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Pinball Oz Wide - Episode 7. Flying Solo from Peninsula to Peninsula

Pinball Oz Wide·podcast_episode·1h 28m·analyzed·Aug 28, 2025
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.035

TL;DR

Tim Reid of Hot Rodded Pins shares his pinball journey from 2008 discovery to building a restoration business in Geelong.

Summary

Jared from Tee'd Off Pinball Podcast interviews Tim Reid of Hot Rodded Pins about his journey from discovering pinball in 2008 to building a restoration business in Geelong, Australia. Tim recounts how a chance encounter with Terminator 2 at a bowling alley led to virtual pinball experimentation, then to acquiring and restoring classic machines like Fun House and PinBot. The conversation covers his early restoration work, business challenges, key partnerships with suppliers like Classic Chrome, and the evolution from hobby to professional service, establishing Hot Rodded Pins as a high-end pinball restoration operation.

Key Claims

  • Tim discovered pinball around 2008 via a broken Terminator 2 machine at a bowling alley gym while finishing university.

    high confidence · Tim's direct account of his origin story in the interview.

  • Tim's first pinball acquisition was a heavily damaged Fun House purchased for $1,200 delivered from Sydney to Melbourne around 2009.

    high confidence · Tim describes the phone call from Michael Shalhoub and the transaction details.

  • An electroplating company lost all the bracketry hardware from Tim's first customer job (a PinBot), but he had acquired a second PinBot and was able to recover.

    high confidence · Tim's direct account of the crisis and recovery, noting he never told the customer.

  • Classic Chrome in Geelong became Tim's long-term electroplating partner after the initial failure, with a commitment to never lose customer parts.

    high confidence · Tim explains how the owner of Classic Chrome advised him on proper nickel vs. chrome plating processes.

  • Tim's first commercial location was a row of sheds at the end of a street in Geelong that he discovered by chance while feeling discouraged.

    high confidence · Tim describes driving out of his nan's shed and spotting the commercial space that became Hot Rodded Pins.

Notable Quotes

  • “It's so fucking cool. And I was really into, like I was mucking around building like MAME arcade machines. I love making stuff.”

    Tim Reid @ early interview section — Establishes Tim's foundational interest in arcade machines and customization that led to pinball.

  • “the stars had aligned and I'd found the thing.”

    Tim Reid @ discussing discovery of High End Pins work — Expresses the moment Tim realized pinball restoration was his life calling.

  • “I nearly, at that time, that was like... It's almost a deal breaker, isn't it? It's like, what am I doing?”

    Tim Reid / Jared @ electroplating loss discussion — Captures the existential crisis when the first customer job nearly failed due to supplier error.

  • “I was thankful to God that I had two. And it's like, well, there goes my PinBot.”

    Tim Reid @ recovery from electroplating loss — Shows Tim's perspective on a catastrophic mistake being salvageable due to having duplicate inventory.

  • “Because it's not even your stuff, Tim. It's your customers, and I respect that.”

    Classic Chrome owner @ partnership discussion — Reflects the customer-focused ethics that became central to Tim's business model.

  • “he's like, get it done, Tim. Like, what the hell?... You don't get it. Like, yeah, I'm trying to – I was trying to do something that, like, the average person – A bit of a wow factor behind it.”

    Tim Reid (recounting father's dialogue) @ fishtails discussion — Reveals tension between Tim's commitment to quality and his father's pragmatic productivity focus.

  • “I pushed this thing out. It's like I didn't even see what I'd done, truly. It was like, I was like looking at it like, shit, I think I might have done a great job.”

    Tim Reid @ fishtails completion — Captures Tim's surprising realization of his own craftsmanship on a major early project.

Entities

Tim ReidpersonJaredpersonMattpersonMichael ShalhoubpersonChris HutchinspersonWaynepersonMatt ScottpersonRob

Signals

  • ?

    restoration_signal: Tim's evolution from MAME arcade building to high-end pinball restoration, documenting process improvements (electroplating supplier selection, zinc vs. nickel vs. chrome plating strategies) and quality standards development.

    high · Detailed account of Fun House and PinBot restoration techniques, partnership with Classic Chrome on proper plating workflows.

  • ?

    business_signal: Hot Rodded Pins transitioned from hobby (nan's shed) to commercial operation (dedicated commercial space) during 2009-2010 period, driven by customer demand and supplier partnerships.

    high · Tim's account of physical move to commercial sheds, first customer jobs (PinBot, Fishtails), and reinvestment of revenue.

  • ?

    community_signal: Australian pinball restoration community highly interconnected through forums (Aussie Arcade), community members (Michael Shalhoub), and suppliers; knowledge-sharing and mentorship culture evident.

    medium · Michael Shalhoub's encouragement despite being declined initially, Bumper Action Amusements' support for virtual pinball projects, Classic Chrome owner's technical guidance.

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Matt from Tee'd Off Podcast absent due to voice issues persisting from prior episode, showing podcast consistency and co-host dynamic.

    high · Jared's opening commentary about Matt being 'Papa Duke fucked' with voice problems and apologizing for solo episode format.

  • ?

    content_signal: Tee'd Off Podcast upgrading streaming infrastructure (Sony camera replacement for C922 Logitech webcam, additional lighting) to improve production quality.

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.267

0:00
Welcome everyone to the Pinball Ozwide podcast. This is episode 7. My name is Jared and I'm flying solo. We have no Matt this month. He has a little bit of a voice issue. I think you might have heard on the last one, he was pretty fucked and he's still pretty fucked. So he's pulled out of this one. Hopefully back for the next one because we miss him. It's weird talking to myself, buddy. So hopefully you can get that ugly mug of yours opposite me next time and we can do this again. So with that, I will skip through some stuff pretty quickly, have a chat about other things that we just need to follow up from last month's podcast, which is just the Expo situation as well. we did hear from Wayne, so that'll be a little bit later down the track. We actually popped down to Hot Rodded Pins as well this month, caught up with Tim Reid down there, so you'll hear a bit about that as well. Typical language warning for everyone, so there is a bit of swearing that generally goes on, probably not as much this episode being by myself.
1:18
Perhaps Matt is attributed to that, he's a bad influence, we all know that. So I'm sure there'll be less swearing. Quick shout out to Michael Keogh. He's been just pretty active through our socials, mate. So just appreciate that. So just wanted to give a quick shout out, say thank you. And look forward to maybe catching up with you in Expo if you come down and have a bit of a chat and a beer. My month in review, just quickly.
1:48
Not much happened. I've just been reorganising my streaming gear. So I ended up hooking up a Sony camera to my streaming gear. So we just wanted to get rid of having the C922 Logitech webcam. So I just dropped the webcam off from the playfield view, put in a Sony camera. Looks like it's doing a really, really good job. Thanks to Rob for sort of hooking onto the stream and giving me some feedback on how it looked because then we brought a light into it as well, and the light sort of helped even more. So I think I've got where I needed to be, hopefully. I was doing that mainly on my maiden, so I'll look to stream maybe again soon and give that a bit of a test run. But apart from that, the main thing that I did this month was, as I said, I travelled down to Geelong to meet Tim from Hot Rodded Pins. First time I'd ever met the guy. The interview will follow this, but just a shout out to him. It was so nice to get down there and amazingly his setup and everything about him was just really, really cool. Such an easy, talkative guy. Got along like a house on fire with him. It was like we were old mates. It was ridiculous, you know. He had some like stuff, as in we were like-minded in regards to some skate stuff that he had on the wall and some Lego stuff and, you know, got to sort of chat about that kind of stuff, which was pretty cool. So I think I will just throw straight into now the discussion, the little interview we had with him, and have a bit of a listen, let me know what you guys think. We'll catch back up after that. So Tim, Hot Rodded Pins, welcome to the podcast, mate. Thanks for joining us. Thank you, Jarrod. It's good to get down here, actually, and have a bit of a look around. So we've already been chatting for like an hour and a half, so this could be either very short or it might be a decent chat. I'm sure it's going to be a decent chat. I was going to say, anyone who comes down here to have a look or pick something up or drop something off, I'm always talking the other way. So I don't think there'll be any worry about any silences or anything like that. You mean any little breaks in conversation like there just was? Like there just was? I've got this fluffy microphone in my face and it totally changes. It does, doesn't it? It does sort of change how you feel about talking. It's like, what was I even just rambling about? Yeah, 100%. We'll be right. We'll get there. Like you said, look, we've only been doing this, I think this is our seventh episode now. So you still do get in front of it. Like, I even notice my voice changes somewhat. Like, outside talking to you, I was probably very chilled. And I reckon when I get in front of it, I put on my announcer's voice and I'm like, welcome to 3XY. Yeah, I definitely do the same thing. And that's why, you know, when I post stuff on my Facebook page or Instagram, I'm very rarely talking in it because I feel like a robot. Yeah. You know, I'm just better off to show the work and shut up. Yeah, no, great. It's a good way to put it. No, it is good to have you down and show you some stuff. Yeah, I appreciate it. It's been a long time because I've known of you for a long time and I've maybe done a little bit of work for you back in the early days when I started out. It's nice to actually show you the latest iteration of what I've been into and how it's all gone. Yeah, it's good. Well, tell us how you got into it. Give us your little life story, as they say. So I might be a bit rusty on the actual years, but essentially I was at uni and finishing up uni and doing a visual arts major around about 2008, I reckon.
person
Michael Keoghperson
Bumper Action Amusementscompany
Classic Chromecompany
Hot Rodded Pinscompany
Tee'd Off Pinball Podcastorganization
High End Pinscompany
Treasure Covecompany
Mantis Amusementscompany
Aussie Arcadeorganization
Pinball Expoevent

high · Jared's detailed description of camera upgrade on Iron Maiden setup, feedback from Rob on camera quality, and planned future stream testing.

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Tim's restoration business relies on specialized local suppliers (electroplating, welding, automotive finishing) in Geelong; supply chain continuity critical to business model.

    high · Classic Chrome partnership commitment, family engineering background providing in-house fabrication capability, coordination between nickel and chrome plating processes.

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Early tension around intellectual property when Tim re-drew Terminator 2 artwork without realizing licensing implications; resolved through Wayne's guidance and artwork donation to legitimate rights holder.

    high · Tim's account of re-vectoring cabinet art, Wayne's reach-out, and Tim's subsequent donation of artwork for proper licensing channels.

  • ?

    collector_signal: Classic machines (Fun House, PinBot, Terminator 2, Fishtails) were affordable in 2009-2010 period (~$1,200 Fun House, ~$1,600 Terminator 2) and undesirable relative to modern machines, creating opportunity for restoration specialists.

    high · Tim's account of Michael Shalhoub's dismissal of Fun House demand, $700/unit pricing for bulk estate machines, customer reluctance to commission high-end work on PinBot/Fishtails.

  • $

    market_signal: Demand for high-end pinball restoration services emerged organically in early 2010s as community members discovered Tim's work via Aussie Arcade forum; word-of-mouth and Google advertising drove early customer acquisition.

    medium · Matt Scott's cold call from Google search, initial customer inquiries following Terminator 2 restoration post, PinBot customer becoming repeat helper/collaborator.

  • ?

    historical_signal: Tim's 2008 origin story captures transition era in Australian pinball: declining domestic knowledge, reliance on online research (primitive YouTube), discovery of international restoration specialists (High End Pins), and emergence of community forums (Aussie Arcade).

    high · Tim's account of learning through online research, books (Shalhoub Compendium), and YouTube; contrast with pre-internet repair knowledge; discovery of Chris Hutchins' work via forum post.

    • 5:44
    And I was going to the gym in my spare time and stuff, and they had a bowling lanes attached to the gym. And in that bowling lanes, they had this little arcade. and as I'm walking past, I saw this Terminator 2 pinball machine. And I'd probably, like I'd seen pinballs before and played them. I was born in 86, so maybe just missed the pinball stuff. I was playing more Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter. Yeah, me too. Maybe, yeah. Yeah, people ask me. I'm like, I was an arcade guy when I started all this. Yeah, for whatever reason, I just saw this thing. I'm like, can I swear on this thing? Yeah, cut from it. It's so fucking cool. And I was really into, like I was mucking around building like MAME arcade machines. I love making stuff. Likewise, yeah. And I just had this wondering thought of, well, you can kind of emulate the arcade ROMs. Can you get like a virtual version of Terminator 2 pinball machine? Because I didn't even conceptualize that you might be able to buy one and have it at your house. That's how green I was to all of this stuff. And I kind of just flew home and started Googling stuff. And, yes, found out that there was, like, guys building, like, this is really primitive stuff. They're like 08, 09. They were using this virtual pinball software to make, like, the cabinet sort of landscape, the portrait mode layout. So it was really ancient sort of stuff. But I totally got hooked on researching these old pinball machines. And it wasn't until I decided to try and build my own virtual machine, like with a proper cabinet and stuff, that I needed to find some parts, like lockdown bars, coin doors and stuff. And at that time, most guys listening will probably have heard of Bumper Action Amusements. And so I rang them and said, look, do you have any old parts? and they were actually pretty on board with the project, which I was surprised about because, you know, the virtual stuff gets a fair bit of hate and I kind of get it. It's not the real thing. But I couldn't afford it. You know, I was probably 20. I was probably calling them tables back in the day. Everyone hates when you call them a table. You've got this idea to have all these tables and, you know, Bumper's probably slapping me in the face, all the guys in spare parts. But anyway, went up to Melbourne and, you know, they were asking me about stuff and I bought some parts and going through that showroom on City Road, I just had my whole head unlocked with Far Out, forget that Terminator 2 at the bowling lanes, which was like run down, flippers didn't work and all that. This is just, this is what people are doing. Like, this is insane. And, you know, being like young, finishing up uni, living at home with mum and dad,
    8:46
    and just in my spare time, any spare time, just tinkering and making stuff, I just thought, these are just so beautiful because I loved art, and they were just covered in art. They were covered in this beautiful artwork. And then, you know, with my family's background in the engineering stuff, the mechanical side, I'm like, this is just ticking all the boxes. You know, I loved it. And then, you know, I sort of come home, like, oh, I've only got this dinky virtual pinball. It doesn't even have any flipper mechs. I thought I was getting right into this, and I didn't know anything about them. Anyway, this is probably the catalyst for the whole thing, was I'd searched for something to do with an Indiana Jones pinball, because I loved the movies, obviously. Who doesn't? And I loved the game. The pinball machine looked so cool. And I stumbled across this post on Wreck Games Pinball. Someone had sent a playfield, an Indiana Jones playfield, to this guy in the USA called Chris Hutchins, and his business was called High End Pins. And I didn't know anything about it other than he put a photo up of what he'd sent, which was this blown out old Indiana Jones playfield and the photos of the finished result. I didn't even know what a clear-coded playfield was. I didn't really have any comprehension. It was like one of those moments in my life, some moments to stand out, where it was like, forget the four years of uni. I got the degree, so mum was proud. Kept mum happy. But at that time, it was like, for me, the stars had aligned and I'd found the thing. That's pretty early then, if you're talking 2008-ish or so when you first saw the T-shirt. Yeah, I'm sure it was around 08. Maybe, yeah. So it's a big leap to go from nothing to, hey, look what we can do. Yes. Yeah. So I just become, like, so enthralled with, hang on, guys are getting these things restored. But then when I saw this job that Chris Hutchins had done on this play field, it connected those two things for me. I'm like, this guy is putting automotive finishing and high-end detail on a pinball machine, and that's what I'm meant to do. You know, I was all in on it. And so what I quickly did was I tried to sell the virtual machine. And this is all on Aussie Arcade. so I was not yeah I wasn't anything to do with pinball then so I tried to sell the stuff like the arcade machine and the pinball and I actually did sell them and then by then so the degree that I had was primary school teaching with the major in visual arts so I was in my spare time airbrushing like stuff and getting creative with all the art side but the teaching I'd realised pretty quickly that it wasn't going to be my future and I felt Not like at the time I'd made a mistake, but I don't regret it now because I was able to, once I'd found the pinball stuff, I could work as a CRT teacher like a few days a week, get for the time pretty reasonable money, and then figure out if I could be something in the world of pinball in Australia. That is actually what it was. And so if I wasn't at school, I was on the internet. Lame as it sounds, I was not going out. Like my mates going out all the time, doing whatever. And I was looking at like parts, manuals. And I'm trying to understand because I didn't have a pinball machine yet. How these things actually like work and how do you service them? And YouTube was there but very primitive. It wasn't like it is now. um but anyway sold the stuff and then because of my time at bumper action they had some like books that you could um like michael shalhoub's pinball compendium books and i bought them the uh the blue one which was like the dmd stuff because with my mates we drive around try and find adam's families and stuff to play out in the wild and so i had this book then i realized that he's actually an Aussie guy and he sells and buys all these pinballs back in the day. And I emailed him and said, hey, look, I want a project. It doesn't matter how rough it is.
    13:23
    I just would love a Williams or Bally 90s pinball machine to restore. And he emailed me back and he said, look, I don't have anything right now in project state, but I'll keep an eye out. And he said anything in particular. And I said, look, it might be a long shot, but I love a fun house. He sort of, well, he might have called me on the phone or something because I feel like I remember talking to him and I felt like he could just hear how young I was and how passionate I was. He sort of snickered. He's like, oh, yeah, no. Even back then, you're not going to get a fun house. Like, just forget about it. I might have some old Gottlieb Premier thing, you know, like Monte Carlo or something. No one wants them. Yeah.
    14:08
    Anyway, so that was that. I hung up the phone. That is the truth. He said no. Yeah. The next day, he rings me up, and he's like, you're not going to bloody believe this, because a freaking funhouse has just come. It's knackered. It's knackered, Tim. You're not going to want it. I said, I want it. Yeah. You didn't get photos back then. You just either decided, do you want it or not? Yeah. Now, it's hilarious because I think he told me $1,200 delivered from Sydney to wherever it was in Melbourne. And I'm like, now a $1,200 funhouse, you just take 10 of them. And I said, all right, yep, done. And this was just leading up to the Christmas holiday. So I'd been teaching a bit.
    14:51
    I'd got the whole summer holidays to muck around and do what I want to do, living at mum and dad's. And, yeah, so the game arrived, and it was, as he said, it was fucked. Pardon my language. It was so bad. And I was so happy, man. I was so happy. It was like, yeah, it was just the best. It was so bad. And it was because what I felt was, wow, well, I don't know shit about these things. What if I can't get it back together?
    15:20
    And that was just further, like, reinforced when I got it home and I start taking it apart, my mum and dad are like, Jim, what are you doing?
    15:30
    You're not going to be able to get this back together. Don't stuff it up. Just fix it up. And I'm like, no, no, no. I've got to find out what's in them.
    15:41
    So anyway, I kind of just thought, well, I'm going to just roll the dice on the $1,200 fun house and I really, really hope I can get it back together.
    15:50
    And I did that and I was following some of this stuff online and trying to get a similar look. And it's so funny looking back. At the time, I thought, here, I'm close. Yeah, yeah. Nut miles. Oh, man. Even now, I look back, I'm like, Timmy, you're such a... It's just funny because... You should have kept it. You obviously don't have it. I don't have it anymore. How good would it be now as compared to what you did do? I know. I've got some photos and it would be so awesome to see because at the time, I remember being so proud of it. And honestly, I did get it back together, and it was one of those things where the only way you can do it – and I've had guys over the years ring and ask me how to start. Like, what do you do? And, you know, it is a bit different now because of the price of the games. Yeah. But you actually just have to start. I didn't – there was nothing. Like, you just had to start and follow what you thought and take heaps of photos. And when you think you've taken some more photos, take them upside down and inside out. And it's just like you need all that documentation. But, yes, so the Funhouse, I did. And I knew that I was still way, way off. But I showed what I'd done on it. And people were honestly to be, like, everyone was very complimentary. It was a nice restoration. Like, I did take the whole thing apart, clean it all, and I put it all back together. Wasn't missing any parts. It was nice. And then I was back at school, and then Oscar was starting to import Euro games, like, import container games. It was becoming more of a thing. He was in Caroline Springs. I emailed him about a Terminator 2 and a Whitewater. Yeah. And he said, look, you better just come up and have a look. So Dad and I went up, and it was like, there's a Terminator, there's a Whitewater. And I said, look, what are you thinking for the Terminator? He said, look, I'm not going to part with that for anything less than $1,600. Yeah. And I'm like, okay. So I ended up getting this Terminator 2. Yep. because the cabinet art was not available.
    18:16
    And I thought it would be a fun thing to show a different side of what I was able to do from back in my younger times. I was mucking around on Photoshop and Illustrator and stuff. So I re-vectored the artwork. That was actually my first stepping stone into the licensing stuff, which we'll cover off, I'm sure, as we talk. But I didn't realize, just being young and a bit naive, that someone actually owned the rights to all this stuff. And I never printed it out for anyone and sold it. It was actually because I had the free time to make the art. I just made it for myself. Yeah. But I feel like it was around that time, I think Wayne still had the Bally Williams rights and stuff. And that was the first time he reached out to me and said, look, be careful. He come along and said, look, yes, you've got to show that you have sanded off your old box or whatever it was. This was a long time ago. But essentially, I was able to show that. And I ended up kind of donating that artwork to Wayne so he could put it through the right channels, to be honest. Like I just said, there's the art and people can use it all. Yeah, because he was going to sell it. He was the guy that had it.
    19:36
    Anyway, so the Terminator come along and I showed some other skills and definitely not doing it for anyone but myself at that point.
    19:44
    That one turned out so much better because what I'd done was I'd realised that when I tumbled all of the bracketry underneath, it just didn't pop. So on the Terminator, I didn't do too much different to the Funhouse except when I stripped all the hardware, I had all of the parts zinc-plated, was what I was getting done at the time. Okay. And when I posted that, so I had the nickel plating, the chrome polished trim,
    20:14
    and the redrawn cabinet art, people just, when I posted it, they just started to see more of a finish, I guess. Like it looked like something. I had a couple of people inquire about could they possibly send me the game to restore it. At that stage, no way. No way. You know, I was not set up. And I really didn't know what I was doing. You know, I was kind of just flying by the seat of my pants. And then I got back in touch with Michael Shalhoub. He rang and he said, look, I've got like 10 machines. he goes but you know for these you know it was two I think it was two pinbots a roller games a taxi a high speed like classic do I say brighter pinbot no yeah okay like these classic Williams games yep he goes but you know it's going to be seven grand for all of them ten of them yeah seven hundred bucks each yeah it's wild anyway I said yeah okay great like that's awesome they all dad and I and my brother we went up to wherever they got shipped to.
    21:25
    And they were all stored at my nan's shed. And that's when I thought, well, maybe I could just do up a game. That's what I thought would be the best thing to do. Yeah. Have your own games to do. Have my own games. As opposed to someone else's. And I could document the games. Yep. And then I'd put them up for sale. Yep.
    21:46
    And that is how I thought maybe there was like a little business in doing that. What I realized very quickly was I finished the Terminator, I bought some games, and those games started to sit there. And then I also realized, wow, I've put all of my capital, whatever little capital that was into, warehousing 10 classic Williams games that at the time no one wanted to spend top dollar on And that was my first lesson Yeah But what ended up happening was they kept looking at the Terminator that I posted and ultimately I had to accept that I was going to have to take someone's game. And do it for them. Yeah, like that is honestly the start of the journey. So I had people come down. So what about time frame was this, you reckon? I must say about 2000 and at the end of 2009 going to 2010.
    22:45
    So it was a couple of years you'd been in the hobby and already the transition to doing that sort of stuff for people. Yeah. People obviously saw the talent immediately. I think so. And there were some things that I definitely had, like, there's a couple of privileges that I know if I check in with myself, what were the privileges I had back in the day? Well, one, read engineering. Heaps of machinery. And that's your family business. That's the family business, yes. All the specialized welding. There was nothing that couldn't be remade. There was nothing that couldn't be refinished. Really technical stuff, I could remake it. So if I fucked something up, it wasn't a problem. It really was not a problem. And then I had some friends in the automotive refinishing side of things. So that was kind of coming together a bit. So the, yes, I quickly, I think what happened was I had a bit of talent with the art and stuff, and I had the confidence of the engineering and fabrication. But I think also, too, people really were hungry for someone to help them with their jobs. Yeah. You know, want to get their games restored or whatever, and I was already just wanting to do my own. And that's how that came about. So I kind of relinquished the decision and accepted the first job was someone did buy a PinBot from my collection because he really loved PinBot. And it was funny because this was all in my nan's shed. It wasn't really a business. It was just a little hobby that I was hoping to make a little bit of money on, probably to buy my own machines. Yeah. So this guy, great guy, I still keep in touch with him now. So he come down, he saw the pin bot. It was really rough, but I was so keen to do it because it was just going to be another game I got to do that I basically gave him two pin bots. Yeah, okay. Because I had two of them. Yeah, yeah. And it turned out to be a gift from God because that was the first game that I'd sent off for a customer that I'd had all the bracketry underneath sent off to be electroplated and the company, the local company, they're no longer in business. They lost the whole lot. Oh, fuck. Dude. And I never told him that. I don't even know if he knows now. But if he listens to this, I nearly, at that time, that was like. It's almost a deal breaker, isn't it? It's like, what am I doing? I couldn't believe it. It was like a, I guess I'm like somewhat of a religious person. And I was just thankful to God that I had two. And it's like, well, there goes my pin bot. I stripped two pin bots just to get the bracketry out. And that's how I got to the company that I still use to this day, Classic Chrome. They were like a staple of electroplating in Geelong. And I just never realized because I just went to the place that popped up first on the internet. And then he took an interest in the pinball stuff. He said, well, what are you trying to do? And I said, well, this is for a customer. I don't know. I didn't know. I was making it up as I went along. And he said, well, you don't do all of that in Chrome. Yep. You do the functional bracketry in nickel or zinc. We do both. Nickel is like a – it's a nice finish, but it's an industrial finish. So you nickel all your brackets and you chrome plate your decorative stuff. I said, well, can you do that? He said, yep. And I said, but look, what are the odds that stuff gets lost? and he said, if you bring it here, you will never lose anything. And he's never lost anything. And what sounds really good about that little story is the fact that you're probably nobody walking in off the street and he's helping you rather than just going, yeah, what do you want? Yeah, we'll dip it, no problems. Whereas he's gone, no, no, this chrome, that nickel, and leave it with me sort of thing. He is such a great guy, honestly. And I've got a few businesses in Geelong that – like literally make the result that I get. It is actually, if it's not, it is such a team effort. Yeah. It cannot be overstated. It's not like, oh, Tim Rees has got this magic wand and it just sort of flops out of the workshop. There is some really great businesses in Geelong that have been around a long time, and this was one of them. I just happened to find the right guy who said, I'm not going to lose this shit on you. Because it's not even your stuff, Tim. It's your customers, and I respect that. we'll do it right. This is what you do. You drop off a tub, nickel. Yep. And you write it all out. That's for that. That's for job lot there. That's job lot chrome. You get the nickel back first. That way you can keep building. Yep. The chrome takes us a bit longer, but that's the finishing stuff. You don't need that for a while. So that's how I fixed that problem. Yep. So at that time, I'd also done a little bit of advertising on Google. just I made a little website and I had another guy who I've currently got his creature from the Black Lagoon here Scott he won't mind me saying his first name and um nice looking creature too yeah yeah thank you and um he he was up in Sydney and he basically out of the blue just cold called based on Google and said he said I want to do a fishtails and even fishtails felt like too risky for me to do. You know, it was a big job. Anyway, he said, no, it's in Melbourne. I'm going to buy it. Can you go pick it up? And I had nothing but free time, so I went, drove to Melbourne, picked it up. And I guess the website made it look like it was bigger than my nan's shed.
    28:38
    But anyway, the game was like a Japanese re-import. So it was a Japanese, it had originally been shipped to Japan, really nicely looked after, have faded to hell.
    28:51
    Which is not uncommon. No, they're always white. And anyway, just another great first customer job to do because it was all there. Yep.
    29:04
    So it was the pin bot and the fishtails. This is how it kind of happened. Yeah. I started stripping the fishtails and I'd stripped the pin bot and the guy with the Pinbot came down and he's just like, Tim, I think you're going to need some help. I sort of welcomed the help. So he come down and started helping me clean parts and refinish parts and sort of look at things together. And it was nice to put like two heads together and figure out some stuff. and then I, on the fishtails, I'd started to muck around more with like two-pack paint, getting the automotive level stuff happening mainly on the cabinet side. Yeah, I was going to ask that. Yep. And I just realised that shit had really already hit the fan because I had two customer jobs. Yeah. Now a neighbour who wasn't happy with it, I was feeling all deflated because how am I going to do this and da-da-da-da. And so I basically drove out of my nan's shed that afternoon, and for whatever reason, I just drove the other way straight down the road. And at the end of this street, as I turned right, I saw this row of sheds. It was like at the end of this little commercial spot. And it was just so perfect for pinball because it presented a certain way. And it started to just look like how I wanted it to look. A business. Yeah, it just started to take shape. Rather than a hobby. Yes. and that's how it really started to transform. And so that year, that was sort of the first quarter of the year. That whole year, I didn't have a whole lot of stuff going on.
    30:42
    Basically, those two jobs, everything I kind of made from them, I just put all back in. So it was mainly covering the rent and the outgoings of the thing.
    30:53
    And, you know, I think I was talking to you before, like at one stage, my dad come down to, you know, he's still busy doing his stuff and he come down and he saw this fishtails there. We should move right along. But he's like, is that the fishtails that you were doing a few months back? I said, yeah. He's like, get it done, Tim. Like, what the hell? And I said, Dad, you don't get it. Like, yeah, I'm trying to – I was trying to do something that, like, the average person – A bit of a wow factor behind it. Yes. That the average person can't or wouldn't do. Yeah. Whereas he was just looking at the money side of things. Yeah. Your money is time. Yes. Just get it out the door. And sort of to this day, I forego a lot of that. And that's why ultimately a lot of it is done at home. So I can choose to donate more time. That is the truth. That's how it is. But essentially, we had this, I love him so much. He's taught me so much. But at the time, I'm like, you don't get it, dude.
    31:51
    And he's like, you don't get it. And we went to a ball. And he's like, no, get this guy's game back. And I said, he's going to get it back. He's going to have his head blown off. Trust me. And that's what I believed. Yeah. Because I was following by that stage. I'm like, ah, high-end pins has a, you know, this is what he does. And this is what Chad Keller does. Yeah. This is what Treasure Cove does. This is what Bill Davis.
    32:18
    Who's another guy? Kerry Stare from Mantis Amusements. He was doing this crazy stuff. And all these guys were like really progressing this high-end stuff, and I wanted a little taste of it. Anyway, so I did finish the fishtails, and I pushed this thing out. It's like I didn't even see what I'd done, truly. It was like, I was like looking at it like, shit, I think I might have done a great job. Yeah, nice. Yeah, and probably looking back, I would do things so different now, but I really did give this guy an incredible job. I think it cost him like two and a half grand to do. It was nothing. I didn't have it priced right. I didn't have it organized right. But I pushed it outside, and I finally saw what I'd done that year alongside the pin bot.
    33:13
    I took the photos, and that night I put all the photos up of the whole job start to finish on Aussie Arcade.
    33:23
    And it was one of those moments where the next day I sort of woke up to private messages. Yeah, right. The inbox had blown up, so to speak. Yeah, it was because there wasn't a whole lot of other places online. It was Aussie Arcade and Aussie Pinball. I realized that I'd probably done something really cool. Yeah. And that's when I knew that all I have to do is keep pushing on this and I can figure it out. So skip forward a few. So I'd posted that and then I got some inquiries.
    34:03
    And, you know, those years were a, oh, jeez, they were tough because I didn't learn the power of just respectfully saying no to someone. I made a lot of mistakes. Yeah. Made a lot of mistakes. People waited too long for jobs.
    34:22
    And I have no shame in saying that. I made mistakes. I'm a human being. There was no intention behind that. It was just the thing just – for one person, the thing really took off way quicker than I'd ever expected. People sending me playfields. People sending me cabinets. People sending me full machines. the phone ringing red hot yeah truly and and i was literally there on my own um with the help of um so the guy with the pin bot basically gave him the job for he covered the parts yeah kind of yeah let's just you yeah and he wanted to stick around and help because he was he was interested in um doing his own restoration so it was a um two-way deal there i got help he got to learn And the knowledge, yeah. Yep, yep. So he netted a lot of that, and I netted a lot of help. Yep. And I probably had that belief that it's going to be okay. Yep. All I've got to do is keep showing up. Yep. Truly, like, every day I'll just keep showing up. It sounds like it was pretty tough at the time, though. It was. With what was going on. It was. And, you know, but it turned out, it turned out. And sometimes this hobby can be unforgiving. For sure. Especially the people within it. Yeah. And, you know, there's a lot of big personalities in it. And I get it because they're an expensive toy. Yeah. And they're a beautiful thing. And it's that connection, like you said, it's that connection to childhood that people have with it. Yeah. It has that emotional connection that if you do something wrong, they'll let you know. Yeah. And they did. They did. And look, it took some time, but, you know, it's been a journey. But yeah, so those early years finding my feet with it, I kind of thought that along the way there would be someone I could really train up to help with more of the artistic side. I think that was probably one of the glaring things I got wrong. Yeah. I did get that wrong. What do you mean by the artistic side? The airbrushing of play fields and stuff. Okay. It's a really unique thing to learn. It's very hard to explain to someone how to do it. Yeah. Like really pulled back on the playfield only jobs and wanted to focus more on the full restorations. Yeah. And, yeah, that really became the period of, yeah, the next sort of the next block of time, the next five years of the whole thing was focusing on the full machines. Yeah. And doing some playfield-only jobs, but they were, you know, I would do playfields for other businesses that were restoring games. But that was a really busy part of the business in those years. It was 2015 when we bought the house here in Geelong, and I started to realize that I felt like it was warp drive, hyperdrive, big, big, big days painting. Yeah. Big days not making a mistake. Big days. Things were getting done, but it was a lot. And that was all getting done at a commercial property, sorry. Like I was renting a commercial space to unpack that. And that was very hard to align that with wanting to sometimes just give the customers a bit more. And it made me think again about the restoration work. And, well, you know, we've got this house out in Geelong. Maybe I could set up an assembly shop there where the games could be kind of stripped, reassembled, and I could do the messy stuff at the commercial space. And I wouldn't have to rent the space because it would just be painting out there. And it was a friend's business. So, you know, it was a great opportunity. Yep. and that is kind of how things are right to this day and it turned out to be a real blessing because so I don't know if I mentioned him yet but Daniel he was on Aussie Arcade as DD's Toys and I'm sure he won't mind me mentioning because he's been like a staple of the pinball community forever he lived close to me and started well he's always helped out with some of the games since the early days, even at my nan's shed. He'd come out and just bring the electronic side of things to life when I couldn't do it. Really clever guy, but essentially he started working with me, for me, whatever you want to call it, and we lived not too far from each other. So me moving the assembly and the disassembly back home turned out to be a really great thing for both of us. So at that point, to kind of get the work all up to date, I had the commercial place to do all of the – we were doing playfields, cabinets, full machines, and I had home starting to be set up for all of that as well. But I wanted to scale back, so that started to scale down around 2015. Yeah, so a lot of it gets done between the two workshops at home, which you've now seen since coming down this morning. and the games get shipped, they go into a storage unit that I've got and then they keep a very small queue now of games. Yeah, having it back at home feels really good. I feel like the scale of it in Australia now, the way it is now, it's probably more of a boutique operation. And yeah, so I've been doing it that way for a while and it's, you know, not much has really changed in terms of what I'm trying to do. It's just the fit and finish of everything is probably getting still just tighter and tighter. I try and find little things to improve on everyone's games. I try and, you know, give as much as I can where I can on them. So do you buy new parts or fabricate any parts or do you just take the old parts and get them cleaned or refabricated or dipped or whatever you might do in that regard? Obviously, I'm talking about drop targets and things like that. Yep. So when we strip the games, everything gets – everything, really, like unless it's – I know it's for the rubbish bin – everything gets, like, washed. Yep.
    41:07
    Kind of inspected. and then if it's a metal, the primary bracketry, like the main bracket of, say, your flipper mech, I will kind of get a bucket together and I'll put all the primary bracketry of each mechanical assembly in a bucket and get that nickel plated.
    41:27
    I'm not interested in nickel plating all the tiny brackets because I just think it opens up too much risk. So we nickel plate the primary bracket of each mech and we all tumble all the other hardware and we wash all the plastic stuff. And what that does is when that's gone through its process, then I kind of create people like a dream list. So I'll go through and basically quote up all the materials for the job that I would love to see on the machine. I don't take a blank check and say, hey, I'll ring you in a year when it's ready or whatever. I really do try and put the customer in the picture and have an actual conversation with them and say, look, this is all the parts on the cabinet which I'd like to buy for the game if we can. This is what it's going to cost. This is on the top side of the playfield. These are the things that I think we really need to get. And on the underside of the playfield and the mechanical side of the playfield, this is what I think we need to buy, like flipper kits, all of that sort of stuff. I feel like there's some non-negotiables, but ultimately it's a conversation to be had with the customer before we spend any money.
    42:40
    And I think it puts people's minds at ease because they kind of know what their upfront you're going to be. And so, yeah, to answer your question, yes, we do try and reuse some of the parts where we can. Some parts are just simply after 35 years now, they're cooked. yeah they are cooked and there's just no point you know i'm putting a flipper bat a 35 year old flipper bat back on a fully rebuilt flipper mech i've literally had them snap like the flippers snap off the you know the the armature or whatever and um it's just like you're wasting your time and i can't charge the yeah it's hard to charge the customer for that it's like well just you should put new flipper bats on yeah it's like yeah true you know so i we try and reuse what we can Because I don't want to just make them, you know, it's like, what are you, it's not a restoration or whatever, but obviously salvage the wiring harnesses, some of the, you know, the fasteners and hardware that you can't buy, we definitely use and polish up and all the ball guides, we re-grain those. the playfields, sometimes I will choose to actually use one of the old playfields, even if the customer is sort of happy to buy a brand new one. There's something to be said about the old playfields. The colors are, you know, you just can't beat them. They're screen printed, beautiful inks. As long as they're not faded, sometimes they're faded. But like there's not a lot of manufacturers now, the playfields screen printing the playfields. Yeah. And so, you know, I'm doing that. Creature at the moment they going to be restored playfields because they just look so awesome You know the fluoro pink of the Cadillac in between the flippers and that just looks so killer And some of the new play fields don have those inks So we do buy a lot of stuff for sure. You know, typically if you like, you know, people always wonder what the games cost to do.
    44:43
    You're going to, if you want it like a game done in Chrome with, you know, a healthy amount of parts that are going to make the game somewhat reliable, you could spend sort of $5,000 to $6,000 in materials. Now, that includes the Chrome work and everything, but it is expensive.
    44:58
    And then your labour, obviously, on top of that. And the labour on top. And there is just no way to get around. You know yourself working on the games. You can spend a considerable amount of time just swapping over a set of ramps. And if you don't want to do it yourself, Unfortunately, you do have to pay someone to do it. It doesn't have to be me. There's a lot of guys doing similar work, but the hours really ramp up very quickly. I take about a day to strip a WPC-era game, fully stripped. Top side and underside. Top side, underside, cabinet, mech stripped. I don't strip the ramps. I actually leave the ramp, I wash the ramps, but usually, and that's another early day learned lesson, some of the sub-assemblies I will not even muck with until the game is somewhat, you know how I was showing you the creature, I've just put the whirlpool ramp on. And if you strip every single sub-assembly of a game, you will end up with tackle boxes, glad bags, boxes. The game, it's unbelievable the amount of parts in these things. Even after all these years, and someone can show me a screw from a WPC game, I'm like, I know where that goes. Truly, it's like you see them every day, and it's like a handy thing to have. But you can easily, the games, I would say, you can fluff them out. Yeah. Like, you know, there's so much less parts when they're kind of kept together. So the ramps, I'll wash all the ramps with the wiring harnesses left on the ramps. Yep. And then when it comes time, at the very end, the ramps go on at the end. Hmm. Then I'll just spend that time getting the old ramp with the wash parts, and we usually build them up with, like, new fasteners, or we polish the fasteners if it's a good quality game. Okay. But by that stage, the wiring harnesses have been washed, and all of the fasteners and hardware has been um like kind of detailed already it's just sitting on the ramp yeah and then i just go and throw the ramps in the bin cut them up with the bandsaw and they're just i throw out so many old parts but and the same with the plastics i don't um you know plastics have like little black standoffs and posts and all that attached back in the day um metal and yeah and and back in the day i would take them all apart yeah because i thought well you've got to strip the game but you do have to strip the game but you don't have to strip all the sub assemblies and create a total headache for yourself so i probably had like eight headaches like that back in the day and that's what really added to how long it took so now what i do is i just i keep some of those components together until the very end and worry about them um sort of as their own part okay um of the job And, yeah, other than that, you know, yeah, so that was right up until about 2020 where things were just humming along. We went to a few shows that Wayne had put on in Melbourne. They were really great for me. Yeah, he asked if I'd do some talks sort of like this about my time in the pinball restoration world. And that was really good. And then sort of that was around Christmas time. And then 2020 COVID hit. That is really about 2020 is when the new cabinets are started to take them a bit more seriously. For example, I no longer required the person's game to get started on lining up their restoration project because it's hard to call it a restoration project when I'm starting with a brand new cabinet. I know. I'll probably get some flack for that. But basically, what I would do, say like someone inquired about, say, that creature from the Black Lagoon, and he's got the game in Sydney. I want to ship it and get it restored. I wasn't really ready to take the full game. I didn't need it. But what I could do is I could build the cabinet and get it kind of lined up, legs, leg protectors, like basically build and assemble the whole cabinet and get the job a long way down the road before I even need his game. Yeah, so the cabinets, I know we didn't really talk about that over those years, but in the busy years, I had started with a friend making some cabinets as part of – because some of the cabinets arrived so blown out that it was going to cost more in my time. To try and fix them than just make something. Yeah, and even though they looked great, there's no doubt they looked awesome, they still really were screwed and glued back together and clamped and epoxied. They still had that air of kind of polishing turds. And then some of those guys were saying, well, look, I'm stuck at home. I'm going a bit nuts. I've got nothing to do. Any chance, you know, I'm sorry that we couldn't get the full game done. I don't know how much is going on with my work, but any chance you'd sell me a new cabinet and I could do a cabinet swap. So I built a few cabinets and got them to the guys and they were really happy. And then people would see their game and go, oh, I'd like a new cabinet. I can do that. And so I was still doing the restoration work and using the cabinets as a foundation of the games I was building. and then started making these cabinets, I found that having a product, it's sold under a different business name because I didn't want to muddy up what I was trying to give the customers with the HRP stuff. So I should probably flesh that out a bit that the cabinet making stuff is under the Flippercraft pinball name and people go, why? What's it matter? It matters to the guys who get the full games done under the HRP name because it's not cheap. It's not cheap to do. And when they sell the game, they usually promote that because it does, over the years, it adds a bit of value. It's got some weight in the industry, which I'm so proud of. I'm so grateful. You should be. I'm really grateful as well to the guys that have got them done. And I should say that because there's probably guys on this podcast who will listen who have got them done, who are getting them done, who have maybe waited way too long back in the day and have since come back and we've done more work together or whatever. I'm so grateful. Yeah, I really am. And also, too, to get the cabinets licensed. So they're a fully licensed product with Planetary Pinball in America. and, you know, to get them licensed is quite, it's an effort. You know, it took quite a lot of effort to get that done. Yeah. But I really felt like... Well, as you said, you would have had to jump through a lot of hoops to prove that... The finishes, like you've got to get them, like if you open, and we might be able to quickly do that, I don't know how much time you've got to yab it on for way too long, but, you know, to open one out of the box... Yeah. So it has to look, even if the title is different, they all should look in the realms of all the same. It has to look like a consistently made quality product. And with pinball, there's so many disciplines to it that it requires. And I don't have all of the hats, but I've got some of the hats, mainly on the mechanical side and the aesthetic side of them. So the painting and the fabrication is good to go. So I can definitely make the cabinets. And, you know, I still wrangle my dad to come and help me machine. So the cabinets are predominantly CNC machined.
    52:42
    But to ensure that the quality is maintained with the licensing in mind and everything, they do have to have certain things. like they should have the lock miter joins on the corners like the old games do because people tilt them, right? And it would be so easy for me just to machine a different join that you can literally just IKEA the whole thing to screw and glue and you could actually arguably sell a flat pack cabinet. But the strength really is in that join. I mean, it's not coming apart once it's clued and clamped And that was one of those prerequisite things that to ensure that the quality is maintained, you had to have this sort of stuff done and it had to be repeatedly done. So I've been really fortunate that the cabinet's come about through a pretty shitty time for everyone. And yeah, I've still got the restoration work coming through as well. So it's been like, it's a lot at the moment, but I'm, you know. So, like I said, it seems well-balanced. And you said the cabinets are going overseas as well. Yeah. Not just Australia. There are people that are asking for them. It really blows me away. So, I had some of these U.S. guys, like we talked about with the NBA Fastbreak stuff, they're scratch-building game. You can get a cabinet in the USA, but it's not a turnkey cabinet. So you can buy the cabinet, but it's not trimmed and finished. It's not finished, yeah. It's not painted.
    54:17
    It's just wood, basically. It's just a wooden box. And if you don't really have much experience with taking a timber box and turning it into what you want, it can be... Daunting. It can be actually harder than starting with the old one because the old one's kind of already sealed. Yeah. You know, you can put some filler in the corners. It's already got some paint on it. So the timber's not as porous. It's not as... You don't have to fight it as much. Turns out that the Flippercraft stuff, that's all I was really interested in offering to people, was just a fully decaled, trimmed, so when I say trimmed, I mean earth braid staples, T-nuts installed, speaker, you know, the 632 threads for the speakers. I kind of thought, well, anything that's, if you had to run to Bunnings and buy a stapler and buy a compressor to staple something, it's like a pain in the ass. Yeah. Could I just take that frustration away from people and give them something with a socket set and a quarter inch on their drill? You can probably use one of these cabinets to actually enjoy the process of swapping over your game. So the new cabinets, the website is pretty primitive. It's really kind of like a placeholder. and I kind of always expected that to be the case because, I mean, you can just go on there and see that the agreement with Planetary, the cabinets retail for $22.50 AU. Yep. We can make you a stencil cabinet as well, fully painted using the traditional approach, which is like actual sort of hung steel stencils. It's a product that I actually really am proud of.
    56:00
    Yeah, so they go in a cardboard box for the domestic ones. they can just sort of stay in the box. And for the US or export ones, they go in a timber crate. And because they get forklifted and moved around. Yeah, you've got to be a lot more careful. Yep. So it's pretty exciting. I can't believe that something that gets made in Geelong ends up as part of someone's game overseas. It's pretty, I don't know, it's pretty cool to me. Definitely. And I love that. And, you know, they've also got the warning label on the back screen printed too, I should say. That was a really big thing of people wanted that they're perfectly aligned. If there's a little blemish on it, bring it back. Yeah, so I'm kind of finding my feet with that. And that's why when you arrive, it's like, yeah, I haven't really heard too much about the cabinet making side of things. And that was by design. We've sort of talked about that. I didn't want to do what I did in the early days of the restorations and take orders that I couldn't get out the door. So on the whole, things are very, very fortunate. And yeah, going through those, yeah, I probably should say, I hope that what I said about the early years didn't sound all negative because it was incredible. It was a huge learning curve, but it really was such an amazing journey. And it's fun to share. Next year, they're doing like a, you probably know this more than me, but they're doing like an Australian pinball expo in Adelaide. I'm going to go to that. I really want to sort of get out and show people some of the modern,
    57:38
    I call them the modern iteration of the restorations and also the new cabinets and have a chat to the guys that I may not have caught up with for a while. And, yeah, there's some really cool stuff going on. I feel like the hobby is really healthy at the moment. There's a lot going on and it's an exciting time. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, there's lots of new parts, and there's lots of guys like yourself doing the podcasting, and it's a great platform for me because I'm probably a bit of a hermit with these things. And to open the door and show you – no, to show someone who doesn't really have a horse in the race here what gets done is really cool because, like, you know, a lot of the guys that come here are guys that have jobs here. And it's – yeah, that's really important, but it's nice to just show someone what I've been doing all these years. Yeah, I've rambled.
    58:27
    I did ramble. I don't know if there's been rambling. There might have been. There's a lot in there. There's a lot. Probably a lot in my head of like I wanted to explain a lot to you. It's a great story to hear, to be honest, for the first time. So hopefully when people listen to this, they're as intrigued and entrenched in the story and the history behind, you know, HRP as what I have been. Thanks. That really means a lot. 100%. I've got a long way to go. You know, like I've, like you said, I've maybe put the clutch in a bit and, you know, this last few years in dad mode, but, you know, I'm going to be 40 next year. I'm going to, I'm going to keep pushing on these. And, you know, I've got a lot of notches left on the belt in terms of what I can take the games to. Yeah, well, like I said, having a walk around and looking at what, what you've done with the space and the work that you've done, especially over the years. I mean, I remember seeing your work, like you said, around, it must have been 2010 sort of year or two through that. Comparable to now, I mean, it is chalk and cheese. It is. It definitely is. Yeah. And I mean. You can see the growth that you've had. Thanks.
    59:35
    Well, honestly, as an artist, I guess, because that's what you're doing, you know. Yeah. That's really nice of you to say. You're working your art into this. So I'm really happy and I'm looking forward to the next iteration because I'm definitely not going anywhere with the restoration work and I want to keep adding to the cabinet library because in the early days, if you didn't have a suitable cabinet, you kind of – you're really stuck. It's funny. I probably, like I said, with the painting,
    60:07
    like the cabinets in a certain way, it's like, why do you do it like that, Tim? I was like, I don't know. I don't really have an answer. The coin box, wasn't it? Yeah, the coin box. Because you bought the coin box. I can mention his name, Jeff. Pinball Perfection once. I was at Nino's and we were talking. I think I dropped off something and he goes, look, let me just ask you, what's with painting inside where the coin door is? Like just the front, you know, where the cross member is. Why do you paint in front there? And I just sort of scratched my head. I go, I've got no idea why I do. I just did it once and it's just stuck. And then, you know, when you come to, you're like, why don't you clear the base? I'm like, hey, hey, I don't know, but you're asking me all these technical questions. I thought that was technical. No, it's not. It's not. It's like, yeah, some of the things I just don't know why I do them, but it's just turned into my style of restoration and everyone's got their own style. Yeah, 100%. So when, yeah, when you do like a black edition of a game, the Judge Dredd, there's some really nice Judge Dredds that get built with the black or the lethal weapons that get done with the black artwork. And I, there's definitely a place for all of that. Yeah, the chrome T2s as well. Chrome T2s. Yep. Yeah, they're definitely a popular one. I still love the – I try and do them probably more like the – keeping in mind that, you know, I suppose that's where the hot-rodded pins thing comes from was the Boyd Coddington stuff where they're keeping some of the parts that make the cars elegant. So I'll try and keep some of those things, and then I'll kind of like try and – you know, like on a getaway, I'll probably typically never do the trim in red. Yep. And that's not to say it's bad, but for me, my style is I try and almost hide the trim. So I'll do like, I'll try and like, you know, do gloss black trim so it blends in with the cabinet art rather than try and bring the eye to the trim. That's just my style. It's kind of like that hot rodding thing of like smoothing it up. You should speak to Stern about their 50th Jaws. I saw it. Fuck me, that's awful. That's wild. I saw someone put blue trim as a show.
    62:10
    Yeah, yeah. Like, this is what it should have been done. Should have been, yeah. I was like, that's much better. So that does relate to what you're saying about the high speed. Sometimes it can be like, damn. Yeah, you don't want to draw your eye to the trim. You want to draw your eye into the game, obviously. Yeah, because the trim really does frame the play field. Yeah. It can be too much because you can't, it doesn't matter how many LEDs you put on the play field, you can't sometimes get it brighter than some of that trim. Yeah. So I'll always try and blend it in. There's a lot of cool stuff, and I'm looking forward to getting back and showing people some stuff online again and posting a bit more, like not so much just the finished jobs, because back in the day, I used to post a lot about daily what I was working on and that, and that was really fun.
    62:52
    And so I'd like to bring that back in as I have a bit more time to answer some questions, because that is one thing that's really hard, There's like your post, you know, got cabinet and filler or something or guide coated a cabinet. How does the guide coat work? And if you don't answer someone, they just think you're an asshole. And I don't want to be an asshole. I intend to tell you. It's just that if I don't have the time, it can be a lot. And then you end up letting someone down inadvertently. So I'm much more aware of that these days. I will get back to posting and showing what we're doing kind of day to day. and yeah it's good fun yeah I look forward to seeing them well thanks man I appreciate the chat this has been really nice I've enjoyed the trip thank you well it was great man it's nice to show you around and yeah it's been good gotta get lunch now yeah I know hopefully Eric's not cracked it with you yeah he might have gone fuck yeah it's dinner time don't worry about it shit I'll have to message him and say it's totally my fault I told my life story yeah I'll let him know don't worry Just letting you know. No, it's been good, Chad, man. Like I said, I've appreciated it, and it's been fun. Thank you so much. We'll go and unbox some of these cabinets. Let's do that really quickly. Perfect. I'll get the trolley. I'll bring one right out here. Done. So we can do it in the light.
    64:11
    Okay. So hopefully you guys enjoyed that. As I said, great time to catch up with Tim. Had a ball. So just a shout-out to Eric. After catching up with Tim, the idea was that I was going to get there by 11, leave by sort of 12, 12.30, catch up, have a feed with him, have a few games and then sort of turn around and get home. I mean, Tim and I were chatting. I didn't get away till about 3.30. So thank you, Eric, for hanging around and putting up with me in my lateness, mate. But it was awesome to catch up and see you. I know you don't listen to this because you don't listen to podcasts, apparently.
    64:52
    Not even one of your mates, but whatever. That's fine. But it was fun, so thank you, mate. Got to play a little bit of his collection, which is always nice, to be honest. I played a bit of Aerosmith, and that was fun. And then just headed back home. I didn't get home until sort of 10.30, so it was pretty late in the end, but it was good fun. So that was what we did there with Tim. It was nice.
    65:19
    Now, I just wanted to go back. Last month, if you guys remember, we had just an opinion piece or just our thoughts on the Melbourne Expo and what's been going online between them and Wayne from Mr. Pinball. Wayne, to his credit, reached out to us. We obviously put the feelers out anyway, but he got back to us, was happy to have a bit of a chat about everything. so I'm just going to go through the discussion we had and without Matt here it's hard to sort of have some bounce off so I'm just going to read through it you guys can make your minds up as to you know which sort of maybe not side of the fence you sit on but you know what you think might be legitimate and not from either party and see how he goes Look, when we spoke on the phone, I mean, he just launched straight into it. He basically said he was never running the Melbourne Pinball Expo.
    66:25
    What he did, so there was an event that we spoke about last time. There was an event that he put up on his Facebook business page that had wrong information Look he said he did that while he was at the expo he was trying to use some sort of at symbol to tag the the melbourne pinball expo something went wrong and it started an event apparently um put up the wrong date and time so he he was um a bit apologetic about that i think he he spoke to um george at the time um uh but yeah that was that was the reasoning behind sort of that event creating accidentally. He did make mention that he's not turning up this year because cost-wise it just wasn't worth his while. The output of his effort to get machines there and to have staff there or repairs or whatever he might have been doing there just wasn't economically worth his while. He only sold a couple of machines from what he said.
    67:35
    So he said it was nothing against George or the show, but just economically wasn't worth his while. He did say later on in the conversation that he did offer to put machines into the show. So I don't know if that kind of contradicts what he said because you've still got to get the machines there, maybe or maybe not. I mean, obviously no one's going to be there, but he did offer to obviously just put the machines in there, so I don't know if that was worthwhile for Melbourne Pinball or anything. Then there was a little bit of issue with Alice in Wonderland and the Pinball Brothers distribution that happened between the grey imports and that sort of side of things.
    68:22
    Look, the discussion he had with me specifically was when it came to Alice that Pimble Brothers, I believe, with the tariffs that were introduced, and I hope I'm getting this story right, it was a bit confusing to understand exactly what he was saying, but my understanding of it is that with the tariffs that came in through Canada and the USA now on these sort of purchases that have occurred, that people that had put deposits down throughout the US and Canada had cancelled their deposits or had a change of mind, switched them to another machine, whatever it might have been. And so the distros over there were being left sort of holding a baby. So from what he said, they reached out, so Pimble Brothers reached out to Wayne and asked him if he could help out and take any of these purchases and on-sell them here through Australia, which he said he's happy to do. And I think he took about a half a dozen or so of those and then sold them through his channels. Now, I can't remember if he said he sold them through his channels or he gave them to somebody else to sell, but I somehow remember him advertising Alice. So, again, there was a little bit of unsureness or a change of story that may have happened there. I can't be 100% sure, so I don't know which way that sort of swung.
    70:02
    With regards then what happened with a bit of to and fro between him, Melbourne Pinball Expo, and Acme Pinball, which is Lucas, I did just say to him at the time, I said, look, you could have just put that story up on your page and be done with everything. There was no need to start name-calling and becoming a little bit vindictive and a little bit silly about the whole situation. And I'll be honest, I'm glad I said something to him. I hope it just sort of dropped a little bit of a penny for him. I've noticed since that there's been a pullback on his page with stuff like that, so maybe it has worked. I'm certainly not sitting here taking credit for it, but I'm glad someone said something to him finally because it does look like there's been a little bit of a pullback. Now, I mean, he did say that, you know, well, there's only 4,200 people on his page or however many on his page, and 98.5% of those people don't give a shit. But that's not the point of it, really, is it? That, you know, it could have stopped any sort of this type of bickering that was going on. So that was about that, basically. I also then just spoke to him about his open day and just questioned why he needed to do that.
    71:25
    His reasoning was that in America that when you have the Pimble Expo or whatever goes on in America, the big expos, that other stores or distribution sellers, people that are large scale in that regards that are in the pinball industry, they also have open days to take advantage of people perhaps making a day or a weekend out of the situation, out of the expo. Look, I can see that happening in America because of this, in my opinion, because of the scale of the place, as opposed to Australia, as I said to him, as opposed to Australia, which is pretty tight-knit, pretty small. You know, he's doing it specifically in Melbourne. His reasoning was that he's had customers call him up, asking him why he's not at the expo and can I come and visit you? Now, he probably could have just said, yes, come down, as opposed to throwing this big open day and having his machines there, which apparently are going to be at the Melbourne Pinball Expo anyway, or there was the option to have them at the Melbourne Pinball Expo.
    72:39
    So I'm not sure what machines may or may not have been there. But, you know, he was like, I was getting phone calls. People wanted to come down and see, you know, the buses that were there to take people backwards and forwards, you know, once they finished with the expo and all that sort of stuff. So I just, again, I just sort of questioned him and was like, yeah, but, you know, I think the point is, is that, you know, that day, obviously taking people away from the expo, you know, you're taking away revenue from Matthew Flinder's hotel, which is where it's at. which means drinks, food, if there's pokies there or whatever there might be, there's an opportunity to sort of push more revenue into that hotel which means it would show Matthew Flinders that this is a successful event and it's worthwhile doing it again. Maybe then in the coming years, donate the reception hall or whatever the place is to George for either lower cost or free cost. And then it becomes a much bigger and better place for George. And then maybe if he decides, so he has the opportunity then to look at charities and all of that sort of thing to support. So I just think having that open day was uncalled for. One interesting point that I hope Wayne doesn't mind me bringing up, I, again, I just sort of had a chat to him about was he, he mentioned many, many years ago that he had, you know, an open day once before at his factory. And one of his competitors turned up and plonked pinball machines in the factory next door and started selling them off the back of his open day. And he was pretty pissed off about that. My point was, you know how it feels, why do it to somebody else? I feel like that was just an important discussion again, where someone was able to say, hey, you know, do unto others as you would like them to do unto you sort of thing without trying to sound a bit biblical. But I did actually say those words to him. I literally said, you know, that hurt you and you were pissed off about that. You know, you knew how it felt, but yet you're going ahead and doing that to George. And I just thought that was unfair for the Melbourne Pinball Expo guys that that should happen. so that's sort of that in a bit of a nutshell he mentioned a few other things again you know just talking about sort of the predator license and look he's comfortable with George having it doesn't have an issue with that he stated he hasn't sold any at this stage because everyone's holding off because of the licensing and that sort of stuff so that's a bit interesting but otherwise that's sort of his take on the Pinball Expo stuff. As I said, certainly I felt that recently the online posting has sort of resorted back to just promotion of certain things and that's good and hopefully now we move on, as will we. So the next is our usual segment, Pinball Price Watch. so basically in the industry i still feel like prices are coming down and again without maddie here it's a bit weird to do this alone um but what i've noticed recently is the machines online that are still quite cheap. You know, we had a big Lebowski at $16,500. I mean, they retail at, I think originally they were $21,000 or $22,000. I think Lucas is advertising them at around $19,000. At the moment, it's Acme Pinball if you want them. You know, we had a John Wick LE at $18,500. We had a Munsters LE at $11,500, which I think is certainly cheap, almost could be best buy of the month. Not a hugely popular title, granted, but still for an LE at $11.50 is a pretty decent price. We had an Avengers Premium now at $11.90. So a lot of these more recent titles still seem to be coming down in price.
    77:24
    There was a Rocky and Bullwinkle as well for $55. you know usually they were seven and a half eight and a half i'm pretty sure a few years back and we had more godzilla's premiums again more godzilla's i tell you somebody needs to write in and explain to me why these godzilla's are selling pimble was wide at hotmail.com why these god godzilla premiums are always coming up for sale they always seem to be the first on the chopping block for those that have a few in their lineup. So I'd be very interested to hear what members think or listeners think, I should say. So that's still certainly happening. I saw, even recently off the top of my head, I saw an Aerosmith Pro that just came out. That was just under $9,000, which is a pretty good price. there was Stranger Things Pro that was $11,000 still sitting for a little bit so maybe just I'm sure there's negotiation there so there's those sorts of things I mean there was a Deadpool Premium as well just trying to think off the top of my head I think that was around $13 13.5 which is now sold uh that was only a couple days ago so that didn't last very long you know so that that's amazing and when when you consider when i do a quick search on the page and i scroll from the two days ago the deadpool premium at 13.5 16th of march 2023 deadpool premium 19.9 so almost 20 000 and that sold you know that that was marked as sold so that's i mean that just goes to show where the market is and even recently you know chris warren well not recently 13th of august as well sold for 17.4 so that was 2023 as well so you know they're certainly still coming down the pricing is definitely coming down so still if you're after certain titles if they're well priced like that you know premiums now look to be hovering anywhere between that 11 and a half to 12 to 13 obviously the more popular ones are higher like your dead pool premiums um godzilla is still around that 12 and a half 13 mark as well um so they're they're still hovering around that, but we're still certainly seeing a good correction in the marketplace at the moment.
    80:12
    Best buy for the month? I had, and I think it is the best buy. I mean, it's not a cheap, oh, wow, kind of one that we've had recently, but best buy for me at the moment was a high-speed two for $4,900.
    80:32
    It was based out of Melbourne, only lasted, I mean, I saw it. I was very, very tempted because most of them would be around six and a half-ish in recent times. For a relatively popular model like that to come down to $4,900 is pretty good. You know, that's getting back to really good pricing for that sort of 90s Bally Williams type era. You know, as I said, the Rocky and Bullwinkle at $55,000 as well. So a few things are starting to come down a little bit. But yeah, there was nothing that really stood out and sort of smacked me in the face with a best buy, so I'm giving it to the high speed tour at 4.9. The what the fuck. Now, there's one what the fuck, a bit of tongue in cheek, but there's a what the fuck because there were t-shirts on the page at $39, pinball t-shirts that looked fucking awful. I'm sorry to the owner of those who's trying to promote them but you've got to do a better job than just trying to stitch images off IPDB that are pixelated and stick them onto t-shirts and try and sell them mate like put some effort into it make make them look good um you know there's you know netherworld have done some awesome t-shirts hopefully we're going to have some come into the pinball expo that I think are pretty cool and we've done them in the past but we've had artists do them so i don't know that was a bit weird um there was a little shout out to a t2 on facebook marketplace he he added it twenty three thousand dollars as a one of a kind um now to his i don't know if it's his credit i don't know well it's twenty twenty three $29,999, so $24,000 for a T2.
    82:23
    When I saw it, it actually had that crossed out and is down to $14,500. It's still pretty high. You know, the weird thing is he's trying to promote it as literally one of a kind, which is just, you know, and it's 8.5 out of 10. Color DMD, which is okay, and it's got a custom topper, which is okay. But otherwise, it's pretty standard. You know, so 14 and a half now was 24. So you get a little bit of a shout out for a what the fuck dude at 24.
    82:58
    But I think I award the what the fuck to a Guns N' Roses Data East at 19.5. I mean, that's just, we're past those prices now. And there's no topper with it, so we're done, mate. Like, that's not right. I mean, I could see them around 13 or 12 and then being negotiated. I think the most recent one was probably around about a nine and a half or something like that. So I think you win the what the fuck for the pinball of the month. That's a Guns N' Roses at 19.5. Okay.
    83:40
    So just quickly, I'm just going to touch on a little bit of industry news, a bit of rumour, just to finish up. Hopefully you guys have enjoyed it. Flying solo, as I said, is very weird, but certainly send me an email if you want. Tell me how bad I was and how much we all miss Matt. Send him some love.
    84:00
    pinballozwide at hotmail.com So the industry news, we obviously had the jaws of the 50th. I won't touch on it much.
    84:08
    Okay, great. The trim is the dumb thing. red trim should have been blue i think i saw someone do a mock-up on one of the pages or um i think it was a pinball enthusiast or something like that blue trim looked really nice you know much better but i mean it's still gameplay it's a premium yeah it's okay the the thing that happened today actually so i'm i'm recording this uh on the wednesday 27th the thing that happened today was Star Wars has just been sneak previewed by Stern, apparently a John Borg machine. I don't know what they're doing. This is just ridiculous. We've had enough Star Wars machines. We just don't need any more that we've already got. And, I mean, I get John Borg, you know, like he's pretty decent, clearly. You know, that's not being corny, but I'm just not sure we need to have another Star Wars machine. I mean, if you go on to IPDB, you had a Data East Star Wars in the 92, 1992. Obviously, you've recently had the Star Wars, but you had the comic art as well as the home original sort of premium pro. you also had the home edition you had a mandalorian we've had an empire strikes back from hanken we've had the star wars trilogy from sega um you know like i think i think we've we've just done them we just don't need to do any more so yeah okay be interesting to see what it's like no interest from me though so that's that's a bit weird there is apparently as well a walking dead Remastered coming up, which again is another weird sort of iteration to do. I mean, I love the game, don't get me wrong. I think it's a great game, plays well, great rules by one Lyman Sheets. But I just don't know if they need to redo it. I think the hype's possibly gone.
    86:18
    You know, when it comes to the want for that machine, I don't know if there is that. I might be wrong. I don't know. But I'd be interested to see if there's still anything out there that needs that sort of remake. You know, I think Ghostbusters is probably what people would have preferred, but just with the slight adjustments with maybe flipper gaps and, you know, the outlanes and that sort of stuff. But otherwise, picking Walking Dead, not sure.
    86:47
    Not sure. All right. Well, that's it for this month, guys. I've been pretty short, sharp and sweet, hopefully. Hopefully you've enjoyed it. Hopefully you enjoyed the interview with Tim at Hot Rodded. I certainly had a blast going down there and do look forward to seeing him again, hopefully. I know it's a bit of a long hike, but he's coming to Melbourne Pinball Expo, so I'll get a chance to have a bit of a chat to him there, which will be nice. Otherwise, thanks, everyone, for the listens. no real admin rant at this point which is good things things are running okay I do just quickly too I mean we've got subscribers that are subscribed to us please make sure you do I mean we seem to have three times the listens to what we do the subscribers so if you guys are listening to it three times each subscriber that's fantastic appreciate that but if you're listening to it not subscribing what are you doing just subscribe like follow do what you've got to do hopefully for episode eight we'll have the big bloke back and chatting away and it'll be um better than just listening to to me ramble on so thanks again everybody hope you enjoy the rest of the month and we will catch up with you soon cheers
    88:12
    We'll be right back. Thank you.