Hi, this is George for the Classic Pinball Podcast. This is Episode 5, Part 2 of Quicksilver. In this next segment, I try to make the case for Stern to make classic remakes. Dave and I then have a spirited discussion of the new Stern home edition of Star Wars. Papa sold out in one second. Yeah, there you go. No, I know. Papa is more. I think you're missing something. Yeah. you've got all the boards that have all been reproduced you've got cabinets that can be made fairly easily a play field is a play field is a play field quicksilver is a single level game a switch in an old style you know bottle your stern game is different than optos or you know again i'm not familiar with the underpinnings but you get what i'm saying it's it's 40 year old technology but it's easy to reproduce there's no mystery or magic people have already done it so when you say it would be hard to manufacture it's a line they put a board out they string the stuff you know they string the wiring harness through the board they connect all the mechs and off you go where's i don't get where the heart is especially for a company that does it well i think that it's more like it's not going to play like the original the i don't think you can really sweep stern the new stern drop targets right but i'm saying why can't you manufacture the old style drop target put your bushings in there make it so that it works like an old stern drop target and you sub that out to somebody and say i want to make a thousand of these drop targets and that's what you install the game instead of the newfangled drop target. What's the difference? That would be great if they did that, but they probably don't think that the mom and pop are over buying the stuff is going to notice the difference. Okay. And the people that do, I mean, this is years ago. I remember having Stern chime in at one point or people from Stern. And I was saying, why don't you guys make the old school? Oh, no one wants that stuff. And it wouldn't sell. A couple of you hardcore collectors would buy them, but no one knows what a Quicksilver is. they know what a mustang is they know what a movie title is but they don't know what a stargazer is it won't sell we know we know best and you know so and that's why they kind of went with okay we'll we'll play game we'll we'll play we'll play with you guys we'll make sea witch we'll put beatles a known thing on it and see how it goes and i guess it went pretty well um so now the thing is well let's put sea witch artwork on it and see what happens so it might be an experiment they might do. Let's see which version goes. I'm going to change gears and feed on your experiment thing. I know you're not familiar with this because you're not a crazy addict like I am with Twitch and all the podcasts, but on Thursday Stern released a new Star Wars. Yeah, I heard about it and to... I saw a picture. I didn't really get a close up of it. watched the feed. I saw all the commentary and everything else. No one liked it. No one hated it. I looked at it and I'm like, you guys are a bunch of idiots. Yeah, they are. This game played, they had Zach Sharp. Okay, you got Zach Sharp playing the game. You could make a turd look really good. Sure. But the game, I was excited. I'm, you know, look, I'm no stern fanboy. But I got to say, kudos. Good job. Great game. Everybody's bitching about the price. It's an experiment for them. They're trying to figure out the home market. They've already done this. You know, I know this, but everybody said, this game seems a lot better than some of the stuff they've released in the past. But they're at least – what they're trying to do – I guess this is where I'm going, Dave. They're trying to push the price point down and get it Joe casual to buy this thing. I don't think they can get the price point to the point where it's like a big screen TV and if the thing craps out, you throw it away and buy another one. But I give them a lot of credit because they're trying. but see they've already played this game before they've already tried this, didn't work for what do they want I think they've got a hit here I'm just going to say I don't know anything it looks like a fun game and it looks like they are going to sell some of these things if you're a Star Wars fan you're fine it's like the whole movie was in the game yeah I guess if you're going to do it with the theme I guess so you're going to get the star wars people pick a title that's the one i mean look there aren't very many people in this world who haven't seen the original star wars there are but there aren't many you missed a lot of the video clips i mean disney gave in my opinion disney gave a lot of leeway on that title here's the thing though they already made a star wars pin they have the exact same pin they made for like a grand more or whatever it is, you can get a nice robust, real pinball machine, not a home model for like $4,000 or $4,500. Who's going to do that? You can buy a real one. That's the problem. We'll see. I'm just throwing it out there. I got no skin in the game. You know that. I don't own a new game. I'm just saying, from afar, I think they're going to sell a few. I'll tell you, the people I talk to... I know collectors that buy new Stern games all the time and they say, why am I going to spend, I could buy a new game, same Star Wars game for, I don't know, a grand or whatever it is not much more And I can get a fully robust game with all the stuff and not little miniature ramps but real real ramps that they supposed to be and not the little miniature things that go on the shots game we say i just i just bring it up there because you were talking an experiment and here they are again you know trying they're trying to fill the market i just can't you know is it going to be the re you know are they going to retheme it like they did it you know with a supreme or a dominoes is that what they're going for with this so they got another platform to do it with maybe i don't know i'm just saying they're they're out there testing the waters they're trying to do something different but everybody craps on them for doing it and i just look at it and say it's pinball why are you crapping you folks don't remember the dark days man do you want me to take you back to the early 2000s you'd be crying for one of those well i don't know they Didn't they do Vacation Pinball or Vacation America, whatever it was? Someone did that game, and that was a home model. Well, no. That was Eric. Thunder Turds. I mean, yeah. There's tons of garbage games out there. I mean, but, you know, hey, I don't crap on anybody. They tried. They might not have succeeded, but they tried. Yeah, but the thing is, though, it's like you put your – I don't know. I don't know if they do any kind of research first. Will this sell? Do they kind of like, you know, get their Pew Research Center on it and say, hey, if we do this, are people going to buy this thing? I don't know. Or they're just going to throw the spaghetti in the refrigerator, see if it sticks. As I say, every time we have this kind of conversation, it's speculation. It's my thoughts. It's your thoughts. It's 555 other people on Pinside's thoughts. but you know I think the biggest frustration with collectors and people with this whole what they did just now with the Star Wars thing they're all thinking probably your effort could be better spent somewhere else your effort could be better you know instead of that it could have been a better thing make the latest another new game you know some other game and still sell it to a home market but have a real game why not put a real game in Costco they're they're attempting to get the price like i said i don't know i don't know anything but the price point i'll look at it and say if you can get a pinball sub 3k but it's not it's not three no i know it's not it's like it's i think it's around four grand discounted but whatever my point is they're attempting to push the price point down think about it it's a star wars so you're paying you know you're paying up to have that theme on slapped on the game remove the theme off the game and put whatever you know put whatever theme i came up with one the other day disco dinosaurs i mean they're coming out with you know jurassic world or whatever why pay the piper when you can come out with your own game and do all the same stuff a quick exchange regarding chris hutchins i don't know if i said this to you the last time but he was saying that 75 of the playfields that he gets from his um customer base need to be touched up painted, cleared in some way, shape, or form. It is very rare that a playfield comes in that meets his standards. You mean like a new playfield? A brand new playfield, like a Mirco or, I mean, and I don't know if you saw that thread, people were complaining about chipping on the playfield. On Mercos? Yeah. Dave, I really you know i took it to heart when somebody said oh you know you guys need to be a little bit more researched well look i did the dive i don't listen don't listen to the haters george i'm not listening to the haters i'm just like don't get my back up i'm gonna go deep and tell you everything you ever wanted and not wanted to know about quicksilver life's too short to listen again Did you know that Mercury Outboard has the brand name Quicksilver? Did you know that you can buy certain apparel branded in 1959 called Quicksilver? What else do you want to know? Take that, Gammas. There you go. Other than you and PJ, do you know anybody else who owns a Quicksilver? No. No, okay. Wow. No, that's about it. I think, well, I did sell a couple to... No, no, no, no. I don't mean that. I mean, you know, somebody you've met, not somebody you've sold to, you know, met through wherever. Yeah. Wow. That's okay. That kind of tells you how rare the game is. Yeah. Actually, a previous acquaintance has one. Okay. Okay. And then here's the other, you know, I said 62 pinsiders own it. I made a mistake in not fully explaining the antique dealer theory that collectible numbers fall in half every 10 years. The example I used for Quicksilver was there were 1,200 machines and I brought it down to 150, but I only failed to go to 30 years. So follow me. If you start with 1200. After 10 years, there would be 600. After 20 years, there would be 300. After 30 years, there would be 150. But after 40 years, which is how old this game will be, that's 75 units. So the pin side number is probably pretty accurate. Obviously, not everybody subscribes to it or pays attention to it, but I think it at least gives us an idea of how many games might still exist. But there are five on public location, if you can believe that. Wow, really? And I'm going to give them all mentions because they deserve it. And I don't know how many of these are open on a regular basis, but the Museum of Pinball in Banning, California pinball PA in Hopewell Township Pennsylvania vintage flipper world in Brighton Minnesota I think Or Michigan What's that, Mike? Michigan? Michigan, yeah. Papa. Okay, we know where that is. Do you say Carnegie or Carnegie? Carnegie. Carnegie Hall. If you're from Pittsburgh, I think they say Carnegie. Right. anyway the pinball parlor in Ramsgate Kent Robert Englunds they have one there too yeah that's it that was my and our friends up in Rochester New York at the bar do not have one and you know who that is they do not have one they own one but they do not have one at the bar okay yeah that's about it for Quicksilver I think I mean you can go down minutia of what separates it from a ballet but all the other sterns are the same way I can address that in a different stern title I did think of one other thing I don't know and you probably don't follow it um Chris the rest Hutchins yeah I like that nice George good research no but i'm guessing you didn't see that and i was kind of surprised when he said that i'm like wow okay that just shows you how particular he is in this segment dave talks about how pinball companies got around licensing art from those who should be paid so back in the day williams tried this too they made a boodles pin which looked just like the but it's the boodles so they kind of got around things that way they didn't have any kind of licensing same kind of thing that bally did in uh the mid 70s with eight ball they have fonzie and piggy tuscadero on there but they aren't it isn't fonzie and it's not piggy tuscadero but it really is that's something going around is you're not paying disney for the star wars brand and whatever that entails i was talking about the analytics of our podcast do you realize that the number one state still is Virginia. Over every other state, it's Virginia. We're our number one. All right, Virginia. This is even crazier. Ashburn, Virginia. 85% of our listeners come from that particular town. So who's in Ashburn, Virginia? I have no idea. I don't know where it is, but I thought that was funny. And then, you know, the other piece, I was teasing it the last time. We are international. We have listeners in Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Belgium. All right. We're worldwide. Yeah, no, we're doing much better than I ever thought. Thank you for all those who have listened to us. I very much appreciate it. You know what these people all have in common? I'm sorry? We know what these people all have in common, especially that, what's the name of the town in Virginia? Ashburn. Especially Ashburn. They all have really good taste. They do. It's fun looking at the analytics and seeing where everybody's coming from. But it's good. Numbers are good. I'd even say that. It'll be interesting to see how many people want to hear about Quicksilver. I'm excited. Yeah, I think people are going to enjoy this one, the Quicksilver episode, because it's a game that's gone bonkers with popularity over the years. People have discovered it. I knew what it was years ago, and a lot of people didn't, but I said this game will catch on eventually. Once people get their hands on it and start playing it, they're going to say I want one of these. Well, I think we're going to cause a lot of people consternation when they're like, oh, that's a great game, and then, oh, geez. I'm never going to ever find one of these, and if I do, it's going to cost me a lot of money. But hey, price you pay. Price you pay. Yeah, a mission to get in the game. I know Dave for almost 20 years, and I never heard this story. Sit back and listen for the next eight minutes. This is one of the best pinball stories you'll ever hear. All right, so for Quicksilver, it was one of the first games I bought years ago, in the 90s somewhere, early 90s. and I was looking around at that time for I think I had told some of the story before for um because my friend Stu said oh you can get these games it's oh good I can get these older games again great I looked around and said oh no you need to get the the latest the the pinball or the Adam Sandler what I was like no no so go ahead how much did you pay I I don't know I went out there on rec games pinball or somewhere maybe Mr. Pinball classifieds and this guy out I think he's in Ohio. He had a Quicksilver and he had a Dragon Fist. He goes, oh, I'm thinking I'm going to, you know, I have both of them for sale, but I really want to keep the Dragon Fist and I'll sell the Quicksilver. And I go, oh, you want to sell the Quicksilver? Okay, sure. How much? Well, let's see. Would $170 be too much? He said, no, that's just fine. And it was working and it was pristine. The play field was perfect. Back glass, perfect. Cabinet, perfect. And it worked for $170 Quicksilver. How's that? Oh, here. This feeds into the Marco Rosignoli book I was looking at earlier today, talking about Quicksilver. Stern's Quicksilver, 1980. A pinball with unusual electronic bumper sounds. One of my favorite games from this company. $325 to $425. The book was written in 2000. Oh, yeah. I remember that. Yeah, find one. but my point is you know he got a price point in there it just we can have our price show and one day and now we can compare how much we paid for all our machines People hair is going to stand up I know someone who bought a roached out one Non roached out one Horrible. It would have been like a boat anchor in that time frame years ago. He paid three grand for it. And they've restored ones anywhere from five to eight, nine these days for a nice one. They're going for new stern pricing. It's the pricing of New Sterns. Good for those who own it. Anything else? I have one more story about a Quicksilver. So a couple years back, I think in 2004, 2005, I had my Quicksilver up in my lineup with some classic ballets around it. I had a friend, Bill, from Texas. People might know him here. Bill Morrison, famous guy from Texas. Great Stern collection he has as well and some ballets too. Abbott collector and he does best in show out there for the Texas Pinball Festival. And I had him over along with some other friends of mine over here. Again, PJ was here. And we're all, it's a really hot day, kind of like now in July, around the same time. It was really hot and we were playing the games and I can tell when games get played a lot and it gets hot, the action kind of slows down because the coils heat up and it's not as crispy. You don't really get as much of a crisp feel and the pop bumpers and the flippers because everything is heated up. I don't think I had – I probably didn't have AC in my house at that time. Back then, I forget. So I said, I got a great idea, guys. You know what? Why don't we all take a break? I'm going to take some free spray upside down and spray it inside each one of the cabinets. And upside down free spray, people used to freeze mylar and take it off playfields. And what I did is I basically put it inside the cabinets. to make a nice shot through the coin door to the coin door made nice i put my hand there it's nice and icy cold it's like oh great and and then i realized at the same time i just finished on that quicksilver using two-part epoxy to um to level the inserts because it's kind of sinking and i want to level and make sure they don't sink anymore earlier in the day so there's a little bit of epoxy smell in there still but that's okay so then we went outside but my friend my friend paul pj said you know i really jones i want to play i want to play it's like all right So we're outside having a beer. He comes in. All of a sudden, we're on the deck. And we hear and feel, bah, boom. And the whole deck outside shook. It's like, what the frick? What did he do inside there? We go in the house. All I see in the game room is glass everywhere. I see a missing Quicksilver glass. I see a backbox with no glass in it. I see the bottom of the cabinet of the Quicksilver is blown out to the bottom. I made a bomb is what I did on all these games. No way. Oh, yeah. And then as I'm coming in, I see my friend Paul coming towards me like a shell-shocked victim of some war and with his hands over his head and kind of walking on it. And I was like, part of me is like, I want to say, what did you do? But at the same point, it's like, oh, wait a minute. I think I did this. I freaking almost killed my friend. You're lucky you didn't kill him. And then I'm looking at, I have a mahogany old school 1920 upright piano across from the game. I see it. Shards of glass are buried into the mahogany wood. A shard of glass is buried... A fragment of glass is sticking out of the wood. Out of the wood. That could be sticking out of his head. Yeah, in his head, too. There was one right above his eye. Yeah, he almost got one in his eyeball. Thank God someone was watching over him and he didn't... man took him we took him to the hospital uh my wife took him to hospital and we were all pretty well hammered so we weren't driving but she did she got him down there and got them all squared away but he still couldn't play quick silver like a couple years after that incident he had like a really bad feeling about quick silver and that was his favorite game too i felt so bad i felt you think you might have had some feelings about you too like no he's not no he's a he's a sweetheart He is really a great guy. I know. I was just saying. That's a good story. That's a good story. I've never heard that one before. And so what happened is, so here's what happened. I made a perfect bomb, whatever, vapor in the game. He came over, started the game up, and as soon as he hit the flipper button, have you ever seen a flipper button inside a game? Oh, yeah, no, the spark, and that was it. Boom. Blue arc. Boom. And so much so that the side rail, it was like a nice, sturdy stainless steel, was like blown up like someone bent the side rail. That's how much the explosion went up. Bent the rail. The playfield glass came up. The back glass came out. They met in the middle and smashed together. They had a slow motion camera on it. And that came out. The bottom of the cabinet went down. And there's still like shards of glass actually buried in the playfield too. And I say, after this whole thing happened, it's like, where the frick am I going to find another quick silver backlash? That thing was perfect. Now I have no quick silver backlash. Now, meanwhile, of course, this is after I found out my friend was okay, so I wasn't, you know, worrying about it right then. But, you know, a couple weeks later when things were calmed down, and I know he was cool and he didn't go blind and he was fine after that, still shell-shocked. But what happened, we all went to Mohegan Sun or something. And I just called while I'm down there. I was like, I've got to call somebody. I called Mayfair. And Mayfair Amusements, Steve out of New York there, he had one. He had a Quicksilver Backglass. And I said, I'll take it. He said, I didn't tell you how much yet. He said, I don't care. It's a new old stock Quicksilver Backglass. I'll take it. And I think he charged me, I think it was like $250 for it. So I scored that. That's low money. Imagine what one of those would go for today. Nowadays, if you can find one, I don't know, $400, $455. I don't know. If you don't have one, more. Why don't we end it there, Dave? I'm going to say to all be good and be well and we'll see you with our next episode. I'm going to say keep those spinners a-spinning. Good night, everyone. Good night, everybody.