Hello, just to introduce myself, my name is Steven Smith from Australia and I'm here with my wife from the land down under. We've been collecting pinballs, I thought I'd just start with a bit of a history from myself so you kind of know where the information is coming from. We've been collectors for about 40 years as a collector, we've got 40 machines downstairs. The whole Hankin experience for me started with my Star Wars Empire Strikes Back, which is one of the pinballs that we've got on show. I bought that because I collected the rest of the Star Wars collection, so I've got all the different Star Wars machines over the time. I read an article, and the first of those was the Empire Strikes Back. I then read an article in Kinecast that was talking about the Star Wars collection, but they didn't mention the Empire Strikes Back. So I wrote to Colin and I said, Colin, you talk about the Star Wars collection, but you didn't talk about the Empire Strikes Back. And he said, well, I've never heard of it before. So I thought, OK, well, that's something new. So I wrote an article for Colin and Kinnick Hest, and that's how it started. But while I was doing that, I started researching Hankin machines, and I found that some of the material that was online was actually not particularly accurate. So we decided to do our own research. So what we did is we went basically all around Australia collecting pinball machines, collecting Hankin pinball machines and meeting other Hankin machine owners. Over the time, I've got a map there of Australia. How many people have been to Australia? Some most, yep. So that's just an example of how big Australia is. So that's overlaid the US. So for those that have never been to Australia, it is a very, very big country. The land size of the USA is only 1.2 larger, so it's actually not that much larger than Australia. When we collected the Hankin machines, we've got the five and literally we drove from Brisbane where we got the FJ, we got the next one from Sydney, one from Melbourne, one from Adelaide and one from Perth. The total distance between the Adelaide and that round trip was about 3,500 miles. So it was a fair distance to collect the machines and meet a lot of people while we were there. We also met David Hankin because I figured, well, if we're going to collect his machines, we might as well get to know the guy himself. So we've had quite a few meetings with David. He was going to be here today, but unfortunately he was ill, so he couldn't make it, which is unfortunate. Through the Kinecast article, Rob Burke rang me and said, hey, I'd love to have one of those in my show so he said okay and I said to Rob well why don't we have all five so that's what we did we bought all five to here and they're on show on free play if you want to play them we put out the word across Australia and all the people we met having hanky machines we haven't found anybody else that's got the full set so we've got our own set in our games room and then we bought a set here it's the first time the whole five has ever been on exhibition both here and in the world so they've never actually been on exhibition even in Australia as a full set and then USA gets the first time that they've ever been on show which is pretty impressive just a couple of things that's my wife that's when we met David David Hankin comes to a lot of our expos our shows in Australia so he's quite a an active member of the pinball community still after 50 odd years. Where it all started was his dad, so Alec Hankin started Hankin and Co. in 1955. He started operating amusement machines. Peter and David, the two brothers, they joined the company and in 1965 they opened up their first amusement centre called Orbit, which was near Sydney, so I have it on this side and the last one still survived in Perth until November 2016 so Peter and David were running amusement centers for 50 years and over time they just kept on opening up music centers across Australia in 1974 Alec passed away and then Peter and David continued the business which then turned into Hankin Pinball. Just a bit of history on the history of the Hankin Pinballs. In 1978, pre-78, David and Peter had pool tables, jukeboxes and pinballs in different pubs and clubs. As you all know the pinball industry was absolutely booming at that time. In Australia, Leisure and Allied, which was a company, had the monopoly and because there was no Australian distributor, there was no Australian manufacturer of pinballs, they got the pinballs into Australia tax free and quite cheap. David who ran amusement centres and had their pinballs in his amusement centres, he wanted to buy the pinballs so rather than giving all the profits back to Leisure and Allied he wanted to have them themselves. They wouldn't sell him pinballs because they had the monopoly and they had all the contracts so they just said no we're not going to sell you any of our pinballs. So David in 1978 decided well if I can't buy them I'll make So he was the first producer or manufacturer of pinballs in Australia. He used his own talent, he made his own boards, he's got his own boards made, his coils, his electrics, etc. So they were very unique. There was, obviously, there was looking at other pinball machines, so there is some similarities. In 19, between 1978 and 80, he made five titles with a production run of approximately 1,300, which I'll talk about the different machines shortly. But he made five, Orbit One, F.J. Holden, Dennis Lilly, Shark and Empire Strikes Back. In, as you all know, about 1980, 81, 82, Space Invaders and the other video games were introduced on the market, which absolutely wiped out the pinball market in Australia. So David stopped producing pinball machines He still in business today So we went to his factory in Newcastle where he still produces pool tables and jukeboxes and he still got operating in clubs and pubs So he's still very active. The pinball David Hankin side eventually went through a few iterations and was eventually sold to AMD, which is Amusement Machine Distributors, which is probably our largest distributor of pinball machines in Australia. We've got the main contract for Stern and very big in Australia. Okay, so the five machines. The first one was made in 1978 with a production run of about 200. It was called Orbit and Orbit One and it was named after the amusement centres that David and Peter had and a legacy from their father. So it's a space theme. It is down there to play. Yeah, that's about it. The next one that was released was FJ Holden. FJ Holden, if you haven't been to Australia or don't know much about Australia, FJ Holden was our national car. It was our first ever Australian-made manufactured car, and it was the most populous car ever made in Australia. the FJ Holden is extremely collectible either was only 200 made but also because FJ Holden Holden then survived until 2017 because I've actually got the last Holden made so Holden itself is quite the Holden car is very was our most popular car it still is and it was also extremely collectible the FJ Holden is an extremely extremely collectible car People that have got an FJ Holden car typically also want an FJ pinball. So the demand or the want for the pinball is double folded. Either you're a pinball collector that wants the hanking collection or you're a Holden collector that wants the pinball machine. So extremely difficult to get. A lot of fun to play. The next one came up it was called Howzat and that was named after to Dennis Lilly and for those anybody into cricket yeah couple of cricket Dennis Lilly in Australia cricket is one of our national game so we're not big in baseball we're not overly big in basketball but cricket is our game Dennis Lilly was probably our most famous bowler of all times and it was called how's that because when he used to get somebody out he goes how's that and then the breath would go yes he's out or no he's not so that's how the word how's that came from the way David made the pinball he was actually at his account at his accountant and Dennis Lilly walked out of the accountants office because the account was it was both David's client as well as Dennis Lilly's and he said to Dennis that Dennis as he walked past he said hey Dennis I'm David Hankin I make pinball machines geez I'd love to make a pinball called Howzat. What do you feel about it Dennis? And Dennis said, no fantastic, yeah make one. So Dennis Lillie helped with the design of his own pinball machine and the cost of that for David was a Howzat pinball for Dennis. A really good game to play was his first wide bodied pinball. A pinball released about 350. So so far we've only got 200, 200, 300 and The next one was Shark. Shark was also a wide-body machine. Really, really interesting and intricate artwork. So if you do see the machine in the pinball hall, have a close look at the artwork, both on the playfield and the back glass. Absolutely amazing. It was actually designed by a 19-year-old, the son of the bank manager. So the bank manager, not introduced in Dennis Lilly, but then the bank manager said to David, hey, my son who loves doing art would love to do the artwork on a pinball machine. So David said, yeah, come along. So the artwork was completely designed by a 19-year-old who not much experience, well, no experience with pinballs but a great artist. The reason why he did Shark was if you looked at the original map of Australia that I showed, all of the capital cities are completely surrounded by water. So the whole of Australia, basically everybody in Australia lives somewhere on the water or not too far from the water, and thus the sharks, because sharks are quite prevalent in Australia. We only get a couple of thousand deaths a year or something. I'm not exactly sure how many, but there's quite a few. But a really intricate pinball machine shark and great sound too. The last one that he made was obviously the most interesting and my favourite. it was Empire Strikes Back. Empire Strikes Back was released in 1980 with a production run of 350. It was the first ever licensed Star Wars pinball machine, which was not a well-known fact until recently when I started writing articles and telling everybody that it was. When I first wrote my article for Kinnecast, we got feedback from particularly people from from us saying well we don't believe that it was ever licensed and we think it was a bootleg machine well no it was licensed by lucas films who owned star wars and the way david got the license he was very good friends with the with the gotley people and the williams people and the stern he was he's a great mates with gary stern and they're all talking about geez wouldn't it be great to get a pinball star wars make a star wars pinball but they all thought that would be too expensive to get the license so they kind of never went down that path well what david did he just wrote to george lucas personally and said hey george my name's david hankin and i'd love to make a star wars pinball and george lucas wrote back and said yeah good idea and then when david inquired about the licensing fee um george lucas said oh no we won't have it like you can just have it because have it as long as i get one of the pinballs so the license for the star wars pinball was just a pinball machine there is on the back glass which you actually can see because it actually down the bottom on the back it's actually got um a license uh copyrighted to lucasfilms with permission to use with david hankin so it's actually written on the glass which is fantastic the good thing about glass is very bit like the the space invade uh space invaders where they get the circular effect of the light going around, the infinity effect, the great, and it makes Darth's head really glow red and looks absolutely fantastic. The artwork's great, the machine's great, it's great, great fun to play. On the brochure, there's also a picture of Mark Dick Hamill. So Mark Dick Hamill came over to Australia and actually helped with the final design, approved the final design. So it was a very, very Star Wars orientated machine. Absolutely fantastic. there's one up for auction. So there's one for auction on for Saturday night. So if any of you are interested in having your own Star Wars machine, it is up for auction. So it's in the auction in the main room at the moment, getting put back together. Just talking about the auction, so on each of those pinball machines, on each of those original, the five pinball machines, which you see downstairs. When I talked to David about bringing the machines over to the US and he was going to come, he really wanted to be involved with the whole thing. So what he did is, on all of the machines, he's got a plaque. We've put on plaques where he personally signed each machine with the limited edition number on the machines, which are great. The Star Wars that's up for auction, it comes with the limited signed plaque, comes with the full manual with all the schematics. I've put the pin cup, the pin mat, shooter rod, a topper, signed copy of the brochure framed as Hankin, a Hankin shirt, if you like the shirt, with him behind the back. The machine's got new glass-pounding coated eggs. When people think about Hankin, they think, oh, it's just an Australian machine. It's probably very hard to keep going. It's not. Mike from Homepin was good friends with David, so he actually now reproduces the boards and the coils and everything else. The plastics are all redone. We've got technicians in Australia that if you ever want them fixed, we've got people that can help and there's heaps of mods for them So what's come from a very simple machine in 1980? We've now really made a bit more exciting Are there any any questions? Yeah ...producing games that they were selling to other Australian operators as opposed to for their own use. No, what David did... David decided to take on the big boys and take on Allied Leisure, so all the pinballs that he was making were directly sold to the public back in 1978 and 1980. so he only kept a few for himself in his own amusement centers but other than that they're completely open for sale and like the possibly what happened rest the world when the pinball market crashed in the 80s and the 85s they'll literally being thrown out all but the orbit was it was trashed even the Empire was trashed there was a lot of for example the Empire I got a friend who's got an empire who then gave me 10 different boards set of sets of boards for the for the empire that just shows how many have been destroyed over the years so there's not many left no but david made him completely open to sale and he would have loved to keep producing them but it just uh wasn't the right time is he had a question the question i'll give you some context what month was empire strikes back released and the reason i ask is because space invaders was the spring of 1980 uh firepower i believe was uh early summer i might be wrong about the timing on that uh and it's got the six targets like firepower and then of course the movie I think was May of 1980 so depending on when it was released tell me about the timelines to get to release date it was released in late 1980 and there is a lot of similarities between Firepower, Space Invaders and Empire David was also great friends with the people that made those as well so when I asked David about design he said we just talked, we shared you know, the thoughts, we shared ideas, there was no animosity with David and yeah, they were all happy with the design and the similarities, there was no problem there. One thing was interesting though about all of the Hankin machines, in particular Empire, they weren't available for distributorship overseas. So to answer your question about, they were easily distributed across Australia, anybody wanted to buy one could buy one, but they were not for distribution overseas. So very, very few actually left Australia at the time. There's a few that have left since then obviously, but very few at the time. And I think possibly the reason that was some of the similarities between Empire and Firepower and Space Invaders. I think that we'll have our Australian one and you have yours. Yeah, does that answer the question? Yep. Yeah. um so where did you come up with the idea of creating the shark machine because i think that's i think that's a very very cool machine in my opinion the what sorry the shark oh the shark where he came up with the design was he wanted something to represent australia and shark is renowned across australia he then talked to the 19 year old guy the bank manager son and the bank manager son came up with the concept and the design and it was just out of his own head and it was absolutely fantastic you know that free thinking of a 19 year old whiz kid yeah yeah it was great looks great so probably a little different question but can you just talk briefly about the logistics of shipping five machines here and how much angst that causes you it It was absolutely terrible. So nobody, so I couldn't, a lot of people were import machines to Australia, not many export pinballs. Well, nobody really, actually. Everybody I rang said, well, we've never done one. We don't want to do it. No. So I finally found one of our largest Australian removalists company called Grace Removals, who does a lot of home, they remove whole homes and they've got all the contract for all the embassies. So I thought, American Embassy, you do it all the time? sure you can do it so they never moved on before so so like so basically I said if they can be ready by I think it was back in May mid mid mid May we could get them there in about six to twelve weeks great so we got got my on the day of packing there was me my wife my brother my sister their partners my mum and my dad all packing the machines to get them ready for grace to pick him up. I said to him, do you want them on pallets? No, no, no, no. So they turned up thinking they were just home stuff. And then they started picking up, they picked up the shark first and had to carry it 350 yards to the truck. And I said, what are you doing? So I'm going to put them on my trolley to get them in the truck. Anyway, I got in the truck, they're gone. Six weeks later, I rang Grace and I said, how are the machines going? Oh, they're still in Canberra. What are they doing in Canberra? I thought they'd be halfway to the US by now. No, they got bumped because we had an American embassy to do. They finally got to Sydney, finally got out of Australia. Then I got a phone call from Grace saying, oh, by the way, we need to double the price. I said, why? And they said, because we couldn't put the pinballs on top of each other, so we put them in their own container. So now you've got to pay double. So we paid double. Anyway, it took nearly four months to get here and it was so much stress because we knew there was timing to get them here and every day i'd be on the phone and then they get here and all expenses supposed to be paid and then i get a phone call from the american company saying oh now you need to pay more money oh why they said well you've got taxes that's fine i knew they were coming but because nobody knew they were coming they sat on a dock in cleveland for five days so therefore i'd pay five days docking fees to to customs yeah but it was an experience and a half and we've loved every minute of it and but never again never again so i'll never bring another set to the u.s just a quick question for you other than the empire game what's your current favorite game to play of those five well my my favorite game is another uh australian based game obviously made in the u.s by stone is acdc australian acdc in australia favorite band love it but i've got heaps of favorite machines and it really depends on what mood I'm in. So if I'm in a 1980s mood, I go and play some of those. And then if I'm in a rock and roll mood, I'll play the ACDC or Kiss or Mandalorian as part of the Star Wars collection. Out of the five, by a long way, Empire. Absolutely long, followed by The Shark, followed by How's That, then followed by FJ and then The Orbit. Probably in the same order that they'll produce because if you look at all five, as you go through the years, they just improve so dramatically. he learned a lot in two years. He never made a pinball before, so he learned a lot in the five years. So definitely Empire. One more, I think, have we got time? It ended up costing, the original quote was 1,000 Australian, 1,200 Australian, which is about 800 US per machine. by the time they got here it was three times that but I've learned since then so if anybody does want a machine from Australia we can now do it at a set price of about 1500 Australian which is about 1400 probably about 1400 US plus taxes yeah because I've learned how to do it now and that's not to accept crap from the removalists yeah yeah Rob yeah cosmic princess is another Australian game that was produced yet they're quite rare in Australia they didn't make that many of them and I know of two of that evolved for sale if you can rewind one yeah it does and I've got a it does yes and I've got a blank spot Yeah. Well, they've actually just brought out a Bathurst 1000 machine. There's a Ford one and a Holden one. It's Peter Brock. Yeah, so there's now a new Australian machine being made, a King of the Mountain, and it's all based on the Bathurst 1000. No, he'd probably be in there somewhere, but not... Yeah, that was perfect. Yep, got to go. Sorry, one more? Go ahead. You'd mentioned that many of the Empire games were destroyed over time. How many do you estimate are still in Australia? Well, I put out the field list to try to find out how many were out there, and I actually know of 12 that people have contacted me saying they've got one. I personally would say they'd probably be no more than at the absolute most 50 maybe 40 that'd be my guess what would you say from the Australian Pinball Museum's got one would you say they'd be about right about maybe 50 about 50 yeah somewhere about 40 50 left in the world yeah yeah that's it all good Thank you.