation and robotics work. And when COVID hit, all the doors shut. Right. So I'm like, sweet, I'm going to get a month or two or three off. So I came home and John has his business in New Ulm. So just to be clear, John owns the building. He owns his personal collection. and he owns the arcade where we'll do private parties. We'll do leagues and tournaments. He's open on Saturday and Sundays to the general public. You come in, you pay a flat cover charge, and everything's on free play. Play to your heart's content.
    23:24
    And then he and I do repairs, restorations, rentals, kind of the full service piece of it, right, where the online distributors or dealers, they make a transaction they ship you a game and that's the last they deal with you so i started i was going to buy my first brand new in box game it was an iron maiden and my research oh yeah i love it so i started that is that is my favorite new one just saying that is my favorite new one i did i did play godzilla last night i'm hooked on it but will i say it's better than iron maiden yet no i i i need some more time on it i need some i need some time there's a i feel like the left flipper on that game is severely underutilized because it's basically only good for two shots and i'm like anyways that's my opinion go on sorry yeah so i started doing my research as an informed consumer. And since we live in southern Minnesota, I thought, well, if I buy a new Ford or a GMC, I know where to take it. There's no surprise. I find the local dealership and I take my car to get fixed. What do I do with a $6,000, $8,000 pinball machine? So I started searching and I found a few. We have some friends in the cities
    24:52
    who do board repair work, some will do restoration, some will do, you know, bring your game to me and I'll fix it. But when I started looking at it, I go, wait, wait, wait, who comes to my house and fixes my game? And so I asked him this question. They gave me a list of six people, two of them I already knew. I called him up. I said, hey, are you surprised by this? One of them was not, and he'll still do in-house calls. The other one I knew and he doesn't work on anything newer than a Williams 11. Three of them were dead, I think.
    25:27
    And the last guy only works on EMs. So I go, holy shit, that's for the whole state of Minnesota? Yep. Okay. Well, that's not good. So I said, John, there's an opportunity, there's a market, there's a demand, so supply demand, right? There's a need, we have to fill that need. Let's do this. And done kind of hem and hawed it and thought about it And we already half doing it But he goes well to make it official during coven mind you so it would have been may of last year he like what do you think if we start a stern dealership yeah sure why not i got nothing else to do it's code and the door's just closed let's do that so we invested in the inventory in the advertising in the business and then I said, hey, Stern's kind of running out of parts and we're having an issue getting games. If we had more, we could sell more. Let's sign up American. Let's sign up Jersey Jacks. And I pitched the same thing to them that, hey, if you look, there's no one around here. The closest people are five, six hours away. You need a presence in Minnesota. So that's what led to the other distributors getting on board with us, too. So we just love doing it.
    26:56
    The part I like, so there's distributors and dealers. And I think a distributor has it easier. They sell more games. They sell to the operators. So distributors are selling to experts in this field who know how to fix their own games. They make the transaction. It goes out the door, and it's most likely the last they hear of it. As a dealer, we are dealing with the general public, and that general public is many times a first-time pinball buyer, which is very rewarding, and it's fun to do a delivery, and the kids are all around you trying to help you set up a game, and dad's there helping you get it down the steps to the basement. So the delivery part of it is one piece, a dealer, that we do deliveries into your home. We set the game up. We connect it to everything, right? Turnkey service. And a lot of times that first pinball turns into other transactions, but we have a lot more to deal with selling to those individuals, right? They might be a doctor, a lawyer, or someone who has no business touching a technical, because pinball is a very technical piece. And so we get those calls. How do I take the glass out? Right? Distributors don't get that call. So I'm like, well, I'm not going to drive to your house and I'm not going to get a ball unstuck for you. So I'll go through about a 15 to 20 minute deal with them. I'll show them the menus. I'll show them the settings, how to turn the volume up and down. I'll show them how to take off the lockdown bar, the glass, how to clean it once a year so that they don't have to ask me to come do it, you know, all kinds of good stuff. So I like dealing with the general public.
    28:45
    We do sell to operators, too. I was just going to say, just a side note, I do have a funny story, and I'll keep it quick, on the backlash, you know, taking out the backlash thing. when I got my Stern Wildfire the guy who had bought that he had gotten a couple of games years ago at a coin-op auction and he got them for nothing we're not even going to get into the pricing back then it's painful in comparison to today but this guy had obviously not known how to take the back class out what he did is he took a sawzall and he sliced both sides of the back box so that you could slide the glass out to the side. When I got there to pick this game up, and at least he kept the side, so I was able to fix this. He actually did a pretty clean cut, so low resin work, not too much.
    29:45
    When I got there and I just lift up the glass from the channel on the bottom and take it out. And he just, he turned white as a ghost because he's like, I did that. He revealed to me, he did this to like five games. And I'm like, oh, no. Oh, no.
    30:05
    And I'm like. Oh, that's terrible. And I was like, wait a second. You had a Gottlieb. I'm like, you, that can't, that whole front opens. And he's like, I didn't know.
    30:16
    Just like, oh, no. So, folks, if you can't get the back glass out, do not take a sawzall to the side. There is a video on YouTube that says how to remove a back glass. Look that up.
    30:30
    So, sorry, go on. That's right. Well, no, no, that's good. A couple of the games that I've worked on, you know, now they're my friends, but I actually met them because I was competing with them on an online auction in the area. So one was a Charlie's Angels and the other was a Harlem Globetrotters. And so I'm bidding on this online auction. And I knew like, OK, Charlie's Angels, if it gets past five or six hundred bucks, I'm out. It's not worth it.
    31:04
    Well, that guy who ended up winning it and I went and I checked it out ahead of time, I knew it didn't work. So I just left the auction company my card as a prerequisite. Like, here, I'm prepping you for what's going to happen, right? So the guy who won it called me up about a week later. He goes, hey, do you fix games? I said, yeah, yeah. Well, I won this Charlie's Angels, and he didn't take it off the legs. He didn't fold the head down. So in the back of his Ford pickup, he transported it up on the legs with the head up all the way out to his home. And then he was backing in his garage and didn't take into account that the head was still up. So crunch, there went the head.
    31:49
    Yeah. So I had to rebuild a little bit of the cabinet for him and then fix his game. And I'm like, now, lesson learned.
    31:58
    Stop bidding on shit at auction that you know is going to have to get fixed because you're going to pay the MSRP for that game at the time. and then you're going to pay me $70 an hour to fix your game. So just buy something I already have done.
    32:14
    You know, he turned into a good customer and a good friend, you know. And then the same with that Harlem Globetrotters. The guy beat me on it, and I think he ended up paying about $900 for it. And same thing. He called me up, hey, I hear you fix games. Yeah, yeah, I do. Well, it's something simple, you know, and this is what gets me. People know that there's an issue with the game, and they'll stick it down in their basement. They'll stick it up in the second level and, you know, oh, let me put it in its final resting place before I know it works. Well, Christ, now.
    32:53
    Right? I've got to take a tackle box full of solenoids and driver boards and all kinds of crap to their home and work on it while their cat's rubbing on my leg. I'm like, come on, just let me fix the game in my own sanctuary in the garage at my house. You'll get it back when it's done, you know.
    33:13
    I'll tell you what, the most rewarding restoration I did was on the Target Alpha, right? So this is why I like fixing games and doing repairs. I had a lady call me up, and she's like, hey, I got this game, and I don't want to reveal my whole life story to you, but when we were kids, she said I was probably 12, and my brother was 16.
    33:47
    Long story short, mom passed away when we were that age. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. Well, dad kind of went off the deep end, and he started giving everything away. Like our pool table, poof, gone. You know, our shuffle, whatever, gone. And this Target Alpha pinball machine, just poof, give it away. So she says, well, now I'm 45 years old and I was at a class reunion about two months ago and we were kind of meeting all the, you know, classmates and talking and so-and-so came up to me he's like hey by the way sorry to hear about your dad we still have that pinball machine that he gave us she's like oh holy crap well the part I left out here her brother also passed away a year later from a car accident and that target elf yeah so now she's got a dad that went off the deep end. Mom passed away, brother passed away. And that target alpha was a memory that she had with her brother playing as kids. That's the earliest memory she had. So when she found out that her classmate had the exact game that they used to play, she's like, will you fix this for me? I'm like, hell yes, I will. I'm not even going to charge you. So went through, restored it, cleaned it, score reels, everything. And she's like, oh, my God, this is fantastic. Because she's, like, so emotionally attached to that specific game. I was like, see, this is what makes it all worth it right here. So that one is rewarding.
    35:32
    And I get that. And this is something I never actually have revealed in this podcast or in this community. um my older brother when i was growing up my older brother um worked for circus pizza and for anybody who's never been in minnesota um showbiz pizza circus pizza were the same company and they later were acquired by chucky cheese um years later my other brother worked there and he had to put on i literally did the whole bart simpson move moments where you know bart goes to the mall santa and finds out it's his dad i did that to bumper the clown at circus pizza to find out that it was my older brother and he was not entertained by the fact that i just kicked him in the knee um remember i was like seven oh boy but um i remember one of my fondest memories of arcades was there was two arcades where we lived one was the circus pizza and i could bike there. The other was a small little gas station. It was Dino's Market, and they had this attached arcade and service bay of the garage. The lights didn't even work in the place. In fact, the whole place was lit by an incredible Hulk pinball machine. Right next to it was a laser ball. That's the reason I got that, because I remembered that from when I was a kid. That game never worked, though, ever, in that place, because I don't think the guy knew how to fix anything.
    37:00
    But getting back to my older brother, We had bags of those tokens everywhere, so I never paid ever once to go in there. I mean, we were clearing house on redemption prizes. It's the first time I ever got to see the Aliens arcade game when that was done. I remember when they got the first holographic games. I have not seen one of those ever come up for sale. I think there was only like 10 of them made. but I remember those types of arcades where there were just tons of the games, not the redemption stuff there was only some of that just tons of these and when he worked there he always would go open up the little safe box where all the tokens were, give us a bag of tokens and be like don't get caught with these and me and my other brother would just go in there and we had a field day well that was my introduction to this and and that's where my heart has always been my older brother passed away when i was 14 and it has been years and we used to have so many my mother has felt terrible about this because i recently discovered a guy that can make a ring out of coins and he does really and this is he has a youtube channel but he does it as a business He makes them out of coins. I have wanted and I have searched through all of our old stuff trying to find one of those Circus tokens to get made into a ring.
    38:37
    And when I found out there's another local guy here, and that's John Russ, who runs Pinball Plus, where I found out that he used to work for Dalko and he worked for Circus Pizza. I was like, do you have any of those tokens left? And he apologized. He said no. And I had told him the story. And I've bought parts from him here locally, too. I just bought glass from him because he was clearing it out for 40 a sheet. And I'm like, I'll take it.
    39:03
    And for anybody who doesn't know, if you want to save on pinball glass and you happen to be driving through Illinois, and I learned this from you. Thank you, by the way. Yeah, of course. If you stop at Pinball Life, you can buy pinball glass for $25 a sheet versus paying $130 on the Internet to have it shipped to you. Yeah, and just, you know, whenever this airs, Pinball Expo is next week. So that's my full intent. I'm going to load up on about 20 sheets of brand-new glass, bring it back, because the shipping will kill you on that. So that's something we'll have available here, too. You know, when we do a restoration, it's like, okay, well, new legs, new legs, you know, levelers, and new glass. So, you know, we kind of give people the option. But, yeah, that is a really nice feature. If you can be there and pick it up or, again, if we have this community that's always connected, all right, you know, Matt's going to go to Chicago this week. Hey, hit me up. Let me know.
    40:07
    Yeah, and I'll be at Expo, too. I know that you're leaving on Wednesday morning, I believe. Depending on what my work schedule is, I'll be there on Tuesday night or Wednesday. But I'm not staying too far away. I'm just down the street actually from the convention center in Schaumburg. And so it would be nice to stop there. You mentioned that American Pinball is doing an open house after they just released, what is it, Legends of Valhalla just came out. Yeah. You're going to be stopping by there.
    40:40
    Side note, Pinball Life, if anybody is going to be going to Expo, Pinball Life is not doing their open house. they will be open for orders and they're going to be doing curbside pickup but they are not going to be doing their open houses here i think that they have a few people that are severely immunocompromised they do not want to risk it um because keep in mind there's a lot of guys in this hobby that are a lot older um in fact there's a lot of guys that are aging out um that's a that can be a whole topic for another show but i have taught i've gotten to know a lot of the guys who make this stuff some of them are up there in years and so so people please be kind if you're going to go there you know they said there's there's they have free shipping i think going on right now but if you go down there just keep in mind you're not going to be able to go inside just if you please put your order in ahead of time you can pick up it's just a little disclaimer so yeah but sorry i gave it back but you're right that sentimental that sentimental um aspect of doing stuff. I have fixed games and I don't like saying this because if my wife hears this, because she gets mad at me because she's like, don't do this stuff for free.
    41:55
    She's like, your time's worth money. And I'm like, when they tell me that this was their dad's game and they get, you know, you see them get emotional about like, hey, I want this game working.
    42:08
    I'm sorry. It's going to be discounted. That's not a collector. That's not, this is just somebody who wants that emotional attachment to something from their childhood.
    42:19
    I, no, it's that I will help you. There's no charge. And, or it's heavily discounted. I just, I can't, you're right. I can't do that. It is rewarding.
    42:30
    And the best thing is that that person will become your best cheerleader to be like, oh, you should see what Matt did for me. If you got a game, take it to Matt. Oh, look what Glenn did. And he got this thing working after 20-some years of sitting there and sitting in the shed with mice crawling in it. And, yeah, they'll become your cheerleader for other business in the community. So, absolutely. Good news, everyone.
    42:57
    Are you ever going to move out of the basement? Pinball Basement, your premier electronics replacement specialist. Brand new boards for Bally and Williams featuring WPC 89 and WPC 95 boards. wide array of new and used parts and find out more at pinballbasement.com classic arcades classic arcades your source for pop-up recap recreations plate field overlays insert decals apron decals cabinet artwork decals and much more at classic-arcades.com now for some pinball news and with that music folks it means it's time for some news in the world of Pinball Restoration. So let's start with the positives. CPR is back at it again with Valley Lost World being available. The Shadow, a new run of their original 2018 run of Playfields. They just launched Stern's Sea Witch. On top of that, they are looking for a Mouse and Around Backlash so that they can recreate. There are four variations that were originally created. Whichever one gets to them is the one that they will make. So please, if you have one, and guess what, you don't mind it being out of your game for a little while, please send it off to them. They would be more than happy to make that product. Superior Pinball Products just came out with game plan displays. These are available strictly through eBay. They're $300 for a complete set, but they are available. Rampomatic is back at it. They did Spring Break, Data East's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Motor Dome. Outside Edge. I swear to God, these guys just crank out crap every week. They just did Mousin' Around, they did Williams Fire, and they just teased Williams F-14 Tomcat with a scene from the movie Top Gun. So, as supply issues continue to plague things, keep that in mind. There are certain products that are not going to be available anytime soon. Nywump for Gottlieb System 1, he is out of parts. It's going to be a while before he can ramp up production. However, those boards are still available through their distributors. Rotten Dog, Williams System 3-7 MPU, all-in-one, cannot be acquired anywhere. No word on when they're going to ever make that again. There are other companies doing it right now. Pinball Basement will try to get that out within the next two months. So keep your heads up. Product shortages do happen. We're not immune.
    45:25
    But people are working as hard as they can to make sure that this hobby continues and that these games can be restored. Also, Pinball Expo coming up this week, folks. I will be there. I am hoping to actually see some of you guys. Stop by, see me, say hi. I'll be either wearing the Pinball Restorers podcast shirt, Big Daddy Enterprises. If you recognize me, like, hey, are you the dude that talks out of his ass? Be like, yes, I am. You know, don't confuse me with Kaneda. But it's just a joke. I just love doing that. But please, just stop by and say hi. But without further ado, back to the show. Can you just stop talking for, like, two seconds? Speaking of the mice thing, I finally had it happen to me.
    46:09
    Yeah. We've all found these with filled with poop and so forth. But I picked up a Williams tri-zone, and it was not bolted to the game. So the head was separate, but they left it connected.
    46:27
    And I was like, because they showed that it worked, but they didn't, you know, they couldn't get it. It's another one of those people that didn't know how to open the can.
    46:36
    I just reach into the head through the opening, and I disconnect everything. Now I have it in two separate pieces. I can unload it, and I can move it. I get it back. I put it in my garage, and I have the head tilted up. I'm drilling out the lock, and finally the lock's drilled out. okay so now i open up i lift the back class off the channel four mice big mice just come run one was probably a rat just come running out of it i'm like i was my hand was inside of this game just reaching down there pulling apart connectors and i'm just like oh man i'm just like hantavirus is real i didn't want to get that like i cried and my wife my wife happened to be my wife happened to be in the garage right at that moment. And she's like, what the heck? I'm like, oh, no.
    47:31
    I said, so it finally happened. Because I've always made the joke that you never want to take the game in and first just plug it in right off the bat without at least looking inside because it could turn into pinball meets whack-a-mole really quick.
    47:45
    Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's fun. But, no, I think. Go on. Well, you know, we were talking about, I don't know, games and themes.
    47:59
    I'm not going to say that pinball picks you, but there's definitely an emotional side to it, right? So if you talk about what's your favorite games, well, Matt, you and I think have a common, you know, non-pinball related thing that I used to, I played guitar since I was nine years old. I played in bands and, you know, was a singer and everything else. So I grew up on Metallica, ACDC, Anthrax, Ozzy. These were my jams in high school. And Motley Crue, very high energy kind of stuff. So for me, I love... We're angry in this theme. We want to piss off our folks. Let's do this.
    48:43
    Yeah. Yep. So for me, I would own every single music theme pinball there is. I would own Beatles. I do own the Zeppelin.
    48:53
    Metallica is still my favorite. ACDC is nice. It's an okay game, but I just like listening to the music. Do you have the Lucy? What else do I have? Well, yeah, of course. Okay, no, no, no. So I work up to games. I mean, I didn't come from a good background of being a spoiled rich kid or anything like that. Everything I have, I've worked up to. So to give you an example, I've had three Earthshakers. I've had four roller games. And I've had that many because, well, when I learned there was a roller games with a diamond plate play field and flashers in the back box, I had to buy one, sell it. But I didn't sell it until I had number two on the line. Restore that one, sell it, buy number three. Oh, look, I got a diamond plate play field. Oh, if I buy number four, I get flashers in the back box. so so i'm taking the best pieces to make my perfect game um same thing with acdc you know or metallica i have had three pros until i finally got my premium so i work up to these things i'd say my favorite old school game uh again roller games my time machine and probably earth shaker so all williams 11 style games and of course my flash gordon uh that one's not leaving but from the old school game perspective those are my favorite but from all the modern stuff like once i i went to a barcade somewhere and i played aerosmith and then i was like oh there's a metallica there's an acdc oh i like all this so i would collect all the music pins and i crank them up um and one of my favorite games is still black knight sword of raid two reasons right now now there's two reasons because I know the history of it. And Sword of Rage is the legacy of Steve Ritchie, right? He did Black Knight, Black Knight 2000. Sword of Rage is his final coup de grace of Black Knight, right? And I think it's the best. So I got the premium because to me, Black Knight has to have an upper playfield. I don't know why they did a pro without an upper playfield, but I'm not a... And part two of why I bought it is when I heard Scott Ian from Anthrax did the soundtrack for Black Knight Sword of Rage I was like hell yeah I love the Cotton Amash album and all that old school stuff man so yeah I crank that one up and I play that game too Scott is one of the most interesting guys in heavy metal because if there's ever a documentary that guy just shows up randomly and it's funny like he's worth more in commentary and in stories than he ever was with this band, not in a bad way. I love Anthrax. Actually, my favorite album of Anthrax is Stomp 442. I'm more of a John Bush era. I like Stomp 442 and I like the sound of White Noise.
    51:49
    Yeah. But I actually got to meet him. He's a lot shorter than he looks. Music pins are great. I love Aerosmith. I love playing that game. I don care so much for the tracks they selected just because my dad always used to crank big ones so I always going to have those songs stuck in my head no matter what But I do like the game because I like the way that multi is done I love launching into the toy box. When I was playing Godzilla last night, a guy was commenting, he goes, I notice you don't nudge much. I go, not when I'm first aligning the shots. I need to see how this play field, like what it does first. this is I I'm not going to start bashing this thing around until I know what it does but with Aerosmith when you hit elevator it is going to send it straight down the middle so it's holding it and I love it because you start you're not going to do a hip check while it launches you can you can do that but your odds are better if you've already got the machine in motion and it starts giving you that warning I'm like son of a bitch but I love playing that I like the I like the multi-ball I just like the way that it does it it's it's a fun game to play and uh coincidentally it's that neighboring bar to where I live so I I've gc'd that thing like 15 times there's always some other dude that comes in I've never seen anybody else really really play it not I mean it's not like it's being abandoned I've seen other people play it I just meant like yeah yeah a guy like locked in on it and so I'm still trying to figure out who this mystery guy is that just keeps beating me out and i'm like so we have a there's a rivalry and i i leave a bar cab for the guy i leave a free drink for the guy leave a chip on that if uh let me know what they said if you gc this this drinks on me and he's done that back and forth we still have never met that's funny so yeah and i love and you're right like you were oh god no yeah i think we're a little bit from the same mold i mean i'm probably a decade younger or older than you, I think, but still, I think our backgrounds, our personality, we're from the same mold, at least. No, I like a lot of people. You're that much older than me. Yeah, I think I'm 45 or 46 right now. Okay, I'm 40. Yeah, I don't even know.
    54:06
    We're youthful. It keeps us immature forever. That's right. That's right. I mean, a lot of people rag on Led Zeppelin, but I tell you what, I just love starting a game and knowing that song is going to play the whole way through. That to me was a big deal with Led Zeppelin, where Metallica, I love Metallica to death, but I want to hear Battery all the way from start to end. I want to hear Enter Sandman or Sabotage all the way to the end, right? I really wish that I could get a Metallica limited edition, right? The things that made some of these bands in our time great, it wasn't because they were awesome bands at the time, but the artwork. I would love to have all the album art on the Metallica cabinet. I mean, the Dirty Donnie stuff is great. We've seen it, but I would love to have a Justice for All back glass and the Roadcase edition, you know? So if I do sell my premium, that's what I'm looking for. If anyone out there has one, let me know. so well no no and i and i agree with you so again i i do love his artwork okay because remember pinball has its own it's kind of funny like i don't know how this was created where you had to have a standard where it is a specific type of artwork i've noticed that that's a thing and i don't know when that became a thing is if they had gotten plush heads that's the artist who did all of the skull involved artwork that they've had for stuff for years why didn't why wasn't he the guy who did the artwork you know like because for him he would have been like yeah it's more metallic artwork but here's the thing it's going to be on a pinball machine it's something unique you could it was it would have been nice to for him because he's done a lot of their merchandise it would have been nice to yeah i would love to have been involved i would love to see master of Puppets, with Justice for All, with Ride the Lightning, and Part of the Black Eye, all of that.
    55:59
    They could have made these additions. Sell me a retro kit. Someone sell me a retro kit then, where I can re-theme it. I mean, it's the same thing, but make it the album cover. Keep in mind, CPR does offer that service. The custom re-theme shop, Stu takes a lot of pride in that. He's done very good work. But me and you have talked about rocked pens, because being a rocked music fans, I've always been surprised. There's an interview with Dave Mustaine from Megadeth, and it was done by Gibson.
    56:30
    This interview that just was put on YouTube not that long ago, there's this entire animated sequence to begin with all of the variations of Vic Rattlehead, which is Megadeth's mascot.
    56:42
    I watched this video, the whole intro sequence, I'm like, if they make a Megadeth game, they need to get this guy. Whoever made this for Gibson, this is the guy that needs to do any animations for this game. Because I'm shocked. It was awesome. If you find it on the internet, look it up. It is totally worth it. Megadeth would be a good one. Pantera would be an awesome one to do.
    57:07
    I want the LE version to be Cowboys from Hell. That is freaking my anthem. Oh, love that shit. And when you GC the game, suddenly Domination starts playing.
    57:24
    Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, Iron Maiden, right? Iron Maiden's a fantastic playing game, and Keith Elwin, and God bless them all, but the thing that drew me to that is the album representations of each life of Eddie, you know?
    57:43
    And that's that artwork. Artwork. Half the reason a bunch of us got into, like, heavy metal music, one, it was kind of like an image, but it was the album covers there's nobody who got into cannibal corpse right off the bat saying this sounded awesome and if you did that's cool too don't get me wrong you you bought that because that album cover was messed up that's what you you know the horror theme you wanted that stuff and so that was album artwork was a thing and so when it comes to pinball the backlash is still a thing i I know there are companies that want to make it just a full screen. If you ever do do that, you still have to put that effort into awesome artwork.
    58:28
    And one thing I will say, I will say this, this sounds terrible for me, because I came from the era of EM, just early solid states, and up until the 90s.
    58:42
    When I see a game, and I was playing, I was doing it with Mandalorian and Godzilla. I really wish there was just a secondary skip button. I'm like, I want the ball moving again. I don't care what's going on on the screen. Skip. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And I hate that. That's my ADHD. But at some point, it'd be cool to see something like that.
    59:03
    Yeah, like Munsters. Sometimes Munsters, the video part, creates too much dead time where you're like, okay, I've seen this clip a hundred times. Tired of it. I just want to skip and keep playing. Yeah, I get it. I do.
    59:18
    Well, it only matters when, well, again, with pinball, and me and you have talked about this, there's two fallacies in the world. One, that people get upset about the price increases when you have to remember these games were not built for you. They were built to make money in a public location. That's what pinball is. The other fallacy, that's one side of it, the other fallacy is, is the fact that Stern, I'm just using them as an example, has made, keeps making games for the operators, and there's nothing wrong with that. They keep making them, but they have to remember, the vast majority of the people who bought the games were private people.
    60:07
    And so there's two opposing ideas there. and I wasn't frustrated, but me and you had talked and we were going to do a show and timing just didn't work. And when you told me that Stern's new thing was going to be selling just to operators first, because they're trying to look down the road. They're trying to make sure that public space pinball creates more interest and gets public to also buy more games. They're aware that. Yeah, they want to get it out there to the market. Yeah. and when um zach uh me and he brought it up i was like nuts he took my fire that was the one thing i wanted to be able to talk about and you know he's a distributor he gets he has full right but i was like yeah that was when god's all launched he was talking about the fact that stern you guys had all had a meeting with gary and that you know this was what you were hoping to do and i was like nuts that was that was my one like kind of insider bit of information Oh, and he took your thunder, huh? Not really, but it's fine. Him and Dennis Creasel do do a really good show. Zach is an incredibly nice guy.
    61:23
    Pinball Pimp. Pinball Pimp, your source for museum-quality restoration, maintenance, as well as Jeff Miller's world-famous cabinet stencil kits. For Williams Valley, as well as other manufacturers, all available at pinballpimpstencils.com. Hey, all you silver ball addicts. Jeff Miller here, a.k.a. Pinball Pimp. I'm looking forward to seeing all you pinheads at this year's Pinball Expo. Be sure to follow my progress as I pimp out games on YouTube and pinballpimp.com. If you're attending the show, stop by and say hello. As always, keep on flipping. Pimp out. I had somebody ask me with a old, it was a Williams High Speed System 11. I opened that up.
    62:11
    I don't know who did this, but they had whoever spray painted the back box never covered the electronics. They had taken the back glass out. They spray painted the entire head. They spray painted the circuit boards. yeah that's called conformally coding conformally coded circuit boards no it's not don't do it people yeah yeah so yeah nobody nobody do this please no god no i'm like i don't even know where to start like i just looked at it like this could have caused everything period and um yeah because components need to release heat um i'm like i don't even know where start man and so and so we took care of it he did order all this stuff and i just came hooked everything up and it played again just fine and i'm like and he said he didn't do it he had gotten the game like this and he hadn't played it actually for about five years like this i'm like you're lucky it lasted five weeks um well yeah yeah and i think it's it's why it's important to have someone I understand people want to buy out of state and you know that's fine so if they're like well I can save a hundred dollars if I buy from the dealer in Pennsylvania or Indiana or Texas and it'll drop ship to me I'm like yep that's great you should do that and then ask that dealer to drive to your house to fix your game because you know again I just encourage I do sell out state don't get me wrong and some of my good customers are in other states but the ones that we sell to here locally I drop what I'm doing I get there I fix their game that I sold them now I've had several instances lately especially with the older Jersey Jack games that before we were a dealer right we have no no ties to I have four Wizard of Oz in the shop right now and one guy's like oh I bought this in Bismarck and I drove it back here to Hudson Wisconsin and come to my house and fix it. I said, no. You take it back out of your basement. You bring it to me. I'll put the time into it. It's not a, hey, half hour, I'm going to fire in a diode and I'm going to leave again. I'm going to go through it. I'm going to make sure it works. I'm going to play it for a week before I return it to you. That's the kind of service that we're doing locally. So, you know, I encourage people in other states too. If you have a local dealer, yeah, support them. I'd love to have your sale, but I'd much rather they service you locally if they have those same capabilities.
    64:51
    Oh, yeah. And I always wonder about that. You know, the industry is the industry. And me and you, again, because we're friends, we've had the conversation that there's basically two industries. There is the primary, which is manufacturers, and there's nothing wrong. That's the bulk of it. Well, when you start to really look, it's not the bulk of it. There's a lot of games, 70 years worth of pinball.
    65:24
    These games didn't all die overnight. They didn't get heaved into dumpsters overnight. It was, these all went to, you know, 2.4 million games worldwide in the height of pinball to a few hundred thousand in public space. That's still quite a few games that end up in private hands. and the sub industry. And I will, so when people ask like, well, what's the sub industry? I said, well, your main automotive industry is, you know, the actual manufacturers for GM Chrysler, Toyota, you know, it doesn't matter. It's just all these different companies. The sub industry is AutoZone and O'Reilly that supply NAPA, that supply all the parts for when these break, because that's a thing, you know, that stuff breaks. And so, So the sub industry for us is anybody who has decided that I'm going to make the parts for these things. And Todd Tucky once said, there's nobody rich in pinball. And that is true. I once saw in a comment that somebody was like, some designer, and they're like, oh, yeah, I bet Jay's making six figures. I'm like, I'm willing to bet he is not. um i'm you know franchi franchi has been pretty honest about the fact that he's an independent contractor for you know as an artist for pinball and that that there are things that go hand in hand with that you're not necessarily on a payroll you're paid by production and so the the companies employ people they've done well people do make decent money in that realm the sub industry Almost every guy we talk to, you know this, every guy, even you, every guy we've talked to, they have a primary job. And there are a few guys who have managed to make pinball full time. And it's not to be depressing. This is not to be negative. It's not to be discouraging.
    67:24
    Because passion projects create passion businesses. And so when you buy something from, I'll give an example. It is Pixel Arcade. that guy does a service that nobody does. He does plastic casting. If you own a nightmare on Elm Street, you need Freddie Redone. He's got the molds. He will make it, and he will ship it to you. He's got the licensure to do that.
    67:54
    And that people, there's a lot of people, they don't know where to get this stuff. You know, back to that thing, you know, there needs to be a database where it has the links, and the links don't need to be biased. because there's a lot of guys you got granted licensure from various, you know, companies like Planetary that you may not know of. And it's funny, these guys all know each other too.
    68:20
    And they all criticize each other. It's actually entertaining to me. But, you know, they have more in common than they ever have difference. And I hope that the next generation coming in, because some of these guys are aging out.
    68:37
    You know, these businesses will come up for sale. Like Ryan Wenger, who bought Comet, he bought that from Art in Florida because Art retired out. He was done. But Ryan picked it up and kept that business going. Keep in mind, folks, if you want to get into pinball, if you want to get into a business, build a rapport with some of these guys. And if you can do the same quality work that some of these guys do,
    69:02
    some of them are hitting retirement age. they want to get out, they will sell. There's nothing wrong with that. We need to capture that knowledge as well.
    69:14
    Some of these guys are dying off that used to work on EMs and they know it like the back of their hand. That's the part that's hard. And when it's spread out, Pinsight is fantastic, but there's so much in the forums. There's too much. I'm a very straightforward person. I need to find an answer and I type it exactly how I expect to find it. But when there's hundreds of forum topics and many of them are just the general public or, you know, some guy being disgruntled and giving their opinion and then smart ass comments, it's like, no, I just want an answer to how to fix my game. Where's that forum? Can we filter out all this other stuff so I can get to the answer and move on to the next game to fix? that's to me something that has to be uh focused on i think but yeah no no and i and i i agree um there have been people who i've reached out to and i'm going to i'm an owner i'll own this right now it's not there's no it's not i'm not giving an opinion i'm stating what i've run into because i decided i'm like hey i'll host a podcast on restoration there's all these companies that do this stuff these guys are all great you know this is awesome okay i'll get a hold of them let's do some shows i talked to a lot of people who because of how people have been trolls on on media platforms not just pin side facebook too that said that they are very reluctant to talk about what they do because somebody always criticizes and that doesn't get anybody anywhere you know if you're if if you're going to be the guy that's just like okay somebody's like excited about putting a hard top on their game and the first comment below it is i'd never put that piece of shit on my play field i i'm like you know what dude the guy's already sanded off the artwork he's committed you know like oh yeah i know i'd like you said i'd rather spend 100 hours airbrushing and and no no like hey man i'm colorblind okay it doesn't know when you need good for me to try and do touch up on a freaking play field so just zip it and let me get the hard top okay god yeah you know and i'll do and and there are guys who are like you know you have to go with the cpr i'm like i'm totally down for that don't get me wrong um stew has bugged me i will get the lost world play field from him. I'm aware of it.
    71:51
    Because he was bugging me. Here's a side note because I can't get him on for a show and I don't want anybody upset about this.
    71:59
    Stu is an awesome guy. I love talking to him. He wants to kind of stay he wants to keep his, he doesn't like to do public forum and that's totally fine. I respect that. Charlie's like that with Pinball Basement. He doesn't want to be on a public forum. But we'll talk them up but we don't want to have to necessarily go that way and so yeah one of the things i uh learned from stew was that his first game was actually um and for anybody who doesn't know who stew right is he's the art director for cpr um his first game was lost world and so i was like hey guess what i have this nightmare project i'm on and he said that it was in production and I and I had waited I'd waited but I was my wife was like are you finishing that game I'm like fine so I got the overlay and I did it right I did I and I put the playfield protector on it too and it looks it looks great however Stuart now dropped it and I'm like all right fine I'll buy the playfield so I'm gonna still do that swap but you're right when people when people harp on somebody. And I brought this up with Ryan Wenger. I said, people suck at asking for help. And so there are newbies that get into this that suddenly they're asking if, you know, what's wrong with this game? And they won't even, in their panic, they won't say the title of the game or the manufacturer in the comment feed below. The first guy should have just said, what game, what manufacturer. Nope, it's more or less, it's broken self-meaning, or it's all the jokes, it's the picking. And I'm like, stop all of that. There are many paths to getting a game to work and look decent. Don't pick on somebody.
    73:57
    Go on, go on. Yeah, you're right. So when, you know, the pinball place, we do have a YouTube channel, I'm not on there posting videos every week but when I find something that I'm like well maybe the general public isn't aware of this or maybe it's a tips or tricks kind of deal that I don't know I've learned by accident if I've had to ask six people about it it probably needs to be made into a video or something right so I always throw my disclaimer in there like I did one on cleaning and I always throw the disclaimer in like, this is how I do it and I've done a couple hundred games. If you don't like the way I do it, you have your own method, that's fine. God bless you, do it. But this is what I've been doing and been able to be successful with it. So here you go, like a magic eraser. Oh my gosh, use magic eraser. Oh my gosh, you use Simple Green. Well, yeah, I do because it removes nicotine from the side of the cabinet because it's been in a smoke-filled bar for 30 years. Okay.
    75:06
    Now if you've got something better, great. Well, I laugh. Like, there are people who are like, no, you've got to use Novus. Novus is not a cleaner.
    75:15
    I don't know when people will ever get this. Right. I'm not trying to be bad. You need to use it. It's part of the process. But, like, to your point, when it's nicotine on the play field, it's been sitting in a smoky bar or a smoky house or what have you for 40 years. Or it's what I call the moisture dust sediment, which is it's brown. It's like nicotine. It's just a totally awesome degreaser. And you work fast. You don't let it dwell on it, but you work fast. That'll clean it off. Yeah. And guess what? Nine times out of ten, Canuba Wax after you're good. It just depends on what you have in front of you.
    76:03
    Oh, yeah. Those old play fields, like I've done this in the cleaning video, I said if I'm doing an EM and I know it hasn't been cleaned in 30 years, I'm putting a coat or two of wax on it because that game deserves it by now. Let's be honest. Especially here in Minnesota, we have wet, damp basements. you know and we run into different problems that uh one of my customers out in like utah and vegas they're like glenn i've had this happen you know i've had this issue i'm like okay well after the third time of him saying you know i've had this issue with different games i go oh well christ Yeah, Minnesota, we run dehumidifiers because we have more moisture in the air up here. In Vegas, you're very dry, and it's static. And wood is going to react differently over 30 years than it does here in Minnesota, where we keep it naturally humidified. And we actually have to fight the humidity here. So, yeah, different areas of the country are very different. well that one time so Jeff Miller recently had done that Evel Knievel and somebody was asking me because because they know I'm friends with the guy they're like why did he buy a new cabinet for that Evel Knievel I said the donor machine was eaten by termites and they're like what because they don't live in a part of the country where termites we don't have termites up here so he was like oh okay well now that makes sense you know yeah and if you're you're right if you're near a coast, there's salt water. And salt water gets in your air. It gets in the... I mean, you see it.
    77:45
    Crap. We've got to get some more guys into this. I was going to ask you this. Maybe you can shed some light on this.
    77:53
    Does Stern, Jersey Jack, American Pinball, do they... When they give you a list of guys that can repair stuff and to your point you brought up the fact that that list was obviously outdated Is there a vetting process Because I know a lot of amateur guys who are really good at this that do it on the side.
    78:19
    Is there a way for them to break into the market to team up with the distributor? Or does it void warranties? What do they have to do to prove that they can do the work so it doesn't void a warranty, but they can grant the warranty.
    78:34
    Yes. So, yeah, you're nervous. Loaded question. Loaded question. I'm sorry. I got a lot to answer here, and I have to make it all sound positive. All right. So, no, there is no real, I guess, list, or maybe they do have a hidden list of people they've worked with in the past. But really, like I mentioned, the car analogy, there's a Ford dealer in every town. Well, with pinball, that's not the case. It's about finding someone who's willing to do the work, not exactly someone who's totally qualified to do it. Right. So that's why a lot of the hobbyists do their own repairs because, well, they want their stuff to work and there's no one around them to fix it. So they have to learn how to do it themselves. no that would be awesome if if I could go to Jersey Jack for a week-long technical training session or Stern for a hands-on troubleshooting class oh oh I love it and then you become a quote you know blessed authorized service tech for for the manufacturers that would be fantastic but the way it works right now if someone has a new game that they're like and and I'll admit Stern is fantastic with this. I had a Ghostbusters. We bought it not even secondhand, thirdhand, and it was a nightmare. It was a five to six month fix, replacing node boards and trough boards and optos, and it was a nightmare. They were really good about, hey, we know you're not the original owner, but we're going to send you parts to help you. They didn't have to, You know, so where was I going with that? Totally derailed. So it's about finding someone who's willing to fix it, not who's exactly totally qualified. Because, again, a lot of us hobbyists, we do it because we love this hobby. That's why I do it. The dealership and selling games, it just fuels my own addiction to get more games in my own collection. Right. I don't make money on this. So, no, I would love to see that as a network. Now, through knowing operators, you know, selling to some operators, selling to people like yourself who are willing to take on these specialties and the friends we've made in this community, we're able to do things, especially, I think, in Minnesota. if we could gather all these resources, oh my gosh, we can make our own full-time restoration deal here, you know, company doing games. But yeah, that's a loaded question. Thanks, Matt.
    81:23
    No, no, no, but it's okay. That's okay, because guess what? You know what? Maybe we don't know that answer right at the moment.
    81:30
    No, but it gets people thinking about it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But both me and you are going to be at Expo. I think this is a good question for Sharp. But, anyways, I want to get back to you. Well, let's touch on Expo. Yeah, let's touch on Expo. That's what I want to talk about. Expo. This is my first time going. Is it yours? Yes. I've been to Texas Spinball Fest a couple times, MGC, and this will be my first time at Expo. And I think after COVID we're due for it. So I'm looking forward to it. I've heard that it's going to be one hell of a wild party.
    82:07
    That's coming from Todd Tucky. That's also coming from Drew Bovair, Poor Man's Pinball Podcast. He's like, because I was asking him, I said, like, so do they sell booze or is it just beer? You know, I'm not really a beer guy. He goes, oh, yeah. He goes, don't worry about it, man. They got a whole bar. I'll be there with a couple of prime bottles and a cigar. I'm like, hey, golden. I'll be there, too. Don't worry about that. Yeah, that sounds nice, actually. Yeah. So you're setting up at Expo. So what have you, you know, because you're actually a vendor. And that's, so you're setting up Wednesday. Are you going to be doing the Bumper Bash, the dinner that night? That was our intent, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So I have to check, make sure we're all registered and everything for it, what we're supposed to do. But, yeah, that's our intent. Gotcha. All right. No, cool. I'm wondering if this is a, you can laugh at this analogy. I have a feeling that the bumper bash for anybody who doesn't know that's Wednesday night. That's for the vendors. That is for media personalities. That is for, cause they're, they're all a no brainer in a lot of this. And that dinner to me is going to literally look like a giant high school reunion, which I've made the joke. Like you're going to be like, Ooh, what table am I at? who am I sitting next to?
    83:33
    Yeah. No, we're going to go. We're going to set up a booth, you know, for the smaller regional dealers. You know, we don't have our own show. We don't have our own following. So to get our name out there as a Midwest distributor dealer of these games is important for us. At Chicago Pin Expo this year, I've been using a different style of stair climber for about the last year and a half. And the reason I did it, I have the same one everyone else does, the Escalera, but the damn thing almost killed me. I was going up a flight of steps, and this was no fault of the Escalera's. I'm not bashing the product. It's a very good product. But it has that chain and a little ball that rolls around. and as I was going up these steps, the homeowner says, oh, I should warn you, my carpet's not secured. And I go, what the hell does that mean? Well, I'm already halfway up and Glenn's more like a bull than taking my time and assessing the situation.
    84:45
    So as he starts to tell me what that means, it means he didn't staple down the carpet on the steps. And as the dolly ball came around and it pulled the carpet, the carpet that the dolly was on became a wet noodle. And Glenn, that was three or four steps up, was also standing on a wet noodle. I had nowhere to go but down. So an ACDC premium at the bottom of this homeowner's stairway, upside down, bam, six steps it fell. Escalera strapped to it on top of it. And Glenn, now pinched between the drywall and the game with my leg, and I had some bruised ribs, I'm like, so that was a traumatizing experience. Ticked me off to Norwind, and I'm like, there's got to be a better mousetrap. So being in manufacturing and knowing that there's got to be something out there, I started looking. What we have is a different sort of dolly. It's a stair-climbing dolly, but it uses a tank tread. So the length of the tread will span at least two to three steps at a time. And I've been using my wife as a test case. She can take a game up and down our steps with this dolly.
    86:05
    It is a little bit different, so the manufacturer makes other dollies similar. But we had them, you know, hey, I want to do this. And I take pictures of a pinball machine on their dolly, the prototype one I have. I'm like, can you make it specific for this? Like, I want caster wheels because in Minnesota, we have split-level homes. And again, I've been doing deliveries by myself. So this is a one-man army.
    86:33
    In a given weekend, I'll deliver between seven and eight games on a day, like a Saturday. So I'm doing all this work by myself. And when you have a 400-pound Guns N' Roses and a flight of stairs, you're like, oh, crap. Okay. Okay, so we have caster wheels on this dolly, the tank tread, and what you do is you get it up on there, you go down the step, and when you hit that split level home, you have to make that kind of 90 degree turn. So the caster wheels get you to the bottom, you stand it up, you can roll around on a dime, tip it back, and it goes down the next set of stairs. So the safe part is the center of gravity of that game is laying against the tank treads, which is always in contact with the steps. And that one we're going to be selling at Expo.
    87:34
    The list price on it is $17.25. We are going to have a discount for operators. I want people to use this. Give me good feedback for one more design engineering change. so those will be available we'll be showcasing that at expo no and that it trust me for any of us who've moved these machines oh god i pulled them out of places i don't even want to my back still hurts um but you're right safety matters and escalators were not a bad product but when you said the when you told me like hey treads it'll go up three steps at a time and it's powered i was like oh thank god well yeah and so here's the thing that i didn't even consider but these walkout basements that we also have all over minnesota right and people are like oh i got a walkout basement i go yeah that's gravity like there's a slope and a slippery wet lawn that i have to get through so i had a mandalorian le i was taking back from a customer um because we do trades we take games in on trade and I put it on our dolly I took it out to his backyard laid it down and boom the tank tread brought that full game again and we got 600 pound capacity with the design we've done with the company so right up this incline walkout basement through his yard right so the uh the rolling ball would not have done that because again I have a walkout basement that's how I get my games downstairs. Otherwise, you know, Drew once from the Four Men's Pinball Podcast laughs. He just, you know, he just slides down his steps and he's there. Like that's his thing with the box. I can't do that when it's, you know, a game I've pulled out of somewhere. And so I have to carry, I put them on a dolly and I move them around my yard and I have a giant fire pit and a slope. And as erosion has taken its toll this last year, particularly since I installed new gutters, if I don't have the thing ratchet strapped like 18 times, I will lose the game. It will tilt. And no pun intended.
    89:46
    Yeah. And suddenly I'm on the ground, the game is on top of me, and things are bad. And so I'm very selective. Like I had to tell my wife, I'm like, I need to get everything out of the garage now into the basement where it's going to be. She goes, well, that game's not done. I'm like, I'm not doing this in the winter.
    90:04
    Oh, no. That could be your next product there, Glenn. The pin sled. Yeah, put a pin sled. Okay, so I've done this before.
    90:15
    A guy told me he had a walkout basement. I'm going to reveal this. You're going to be like, Glenn's the worst dealer ever. I'm not going to have him set up a game. But I got to the guy's house. He's like, oh, I got a walkout basement. And it's February, right? I go, you got 14 inches of snow, too. What the hell do you want me to do? And I'm just looking at him like, what, man? What? So the game was still in the box. And I said, hey, when you were a kid growing up in Minnesota, did you ever jump in a box and slide down the hill and use that as your sled? He's like, yeah, yeah, I did. I go, good. Since this was your idea, get down there and catch. and I pushed a 400-pound game in the box down the hill. I mean, I did, you know, kind of soften it. I didn't just let it slide free while it was falling, but I nursed it down to the bottom of this 14 inches of snow on the ground walkout basement. I'm like, man, I'm not charging enough for deliveries.
    91:09
    Not worth it. Oh, that is priceless. And all that's coming to mind is the beginning of Ace Ventura when he's mimicking the UPS delivery guy. And he is dropping that damn thing down the hallway. The whole works. I was waiting for like a Chevy Chase in National Lampoons when he gets on the sled that's been all flicked up. And I thought this game's going to end up out in the street. But it was good. Oh, I... So, yeah.
    91:41
    The scenarios that lead to you developing, working, and like, hey, dude, I need something to guarantee this thing. $7,000 machine does not get ruined.
    91:51
    Oh. Yeah, and the nice thing about this dolly, too, it's got the treads are made of the same stuff like your shoes. You know, the basketball court where it doesn't leave marks on the court, right? Those special soles that basketball shoes have and stuff. The tank treads are the same thing. So people who are, what do I want to say, sensitive about their hardwood floors or their tile or whatever fancy flooring they have, um i did i did carpet cleaning skin marks i did carpet cleaning for 10 years the number of people that are rich and i'm not picking on the rich but when you've decided that you want to want to go with a white wool carpet and you if you own a single and i tell them right off the bat and i used to install a long time ago i'm like you cannot have black black soul shoes in your home ever and they're like no really i'm like this carpet you just had installed everything will show so to have it be the what you call quote-unquote markless shoe sole material is huge yep otherwise so there's some thought that's gone into this for sure i i applaud it from a guy who as a surface technician for flooring. I totally get it. That is awesome. Thank you. Pardon, I'm going to wipe a tear away from my eye.
    93:15
    Yeah. No, I'll admit, I mean, the dolly is great. I can do a stern all day very comfortably with it. You get those Jersey Jack games that are 400 pounds on there. You do get a little nervous about it. You know, and I do ask the homeowner or even my wife if she's helping. I'm like, just be my spotter because I had such a bad experience one time. But it's not like a traditional appliance dolly where you're having to, you know, hump it up the steps to get it back out of the basement. You just apply some downward pressure to make sure that the treads stay in contact with the steps and you hit the button and let it do the work. So, yeah, we're kind of excited about that.
    93:58
    Hopefully it's what we see in the market. it i for anybody who's a distributor and anybody's an operator any well heck half of us we already know the average collector starts at five games and to have a lot of people that we know oh let's see i'm at i'm at 15 i don't even know what you're at you had you had 20 plus um charlie i got about 25 yep charlie's got 30 our buddy phil has like oh geez phil's uh phil's getting up there he's running out of room and um i've got i've met for more and more collectors i've met dude there are guys that would be like i need that you know those other those other stair climbing dollies i forget what the ones are called that it's got a ball screw and it does one step at a time um yeah the thing i wanted to hit with this one is a price point for the average homeowner, right? So I'm going to use the escalar again. That was a $2,500 dolly, $2,500 plus you get your accessories that you get to buy. And then there's the other dollies that start at $3,000 up to $8,000 or $10,000 or $20,000. I'm like, no way in heck is anyone going to pay that much for a dolly who's the average homeowner. So the price point $1,725 is the MSRP Again, if you're a distributor or operator, you get a discount.
    95:23
    So, yeah, for $1,700, it's much more palatable for the average person. But, you know, when we do these, try and get these games out of basements, there's always something else. Like, oh, what about this 300-some-pound slot machine? Matt, you've moved one of these. Oh, God. Yeah, if you leave the seatbelt. So we do have a seat belt, but I take it off because all I do is pinball and I just use a ratchet strap. But it does have a seat belt that you can use, and that would work great for slot machines.
    95:58
    You're not going to do a full-size arcade with ours. I don't recommend that at all because of the length of the handle. And, heck, if this goes well enough, maybe we'll come up with the same style for arcade machines. Yeah. No, I get it. Paperwork, washers, dryers. I move washers and dryers up and down steps with a water heater.
    96:19
    Right? So it's a good. I'm just, all that comes to mind is the cursed, it was my bar fridge. Yeah, you got it down the steps, you slid it down. It's going to take eight guys to get it back out. That's all that comes to mind. Yep.
    96:38
    Oh, man. Don't put a piano on this, folks. I will not advise that there's a company that is called Piano Movers they are a real company they have chains across the United States that's who you call when it's a piano yes and those are the dollies that are $40,000 to buy one of those dollies I've looked it up oh man no well it's going to be a blast at Expo I'm excited just because you know being the little kid in me is going to be like, there's going to be so many games to play. I am bringing a game.
    97:17
    And I was nervous about that because I'm like, crap, I haven't restored this one. It's my game plan supernova. But I was reassured by a few other guys who were going that said, no, no, most of the games are unrestored that are there. As long as it's shopped out, don't worry about it. I'm like, all right, cool. So it's going to have new rubbers on it, but it's not a common game. It's just, I wanted people to play it because, you know, game plan, everybody always knows about sharpshooter they just never bring these other ones up and so i'm like well cool i want people to play this so i'm going to bring that one with me and um you're so i'll be loading and setting that up and then i gotta go help jeff and then i gotta go help other people i think i actually have to stop by and see uh tnt make sure that they don't need something because remember i'm driving in you're driving in so you know having been a resource um i'll help you set up because I'm going to just be there. I'm going to have time to kill.
    98:10
    And it should be a lot of fun. And I'm looking forward to that. And I'm looking forward to seeing the general public come in. I want to see people. I want pinheads. And I encourage anyone, if you're going to Expo, bring somebody who's not into pinball. We need this to grow. The hobby has grown, but I want it to continue. I don't want pinball. It faced near extinction. And 1999.
    98:39
    If Gary hadn't teamed up and kept his company going, there would have been nothing left. We have new companies now.
    98:49
    This would have just been a glorified vintage hobby. We have to get people to want to play this. You have kids, bring them. If you have a friend who's an arcade or a gamer, bring your gaming friends. Be like, yeah, you play Call of Duty. Try playing this. Get them locked in. Get the exposure is a huge thing. Please bring those people.
    99:10
    And I will definitely be seeing it. And for, again, it's the pinball place. He is, this is a business that I push, one, because we're friends. He's a local guy. I don't get paid by these guys. I've given Glenn money.
    99:24
    It's the exact opposite of how this should work. Yeah, we appreciate that. Thank you. No, I don't mind in the least. And so if you're in Minnesota, please order. You guys are exclusively pinball. You're not coming – if you go into a pinball place, you're not buying a Cal Spas hot tub. You're not buying dart boards. You're not buying billiards. You're not buying, oh, the bar shuffleboard things. You're not buying any of that stuff. He's not trying to sell you a home above ground pool. It is just pinball. that's dedication that's passion and there's customer service to back it up but you know join the league people there's that's probably the thing that can help grow this the most right man is like having local leagues uh like a bowling or a pool league or dart league that people have been in that's one thing that we want to focus on in the next few years is growing like you said the non-pinball people get them to come join the league and they have a blast i mean it's an excuse to get together and have drinks more than anything, but it adds a little friendly competition.
    100:37
    When we run our leagues in New Ulm and Mankato, it's about 40% women and 60% male. It's almost 50-50, and it makes for such a fun dynamic, right? Because the ladies come in and they talk shit better than anybody. They're like, oh, well, you sucked at that ball. Yeah, you got me. How many of these do you own, and why am I beating you on your own game? Well, yeah, I get it, because I fix them.
    101:09
    But, yeah, everybody sign up. Join the league. No, no, and you're right. I don't want people to feel intimidated by joining the league. People think they always have to be good at something to join the league. Dude, this is just like bowling.
    101:24
    It's half booze, and people just try and have a good time. There's always that one guy that's the ultra-professional, and there's nothing wrong with that. He might carry the weight of a team. Don't get me wrong.
    101:35
    But you don't have to feel intimidated joining a league. It's about having fun. It's a social thing because I have, and Glenn knows this, I've posted when I've gone out and about, and I have friends call me afterwards like, I didn't know you were going out there. I would totally go because they want something different to do. Enjoy a few drinks. have play pinball talk some smack laugh about it it's all it's supposed to be fun that's the whole point and if you get really good at it and if you get really good at it there's nothing wrong with being good at something either i mean like then if you want to do ispa do it you know it's not like it's a hidden you know club or something it's this is this is a huge thing it's a huge hobby now it's mainstream it's not just a bunch of us uh you know geeks so anyways yeah i think that's the best thing is you get such a mix of class of people it's not just the hipsters it's not just the wealthy that have this this is a hobby that spans different decades generations and interests or people of different backgrounds right so um yeah i think it's fantastic and we we have a lot of fun when we run these leagues so no i get that all right glenn i've taken up too much of your time as it is i just appreciate it thank you for coming on the pinball restorers podcast and you know what old games you take old games on trade i'm not going to quote any car ads and say bring your old you know drag it here and we'll give you two thousand dollars no that's not how it works but you do take games on trade you do buy old games you sell used games and i just want people to at least take a moment, stop by, and it's truly a pinball-only establishment and more than accommodating and more than helpful. So please come out and stop by, see Glenn, see John, and let's further this hobby.
    103:37
    And with that... Thepinballplace.com. Oh, yeah. It's easy to remember, too. Thank God. No dashes, no hyphens.
    103:48
    Right, just thepinballplace.com. We're real people. hey thanks Matt this has been a Ruby Butt production Ruby get out of the litter box