And the picture of the pinball machine was outside, and I was a little bit worried for that. And I got there, and I actually got there at 10 o'clock sharp, and I was there before all of the workers showed up. And I kind of went to the gate, and nobody answered the door. And finally another car pulled up, and I'm like, well, here it goes. We're going to have a hot competition for who wants the pinball machine more. And he's like, can I help you? And I'm like, well, yeah, you guys said you open at 10. He's like, yeah, I'm sorry. I got stuck in traffic. And I'm like, okay, well, let's talk about this pinball machine. How come it's outside? And they're like, oh, we just moved it outside because we wanted to take pictures of it for Craigslist. I'm like, I sure hope that's not a lie, but okay. So I picked it up. I had to fix it up. And it really kind of from the ground up. I like to tell people that we're kind of living in this golden age of pinball and arcade game repairs with all of the videos that are on YouTube. people streaming it on Twitch, people just making the videos and all the information that's available out there, I felt confident enough to give it a go. And luckily, I didn't have to do a whole heck of a lot of work on this one. And then the next game I got was about three weeks later. So I went about 42 years of not owning any pinball machines in my lifetime to owning two in three weeks, and then four in the end of 2018. 2019 is what I meant to say. The next Pez collection, here it comes. They just keep growing. I'm kind of surprised on how well they kind of make it into your collection. Everybody kind of jokes about that. They'll say, oh, yeah, we buy one, and then it becomes two, and it becomes ten. Yeah, it does. And they're a little bit more costly than the Pez, and they're probably not nearly as readily available, and they're not affordable for other people to buy me, although I'm totally open to those offers. But Dave, you mentioned a good thing about these older games and the number of streams or YouTube videos. Marco's Specialties does it usually on Thursdays. All these Tech Talk tips are available because I don't know how to fix a game, but did you know how to fix it before you saw these tutorials? No, no. And, of course, the first thing that you do any time that you see the underneath of a play field, your eyes just start bugging out. I get it all the time when I'm repairing other people's machines, is that I'll lift the play field and they're like, oh my gosh, how can you tell what's going on? It's like, you can't just by looking at it. But when it comes to these older games, it almost feels like they're a little bit more accessible to work on. And again, you get those videos from YouTube, or you're right, Marco's doing the tech talk on Thursdays. days big shout out to people like mark's basement arcade mark valuk in wisconsin he's just making the videos and they're very long form videos but they're very educational joe's classic video games also doing uh theirs and they've been doing it for years i've only been watching them for a couple of years and it's like you find information out there because if you've had the problem there's chances that other people have had that problem and luckily we're sharing that information But those videos have made it way more approachable than it may have been, say, 10 years ago, maybe even five years ago. Clay from Michigan has been doing it for years from the VFW and that great kind of compound there. There are a lot of resources for sure. And then, of course, Pinside, a good way to ask any questions and have answers almost immediately. So it does make it easier. I've heard a lot of people say that those single-player wedge heads are the easiest machines to repair. Yeah, I probably agree with those. I have one. And when I bought it, I bought it at kind of an estate sale. A guy was he was affected by covid, but not not health wise, but job wise. So he was selling off one of his houses. He either had a vacation home in Colorado or a vacation home in Florida. But he was relocating everything except for the pinball machine to sunny Florida. And he had bought it a few years before that looking for a restoration project. And he never quite got around to it. So sure enough, he gave me Bowling Queen for $200. Wow. And it had a completely stripped play field. He gave me a pickle jar that had all of the posts and all of the screws. and he had bought a whole rubber kit for it, which was nice. I think he had a flipper rebuild kit as well. That's $200 right there. Yeah, absolutely. And I was just like, well, if nothing else, even if I can't get it working, I probably have a good $200 plus in parts and also underneath the play field and all that stuff. And sure enough, it took a little bit of work. There were some wires that were snagged and unsoldered and just needed to be corrected. I needed to check continuity between switches, and with EM games, there's quite a miles of wires underneath that you have to travel from the cabinet floor to the back box to the play field and all over like that. But if you take a little bit of time and just take a little bit of effort, and you can really be able to get through it. You're a brave man, Dave, but what I like hearing is that you knew nothing before you started this a few years ago, and it was simply those videos. and the tips, and asking online that, you know what, you can fix anything. Okay, good lesson to be learned there. Some of these other older games that I've seen in your collection and watched on stream, you have one of my all-time favorite EMs. It might be my favorite. Old Chicago. It's my favorite, too. And it's my favorite for probably a different reason. I like to call it my birthday game. Because according to the pinball database, it says that it was first manufactured in April of 1976, and I was born in April of 1976. Nice. Yeah, so coming up here on 46 years ago, it was my second pandemic buy, and it happened to be up for sale for another guy who was moving out of Colorado during the pandemic. And I think I got it for $600, but it was one of my first working games. I didn't really have to do anything to it to get it going EM-wise. There was maybe just a few stuck switches. The alternator switch wasn't working, so he was never getting the other top lane to light. But he kept on playing it. He said he loved it. His wife didn't want to let it go, but they were like, we just can't move with it to where we're going. And then we're moving back to St. Louis. So your center scoop, when it releases the ball, where does it drop it? It goes about two-thirds of the way down the right flipper. It is such a favorable eject out of there. I believe that's exactly how the book suggests it to be. But it's nice where it ejects, and you can dead bounce it almost from right to left, back to the right, and shoot it right back up there again. Love it. You have to have that patience, and I assume your spinner is nice and juicy? Absolutely, especially on that game. So the reason I bring up these older games, I love playing them in competition. And we have an old Chicago in league, and I always look forward to playing that. In fact, I'll go and pick the game if I have an option. What I think some people who don't like the older games don't understand is these type of EM machines are not luck-based. I hear a lot of people say, oh, flip a coin, and it's just so not true. I mean, Roger Sharp proved that years ago, but there are tons of flipper skills required. I mean, the rules certainly aren't there. There are some simple rules, easy to understand, but the flipper skills needed, the nudges, and the accuracy required in these older games prove that it's a game of skill. and the better players shine on these games. Yes, I think that's very true. I think there's a little bit of luck every once in a while with some of these older games. Just like Old Chicago having the pop bumpers being right above the outlanes, above the flippers. But when you choose Old Chicago and you go out of your way to choose Old Chicago, do you kind of consider it the great equalizer sometimes? I like that it's five balls. I like that it's an EM machine that if you miss the skill shot, it doesn't matter, unlike other EM machines where you can't get the ball back up top. And those are my least favorite games The games where congratulations you plunge you won Oh you missed the skill shot Sorry you at a massive disadvantage That is something I don like about certain games Old Chicago, it's really not a difference maker. It's nice to hit the, what is it, 3,000 and three letters? It depends on how it's set up. You said that you like it on five ball. I actually like to play it on three ball instead. Whoa. I know. And it depends on if the drop targets are set on the liberal or the conservative settings. if you get the 3,000 points and three Chicago letters, or you just get one Chicago letter if it's set on conservative. And so I actually like to play it on three ball because I think it scores better on three ball. And I always try to get that over the top, as I like to call it, the pinball laundry buzzer. Yeah. Another thing I love about EMs, the sounds. Oh, sure. I have a Captain Fantastic that I'm actually pin sitting one of our operators here had acquired it and he's like well did you mind taking it home and maybe do a shop job on it and just see you know get it to work i know one of the flippers is completely busted on it but i'll buy all the parts and i'll i'll let you work on it he's like by the way it has a solid state upgrade to it and i don't know if you've ever seen the weco upgrade uh solid state sound boards for an em it's not an upgrade no it wouldn't be no way No, and it sounded like UFO sounds, although I was surprised that the tilt bob was wired to it, so it would make a nifty re-re-re-re-re type of sound for the tilt bob. That was probably its only clever aspect to it, but I took the Weeco board out, and I bought chimes for it just to make it sound just like it should back in the old EM days. Oh, perfect, and hopefully the flipper that wasn't working was the upper flipper, because you should never use that in Captain Fantastic ever. I use it all the time. I'm pretty accurate at hitting those drop targets, but I know why people don't like to use it at all. You're a brave man. Stay away. Everybody's got their different skills. You have another game, and I've only played this game once. It used to be at this location I play a lot just outside of Toronto at Bluffs. It's called Speakeasy. And I remember enjoying playing that game. It escapes me because it's been so long because of COVID and whatever, That's a fun game. Explain Speakeasy. I'm surprised you've seen another one of these out in the wild anytime during your life. I didn't know about Speakeasy until I bought it. It came out in 1982. Again, kind of a depressed time of pinball. Anything between, let's say, 1980 to 1984 when Space Shuttle came out was kind of a depressed time. They had made Speakeasy as a two-player game here in the United States. There's a Speakeasy 4 that they actually made for exporting to Italy, and so those are even rarer. But the unique feature of Speakeasy is that it has an all-plastic playfield. It's a molded piece of plastic. It's not plywood. And so the artwork lasts a very long time on it. It looks like a beautiful game. It's got the roulette wheel that you can spin while you're in-game or when you drain the ball. It's got the swing-away targets in the middle, which are dangling drop targets that if you come down the play field, the ball will kind of come through them. You won't be able to necessarily see where it's coming from until it's there. So they're a little bit hidden. But when you shoot it up the play field and through those targets, the targets swing away and lock into position. And the idea is to collect those in order in order to add a ball. That was the other unique feature of the game is that they decided to use a feature from the days of pinball that were illegal to award replays, and they would award you extra balls in the form of add-a-ball. They actually put this in a solid-state game in 1982 where there was an add-a-ball for collecting the swing-away targets in order, for collecting the rollover targets at the top in order. and also on the roulette wheel there is an add-a-ball space and there is also a subtract-a-ball space on the roulette wheel. So there's an opportunity to go from all the way up to nine extra balls down to negative two balls. And yes, if you drain the ball when you're at zero balls left to go or if you're at one ball left to go and the roulette wheel stops on subtract-a-ball, your game is over. I think because it is a rare game and because of that subtract-a-ball, You probably don't see it a lot in competitions. The only way that I think that you could probably get away with it being in competition is if you defeated that switch on the roulette wheel to subtract a ball, and then in the settings you can make the add a ball actually be novelty and give you points rather than there. So I guess there's a way to do it, but yeah, that subtract a ball is, since it's such a random event, it's not easily added into competition. him. And another game that you'll see on Pez Johnson on Twitch is Dipsy Doodle. If you like Doodle Bug, Dipsy Doodle, that's a must-have for sure. You know, it's strange. That one's not mine. That's another one that I'm pin-sitting. One of our local pinball collectors here saw it online, and he actually asked me to do the transaction for him. Rob, if you're listening, I appreciate the opportunity for doing this. LaserLos on Twitch, he was playing a lot of Doodlebug, which a lot of people were watching him do it, and he was trying to get the very elusive 10K a doodle. And he did it. He did it. He just did it recently, too, again. And it's amazing when you do it. Dipsy Doodle does not have that feature, by the way. It changes the rules of the game. But Rob saw it, and since he was loving watching Laser Lose do the Doodle Bug, and Dipsy Doodle came up for sale, he was like, I would really like to have the game. I don't necessarily have the room or the way of transporting right now. And he asked me if I could take it home, make sure everything is working on it, maybe clean it up a little bit for him. And then when he gets his Rush Premium, which hopefully will be very soon, he will know he will have room for Dipsy Doodle. So it'll be leaving our house eventually. But it's been a lot of fun being able to figure out why the doodle bug wasn't doodling correctly. Again, it was a switch that was a little bit too closely adjusted. And going through the troubleshooting steps of that, that was a lot of fun. And ordering a couple of parts just to make sure that it was in great working condition. It's been a lot of fun to have, and I'm going to be sad when it actually leaves the house. You still have a fine collection, and you're not alone in Colorado. There's something I've noticed about incredible players from your state. In fact, Tim Sexton had my favorite line at InDisc. I think it was Walt Wood playing a game, and he was blowing it up, and he said on stream, he goes, How does the machine know he's from Colorado?