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#141 Doctor Who? The Classic Pinball Podcast

The Classic Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 18m·analyzed·Jun 29, 2026
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TL;DR

The Classic Pinball Podcast Podcast #141: anniversary reflections, field service war stories, and repair industry challenges.

Summary

George and Dave of The Classic Pinball Podcast Podcast discuss their 7-year anniversary, share field service stories from game repairs (including difficult customers and poor-quality eBay purchases), and reflect on arcade closures and the challenges of on-site restoration work. They touch on pinball history (World Cup Soccer 94, bicentennial games from 1976), community etiquette issues, and the technical complexity of servicing 1990s-era games.

Key Claims

  • The Classic Pinball Podcast Podcast started on June 22, 2019, making their 7-year anniversary imminent

    high confidence · George states: 'We started on June 22, 2019. So the premise behind the show, for those who have been with us...'

  • Spirit of 76 was released in 1975, Freedom in 1976, and Liberty Bell in 1977 — games themed around the U.S. bicentennial

    high confidence · George provides specific release years for three bicentennial-themed games: 'Spirit of 76 was released in 75. Makes sense. Freedom was released in 76. Makes even more sense. Liberty Bell was released in 1977. Doesn't make any sense.'

  • World Cup Soccer 94 is a Williams game

    high confidence · George states: 'Yeah. And not the one we did. I guess it's a Williams game, right? World Cup Soccer 94.'

  • Dave had a customer with two games in Dover, New Hampshire who tried to get him to provide an insurance estimate to defraud insurance

    high confidence · Dave recounts: 'can you actually send me like an insurance estimate? I said, insurance estimate. Why am I doing an insurance estimate?' The customer wanted insurance to pay for repairs on games damaged by tenants.

  • Dave worked on a Bobby Bobby Orr's Power Play purchased via eBay that was in severely poor condition with nicotine-stained playfield, rust, mismatched parts, and wiring issues

    high confidence · Dave describes: 'the play field looks like yellow nicotine all over it. The cabinet side is all scratched up...There's so much rust on the bar...There's rust. There's the connector pins. There's weird wiring going on.'

  • Throwbacks Arcade in Culpeper, Virginia did not renew their lease and is closing

    medium confidence · Dave states: 'And their lease didn't get renewed. Okay, so now what is he going to do? I don't know.'

  • 1990s-era pinball games are now 30+ years old and require more extensive restoration than they did when new

    high confidence · Dave explains: 'Nowadays, fast forward a couple 20, 30 years later, now you get these 90s games that now are as old as the older school classics I was working on. Now they're having all these things...a lot of times it takes me two days on site to do.'

Notable Quotes

  • “If it wasn't for new games, you guys would be SOL. Yep, you betcha.”

    George @ N/A — George critiques the broader podcast community, suggesting most pinball podcasts depend entirely on new game releases for content relevance.

  • “If you're going to be scamming the insurance company, you're going to be scamming me too. It's not above board. I like to deal with honest people in my deal.”

    Dave @ N/A — Dave's ethical stance on declining fraudulent insurance claims—a strong character moment showing industry integrity standards.

  • “I'm ready to call a priest. I told him to give this thing the last rites or an exorcism.”

    Dave @ N/A — Dave's colorful reaction to the severely degraded Bobby Orr Power Play; captures the shock of poor-condition eBay purchases.

  • “The more they overtake the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ N/A — Metaphorical explanation for why modern games with more toys/features require more parts inventory and are harder to service.

  • “We're not going to dump the Cajun seasoning on the whole thing so you can't taste the steak.”

    Dave @ N/A — Dave distinguishes his podcast's tone from competitors, criticizing excessive profanity in other shows.

  • “They always seem to find you after. After.”

    Dave @ N/A — Dave's repeated observation that customers contact him only after purchasing problem machines, highlighting the eBay/secondary market issues.

  • “These people are dope about how to buy a pinball machine. They don't know what they're buying.”

    Dave @ N/A — Dave's frank assessment of buyer knowledge gaps and the need for due diligence before purchasing used machines.

  • “Run. You were saying run. You were saying this is going to be a barnacle.”

    [name withheld pending review] — George references Dave's prescient warning about the Dover customer as a 'barnacle'—a problematic engagement that won't shake loose.

Entities

GeorgepersonDavepersonMaureenpersonStupersonIrvpersonGary ShanleypersonGrantpersonSteve RitchiepersonThe Classic Pinball Podcastorganization

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: The Classic Pinball Podcast marks approximately 7 years of operation as of the episode, reflecting on longevity in a niche media space.

    high · George states: 'We started on June 22, 2019' and discusses the anniversary milestone, noting the early episodes featured personal game collections.

  • ?

    operational_signal: Professional pinball restoration technicians face escalating customer acquisition issues: eBay sales by unqualified sellers, customer fraud attempts, and poor-condition purchases requiring expensive remediation.

    high · Dave recounts multiple customer failures: Dover scammer, Bobby Orr Power Play eBay disaster, and pattern of customers finding him post-purchase. Quote: 'They always seem to find you after.'

  • ?

    product_concern: eBay sellers of pinball machines are selling severely degraded games with misrepresented condition, relying on high feedback ratings that may be manipulated.

    high · Bobby Orr Power Play had nicotine stains, rust, mismatched parts, and damaged wiring. Seller had 100% feedback. Dave notes: 'I don't know how. Somebody's on the take for that.'

  • ?

    operational_signal: 1990s-era pinball games now require multi-day on-site restoration (2-4 hours additional work) due to age-related component failures and complexity, comparable to games Dave serviced 30 years ago.

    high · Dave explains: 'Nowadays...these 90s games that now are as old as the older school classics I was working on...a lot of times it takes me two days on site to do.'

  • ?

    venue_signal: Throwback Arcade in Culpeper, Virginia is closing due to lease non-renewal, representing loss of another pinball venue despite having 20 well-maintained modern Stern games.

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.237

0:00
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Classic Pinball Podcast. My name is George. His name is Dave. Hello, Dave.
0:11
Hello, George. You're beautiful. It's Bob and Tom in the morning, bringing you the top hits of the top 40s. Oh, geez.
0:19
Okay, folks. A long time in between episodes. Seven weeks. I don't think we've ever gone that long, but here we are today, end of the month, better late than never. A couple things that are happening here in the country and news.
0:40
Number one, this has been on my list for three months. Finally, we'll talk about it. The World Cup. Any interest, Dave? Well, you know, I actually had zero interest until last night after a pinball day spa thing we did down Southeast Mass. We stopped at a restaurant and then they had it on. It's like, OK, well, it's on in front of me. I guess I have to watch while we were at the bar, right? And so, you know, I actually can say that I like it better than football. Oh, no, stop. Because I don't like football. Oh, stop. I mean, at least with soccer, it's always moving. There's none of this chess match where you've got to stop and think about things for half an hour. How about hockey? It's always moving. I love hockey. Hockey's great. It's graceful violence. A couple punches and some skating. It's perfect. Okay. I don't want to belabor the point other than the fact that it's been on my list because of World Cup, the pinball. Yeah. And not the one we did. I guess it's a Bally Williams game, right? World Cup Soccer 94. Okay, so I saw some games. I would have thought that there would have been a lot more activity and action on that game given the World Cup, but we still have another two or three weeks to go. Action meaning what? Yeah, just that you would see them for sale, that people would be asking for them just because of all the hype, and not just here in the U.S., but globally. Kind of really didn't see that. The other thing is, you know, America's 250. And again, you know, I went and did a little homework. You know, our 200th anniversary, you know, there were three games that were released around our 200th year. Do you know those three games? Tales of the Arabian Nights? No. Yeah, that's a new one. They just released it. No, no, no, no. I'm saying 1976. Oh, that one. Games that focused on the United States.

  • Taito (Japanese manufacturer) created cheap knockoff copies of pinball machines, similar to how they copied video games

    medium confidence · Dave states about Taito: 'they took everything and they cheaped it out and copied it and gave you a plastic version of what it was.' George adds: 'They did the same thing with video games, too. Their video games were a cheap copy.'

  • Dave charges approximately 6-8 hours per game for on-site restorations and typically does one game per day

    high confidence · Dave explains: 'typically I only do one game per day because it usually takes six to eight hours to work on a game when I really go through them.'

  • Steve Ritchie designed Getaway

    high confidence · Dave mentions at the arcade: 'That's a Steve Ritchie game. Again, fun game...'

    • @ N/A
    Throwbacks Arcade
    venue
    Fargon Breweryvenue
    Dr. Dave Pinball Restorationscompany
    Vintage Pinball Repaircompany
    Taitocompany
    Williamscompany
    Ballycompany
    Tales of the Arabian Nightsgame
    Getawaygame
    Bobby Orr Power Playgame
    Eight Ball Deluxegame

    high · Dave states: 'And their lease didn't get renewed. Okay, so now what is he going to do? I don't know.'

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Taito (Japanese manufacturer) produced cheap knockoff versions of pinball machines (e.g., 8-Ball Deluxe clones with plastic components), similar to their video game knockoffs.

    medium · Dave describes Taito's approach: 'they took everything and they cheaped it out and copied it and gave you a plastic version of what it was.'

  • ?

    historical_signal: During the U.S. bicentennial era (1975-1977), pinball manufacturers released patriotic-themed games: Spirit of 76 (1975, Bally), Freedom (1976, Williams), Liberty Bell (1977, Williams).

    high · George documents specific release years and manufacturers for three bicentennial games, noting Liberty Bell's late release timing.

  • ?

    community_signal: Generational shift in marketplace behavior: buyers ghosting sellers after inquiry, lack of courtesy responses to parts requests on Pinside, and general incivility in secondary market transactions.

    high · Dave and George discuss people inquiring about parts and then disappearing without response. Dave states: 'We're of a different generation, George. It's called politeness and courtesy.'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: The Classic Pinball Podcast distinguishes itself from competitors by avoiding excessive profanity and focusing on diverse content beyond just new game coverage.

    medium · Dave states: 'these other podcasts are very potty mouth, and we aren't' and criticizes competitors: 'If it wasn't for new games, you guys would be SOL.'

  • $

    market_signal: Secondary market pricing for same-title machines varies dramatically based on condition and buyer segment: Gary Shanley pays $10,000+ for premium examples while budget buyers purchase severely degraded units for $2,600-3,600.

    medium · Dave notes Gary Shanley's high spending vs. other customers at lower price points, suggesting market segmentation by buyer sophistication.

  • ?

    industry_signal: Specialist repair businesses (EM vs. modern) have developed informal referral networks, with Stu directing modern game customers to Dave and vice versa based on specialization.

    high · Dave explains: 'I keep getting' referrals from Stu because Stu specializes in EM and redirects modern game work to Dave via his website.

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Modern pinball machines with more toys and electronic features require significantly larger parts inventory and longer service times compared to EM-era machines with simpler mechanical designs.

    high · Dave references Star Trek quote: 'the more they overtake the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain,' explaining why modern games need warehouse inventory vs. Stu's EM toolkit of 'rubber band and some glue.'

    • 3:01
    Elton John. Bicentennial. Oh, yeah, yeah. Spirit of 76? One. Bally. Oh, Freedom. Two. Williams. Hold on. Williams, Williams. What did Williams do? Philadelphia.
    3:21
    No, I don't know. Liberty Bell. Okay, yeah. So here's the weird thing about those three games. William can't suck from that time. So here's the weird thing about, I'm not a fan of any of these, but here's the weird thing.
    3:34
    Spirit of 76 was released in 75. Makes sense. Freedom was released in 76. Makes even more sense. Liberty Bell was released in 1977.
    3:46
    Doesn't make any sense. Well, it was such a good game, it took a long time to code it. Oh, sure. Oh, sure. Yeah, that's why. So there's that. But more importantly, our anniversary.
    3:59
    Seven years. What'd you get me, George? You get me gold or silver or tinfoil? What do you got? You get bumpers. Zero. You got. What year is it? What year? Seventh year? It's in the mail. What year are we in? Seven. Seven. Going into our eighth. We started on June 22, 2019.
    4:25
    So the premise behind the show, for those who have been with us, you've heard it before, for those who are new to us, the premise was at the beginning, we'll do a show, it'll put us on the map, a lot of people go to Pintastic. That's kind of the premise of episode one. And then we started going into our personal games. Sometimes I wish we never did them all up front. We should have waited until we got our feet underneath us. So we got our S together, George, our S together. It is what it is. We can just redo. I will go back and listen, but there are some really great games and they are some of our most listened to episodes, believe it or not. You know what we should do? We should do what Stern does. Stern is going to make vault editions for the Pinball machines. We should just do our vault editions for our old school shows and do them over. Do it improved. Yeah, if we come up short. And that kind of leads me into all the other podcasts that are out there. I'll just make this statement. If it wasn't for new games, you guys would be SOL. Yep, you betcha.
    5:36
    And not tooting my horn, but I will. If you're looking for something completely different, it's us. And I'm sure you have some stories I'd like you to start us off today.
    5:53
    For me, I have a lot of filler, just little bits and bites of things that I've seen over the last seven weeks. Not a lot of heavy pinball. I do have one good story. But why don't you start us off? Enough of all the leftovers as we talk about them.
    6:17
    All right. We want to start with some stories? Yeah, start with a story. All right. Here's a good one. How about this woman from Dover, New Hampshire called me and we're playing. Oh, we talked about this. Well, we did, but the audience doesn't know about it. I don't think I ever heard the end. Okay. So set it up. Sorry. I'll set it up. So Doverne Hampson, this lady, I think she was emailing me at first and then didn't get back to me and then did get back to me. She was very cryptic in her emails. Very cryptic. So, and now I'm finding out why she was cryptic in her emails. So we said, but finally after all those things, she said, okay, well, when can you get out here? It's like, well, I'm really busy. I've got other customers in front of you, but, you know, it's like, well, I can probably get out there on this date a couple weeks ago, whatever. And I said, but you're up in Dover, so you're a bit of a ride, and there's going to be, you know, a little bit of travel time involved and whatever, and you have two games to work on, so typically I only do one game per day because it usually takes six to eight hours to work on a game when I really go through them. And, you know, these games, one's a time warp, and it was like just no power on it at all. I said, can you turn it on and take a picture with it on to see what's going on? She never did. The other one, she showed a video, a quick video of a slugfest, 1991, you know, WPC situation, but it's like a pitch and bat. So that's pretty much just a bunch of some board work. Maybe the batteries leaked on it or whatever. You know, not too bad. It actually kind of worked a little bit. I saw a video of it. It's like, okay, well, I said, well, you're going to probably need a lot of work on the Williams because those classic Williams are just notoriously bad boards from day one. You can rebuild them, but they're not reliable and blah, blah, blah. So then she comes back and said, well, when can you come up? When can you – I said, well, let's do this date here. And I gave her an estimate. She says, oh, whoa, that's a lot more than I wanted to spend. And can you give me an invoice or list what you're going to do for work? I said, sure. So I kind of spelled it out for her and this and that, sent it to an email.
    8:35
    Well, okay, well, thank you for that, but can you actually send me like an insurance estimate? I said, insurance estimate.
    8:44
    Why am I doing an insurance estimate? Well, because I want to have insurance, you know, get paid for this repair. It's like, why do you want insurance to pay the repair?
    8:57
    Well, we rented our house out for eight years, and there were some teenagers there, and then the games don't work. It's like, well, that's kind of wear and tear. So she sent me pictures of, show me a picture of these games, you know, show me a picture of a huge game room. Oh, she says, oh, they're up in the attic. Wait a minute, how are they up in an attic? Oh, this is where I got messed up. Yeah. I'm thinking of an attic meeting, dusty, lots of stuff. Right. And a lot of heat. Yeah. I'm thinking like, you know, cobwebs, heat in the summer. It was a game room. It was just on the third floor. Right. Say it's a third floor game room, not an attic. You dope. Uh oh. Uh oh. I see where this is going. But I remember saying to you, run. Oh, I remember. You were saying run. You were saying this is going to be a barnacle. You can't scrape the barnacle off as you go and engage with the barnacle. I remember. So I kept, oh, well, you know, I just want to do this. So it's like, well, this isn't an insurance issue. This is like wear and tear. Did they tip the games over and throw them on the floor? No, doesn't look that way. It's like this is where, well, I just want to try to get some money reimbursed by them. It's like, so you want me to commit fraud and say it's an insurance issue when it's not, and I'm going to be on the hook for that. And they come back to me. It's like, no, not interested. I don't make my money that way. I'm above board. I'm not doing any kind of scammy thing. So she was a foreigner from some different country. I'm not going to say where, but I can tell by the accent. I could, but I'm not either. Maybe in that country they do those things. But here in America, we don't do that. Well, typically, most don't. America? Some do. Some duds in Florida might. So who'd you pawn her off on? I pawned her off on nobody. Nobody. I basically said, no, I basically said, I'm not, I don't feel comfortable and you got to find somebody else. Well, why? Just because the insurance thing? What, you know, it's silly. What's the big deal? And I go, yes, exactly why. Yes. If you're going to be scamming the insurance company, you're going to be scamming me too. It's not above board. I like, I like to deal with honest people in my deal. And not people trying to scam the system. So, no, not a good fit. This is kind of related, but not really. What do you think of people that inquire about parts on Pinside and then just ghost you? Is that the society we live in today? Yeah, that's called, there's a whole video, it's a great video on YouTube about, like Facebook, it's called Facebook Marketplace Video. And it shows like a live action of it, of a guy like polishing his car and it says for sale on it. And you get this guy that pulls up on a bicycle and says, hey, is this still available? And the guy says, yeah, sure is. And the guy just turns his head and starts biking away. Because that's what, so it's a live action of doing the same thing you're talking about. If I engage with somebody, I always say at the end, thank you for your time, but I'm not interested. No, we're of a different generation, George. It's called politeness and courtesy. I've heard a lot of generational talk recently. I really don't want to go down that road.
    12:28
    I know they said it about our generation, and they've said it about other generations. These kids today, I tell you, George, these kids today, they don't know. Yeah, I know. Get the F off my front lawn.
    12:42
    Get off my front lawn. So, yeah, I had to bring that up because I had somebody poke again. It was out there for a couple of years, that Fireball 2 that Jack was selling, the – Electric Boogaloo. And the guy was like – you know, I basically said to him, A, do you know what you're buying? B, do you realize that, you know, this is expensive to ship, et cetera? And he basically was like, you know, F you. It's like, I'm doing the preamble because I don't want you F-ing me around. You know, that's usually how it goes. Yeah. Yeah, you want to basically give the law the land, the lay of the land. Here's how this is going to work. Right. Not your way. It's my way. And if not, you know the rest of the saying. Hit the highway. Yeah.
    13:31
    Hit the road. Enough of a rant. Now you're getting my blood up already. Blood pressure is going up. Yes.
    13:41
    So that was the story of the New Hampshire scammer. Okay. Well, hold on a second. Maureen wants me, I will be, I just told George, I'm going to be, sometimes I like doing live, sound effects live, sometimes the sound quality isn't that good. I'm going to insert things later, I think. It's better quality. But I will do that one. So, yeah, I'm going to do it with the story. So here's – you want another story? Yeah, go ahead. Okay. Got a guy up in northern Mass somewhere, and he's got a Stars and a Pioneer, and beautiful Stars. The Stars is an awesome original cabinet. Playfield's really nice. Hasn't worked for years, so it needed a lot of my time.
    14:29
    And he was going to basically – he's had them both for a while. Well, he got the Stars pretty cheap because someone owed him money, some contract owed him money or something like that. Does he know the value of these games? He does now, but he got it cheap. But this Stars is nice. I mean, he was missing a couple little parts, but in general, this could be, if I could go crazy on it, it would be a beautiful Stars. But I went partially crazy on it. It was still a very nice Stars. So he's going to keep that. He's going to be gifting the Pioneer to his son who's moving out to Ohio. So I kind of got that running a little bit better, too. And the whole time while Maureen and I are working on this, we keep tripping over a dome-shaped litter box hut. It's a cat litter box, like a dome, right near the stars. We're putting all our parts nearby, and we keep tripping over this dome, and it stunk. It stunk like, you know, just cat, you know, and it's in the way. Like cat ass. Yeah, the cat ass, exactly. And this is another thing, George. These other podcasts are very potty mouth, and we aren't. We might do a couple little swears here and there, like for light seasoning, a little bit of pepper and salt, but we're not going to dump the Cajun seasoning on the whole thing so you can't taste the steak. That's what we do at this podcast. I'm not going to do machine gun F. No, why? It's stupid and juvenile and I don't know. It's just not effective. Anyway, that's my PSN. So anyway, so the kitty cat hopped there and it stunk and we're talking to the guy and bring the puppy down, a cute puppy head and say, oh, you got a puppy. What about the cat? Oh, the cat. Oh, that cat died a couple of years ago.
    16:17
    Oh, no. Yeah. Never. Dear, where's the dead cat? It's in the soap dish. But there's soap in the soap dish. Yeah. The cat's in the soap. What? Yes, dear. There's a whole dead cat in every bar of dead cat soap. And it's that cat inside the dome? Because it stinks. You didn't say that. No, I didn't say that. I wanted to. He said, no, let me get that dome out of your way. It's like, yeah, maybe you want to throw that away. Yeah, right. Like outside? Yeah, outside. In the bathroom, there's a cat carrier. In the bathroom, there's still a cat carrier, so I think he's still attaching to this cat. You know, it's long gone. I don't know. It's time to clean up the act there.
    17:09
    So that's that one. I have another Pinball Duds special. The Pinball Duds out of Jupiter, Florida. I love that you call them that.
    17:20
    I wonder if it ever got back to them. I don't know. But, you know, hey, they need to clean up their act because they sell a lot of crap. Now, our friend out in the West, you talked about this last time. Yeah, and I need to actually share. Gary Shanley. That's the good end of the stick. Gary, Gary, Gary. I know you're getting some good high-end games from them. So maybe they're putting a little extra spit polish on that kind of stuff with your games because, you know, you're paying good money. You're Gary Shanley. And you're Gary Shanley. You know, you're probably paying over $10,000 or so for these things.
    17:58
    These guys are paying, I don't know, three, between two and four grand. What can you miss this now? This is a Bobby Orr power play.
    18:08
    And this Bobby Orr power play, I don't think I got pictures of it. He really wanted me to, basically, he's from Rhode Island, and he wanted me on the phone or talking to him. It's like, well, he told me to go to her. Did we talk about this? No. And he said, no? I don't think so. This one. You didn't even know what I did. No, because this one, he never said where he... Did you say something to the effect of he should just scrap this game and go buy a new one?
    18:36
    Yes, I didn't really say that to him. No, I know, you said it to me. Yeah, so he didn't tell me right away where he got it from. We didn't really get to that point, but on the phone, I don't think I really got pictures of the games. I don't really know, but he just said, oh, this thing doesn't work, this doesn't work, but it was working. It worked for two days or something like that. Finally, when I got down there, I looked at the game, and it's like, I cannot believe this game. It's like, the play field looks like yellow nicotine all over it. The cabinet side is all scratched up. The apron is like, I don't know what valley it's from, but it's not this game. It's all just worn out. There's so much rust on the bar. I remember you saying this. There's rust. There's the connector pins. There's weird wiring going on. I looked at the guy and I said, instead of calling me, I'm ready to call a priest. I told him to give this thing the last rites or an exorcism. Well, you didn't really want to grind him. I didn't want to. I just want to give him up here. But you said he was not feeling very good about his purchase He wasn but I wanted to basically say hey dope That right But I know Right but they find you We talked about this many times. They always seem to find you after. After. And they keep telling me that. I wish I had found you before.
    19:59
    The problem is it's eBay. eBay is a great advertising tool. How about you put a machine out on eBay that you're never going to sell just using as advertising? I probably could. Well, if I do, it would be sold, right? Unless I put a huge price on it. Yeah, you put a whole, if you get a premium price on it, good for you.
    20:17
    Yeah, it's not a bad idea. It just seems like there's a lot of dopes out there. But you know what, though? The thing is, though, is everybody knows especially. There's a lot of things in the world I don't know about, so I'm going to dope about other things. These people are dope about how to buy a pinball machine. They don't know what they're buying. So it all comes down to expertise of what you know. But the thing is, though, you should be, for anything you're going to get into like that, do a little bit of homework. Do a little bit of, and then they say, well, I did do homework. He has 100, they have 100% feedback rating on their eBay thing. I say, I don't know how. Somebody's on the take for that. I just, but didn't you say somebody told you you can remove the bad?
    20:54
    There is a way of removing bad evaluation. On eBay? No. Yeah. Oh, it wasn't you. We'll talk about this in a little bit. Okay, so that's what it's going to be. My new pinball buddy, Irv, he's the one who told me because I mentioned it to him. Oh, he's got – we had a whole segment of Irv and you. Oh, wow. Indirectly. I'd like to hear about that one.
    21:17
    Oh, we can do it right now if you want. Well, let me just finish up with this one here, the pinball dud. Then we'll go to that one. So I'm looking at this game, and I said, so where did you buy this from again? Oh, in Florida. I said, the pinball duds? Yeah, that's them. I looked around the room. It's all sports memorabilia. It's all hockey stuff. He's such a big sports nut. He won a Bobbio Power Play come hell or high water. There's one on eBay. He bought it, and then the chips fell where they may. And the chips fell. They certainly did fall. Right. I mean, I have one, and mine is not in good shape, but I only spent $400 on it. Yours is a frickin' immaculate restoration compared to this game. Yeah, yours is like, I don't know. And I said, how much you spent in this game? And I think, I think you spent, I want to say, was it 26? Ouch. No, I think it was either 26 or 3,600. Something like that. But they do, they do. The sign was all square. Oh, I know, it's all square. He wanted us to touch up the sign of the game, too. It's like, I looked at Maureen, it's like, you feel like doing that? I said, well, my wife can do that, but it's not going to come. It'll come out better than this, but it's not going to be perfect. And I said, did you look at pictures before you bought this? Did you look at the only show you the one side that's good? I don't get it. How do you hit go? It just said the wiring inside. It was nicotine. There was rust. There was like just this grimy, yellowy crap everywhere. We were there for like eight hours. And then finally we're there like till nine o'clock at night. And he said, well, you guys are going to be in much longer. I really got a couple more hours to go, but it's, well, my niece, daughter, my daughter, I think his daughter. No, his sister-in-law. Sister-in-law is here from California. It's only for another night. I said, okay, I get it. You want to get us out of it. You want to enjoy your time. I get it. It's like, well, there's more work to do here. We got to come back. I just see at least another two to four hours of work here. But I said, at least, I said, it's sort of working right now. I said, no, I'm not going to play it at all until you come back. I said, okay. So don't play it. Let me come back. So I made a bunch of notes what I got to do, but that's like a two-day day spar in this freaking game to get it to anywhere near. I feel terrible for that person. Hopefully that person doesn't listen.
    23:33
    What's that? What's your game? The guy that called you and wanted help because his wife bought him the game. Oh, well, one more of these. So now this other person, they bought, he's an older guy, I can tell. His wife seems younger, so he called me up, and lately I find I'm getting a lot of referrals from Stu. Stu has it right with his website, I must say, because his website, it gets the people, because his website is Vintage Pinball Repair, and I'm Dr. Day Pinball Restorations. People are saying, well, I don't need a whole restoration. I don't need the whole game painted. Well, that's not what we do. We actually get the thing restored, refurbishment. But vintage pinball is like, oh, I got a game from 1990. That's vintage. I'm going to call this guy. Then Sue says, I don't work on that. I work on all the older stuff, the EM stuff, but I know a guy. So I keep getting. So start another site, Dr. Dave's Vintage Pinball. Yeah, and have it point to this. You know, that's a great idea. Great idea, George. Give me two good ideas today. Yeah, I like that. I'm writing that down, George. Okay, eBay, Dr. Dave's Vintage Pinball.
    24:42
    Okay, you want to hear about how Irv did an association with your name? Okay. Okay, so last show, quick synopsis, I met Irv at Pinfest.
    25:03
    He invited me to his home. He's got a bunch of nice games. We talked about this. Farfalla, Lost World, NASCAR, Twilight Zone, Xenon. Went to his house, beautiful home, up on a mountain, yada yada yada. I saw the picture, George. Nice picture. Spectacular. Anyway, so I think it started with Devils.
    25:30
    Was it? No, no. Dungeons and Dragons, the 1987 version. He got that game? I sent that to you and you said, fuck. Yeah, he got that. Who wants that game? No, no, no. He was just, I don't know why he brought it up because he thought it was a buy or whatever. It's not. Nobody wants that game. I go, go to the reference, Dave, and Dave is like, you know, deep six. This thing's not worth it. No. So then he comes up with another one. He goes, Devil's Dare. No. And I'm like, well, I know he's not going to like that because it's the devil. I mean, I will say for that game, it's a great player, but you can't put it in your living room. The wife ain't going to like it. Right, but you don't like it because of the devil. Anyway, that's not the story. The story is D.D., Dr. Dave, Devil's Dare, Dungeons and Dragons. Yeah, a lot of DD. Okay. Yeah. So he was kind of poking at you. I just thought it was funny. Okay. But anyway, he also took me to a brewery near his home, something called Fargon in, geez, Culpepper. Sargon, like in Star Trek? Oh, Fargon. I get it. Fargon. Oh, the guy's last name is G-O-H-N, not G-O-M-E. So, it's a play on his last name. But we also went, and you'll like this, we went to an arcade right next door. Ramper? Called the Throwback Arcade. Oh, so it's throwback, so it's old school.
    27:13
    No, it's not throwback. No, it's Rampers. It's a Ramfest. Another bug hunt. So, you take Dave there, right? I go, absolutely not.
    27:26
    So, the only two, well, there are a couple others, but the two that I remember, you brought up Tales of the Arabian Nights. Yeah. That was one of the games we played. That's okay.
    27:39
    I think the other older game right next to it was Getaway. That's a Steve Ritchie game. Again, fun game, but everything else was moderns. Everything. And he had a nice, I mean, probably 20 modern games, mostly from the last five or six years. So they were all TV screen Stearns. For the most part, but the one thing I will say, for the most part, there were a couple that had some issues, but for the most part, pretty well-maintained games. They should be there. But here's the kicker. And their lease didn't get renewed.
    28:19
    Okay, so now what is he going to do? I don't know. I'll keep you in the loop. But not only that, they had a bunch of, you know, arcade games, stand-up arcades, you know, Dig Dug, that kind of stuff, everything in between.
    28:35
    And then the killer was I'm listening to the music, and I'm like, this doesn't sound right. The vocals are wrong. And what's going on? Bane of my existence. Karaoke again. It's like it follows me everywhere I go. And the last couple of places I've been out to, every single one unknowingly has had karaoke. Well, you know, with enough beer, it's fun.
    29:03
    You'd have to put me underneath the tap and say, open wide and then chug for a couple of minutes. No, no, not my thing. So anyway, that's my my Virginia experience. Another arcade, unfortunately, moving. So how's it? Well, throwback. It's like it's not really a throwback. It's I don't know. I guess the 90s are a throwback. It's like it's like Stu's website. It gets you in the door. Yeah, it does get you in the door. Yep, he's smart. He's a smart cookie.
    29:42
    And I was just talking to Maureen the other day as we're working on these 90s games out there. They used to be kind of a little more quicker, and the old school games like the Paragons and Power Plays, those take a lot of time to do a day spart out in the field. And even Stu said, I don't know how to do it. You're crazy for doing marathon restorations in someone's house. It's like, I don't know how you can do it. It's like, I'm going to keep going for as long as I can, but it is a marathon. You're on your feet all day long for eight hours not taking a break. So as I'm working on these 90s games, like, you know, these games are getting like 30 years old now. Now they're starting to almost behave. How about 40? How about 50?
    30:24
    What do you mean 50? Well, if you were 1976, that's 50 years. Well, I know. Well, I'm saying the 90s games, since I've been working so long on these things, the comparison I'm saying, when I first started doing this thing 30 years ago, the 90s games were kind of new. They didn't need a lot of stuff. They needed some stuff. But the older games were the early solid states, you know, the quick silvers, the eight ball deluxes. That needed a little more, you know, love. Nowadays, fast forward a couple 20, 30 years later, now you get these 90s games that now are as old as the older school classics I was working on. Now they're having all these things and all this stuff. And they're even more of just, a lot of times it takes me two days on site to do. Well, there's more in it. There's more crap. There's more, as Scotty said from Star Trek, the more they overtake the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain. There's so many toys in the frickin' thing that break any special parts. So even to carry all this inventory that I have, I do have a lot of inventory.
    31:29
    You know, again, Stu's kind of smart in a way by doing the EM stuff. He's like, I just need a rubber band and some glue and a screwdriver. I need all this stuff. If you do EMs correctly, you really do need to go through all the switches. Oh, he does. That's not what he does. No, he goes through a lot, but he doesn't need a whole crap load of parts. Right. You know, fuses a couple this, couple that. Right, I didn't think of it that way. Yeah, that makes sense. I need all that stuff, plus I need boards and connectors and stuff. I need, like, you know, a warehouse full of stuff to do my gig. So, to reach his own, but he's got a good gig going. What? The eight-hour Adam's family.
    32:12
    Which eight-hour Adam's family? Adam's family. Oh, well. I have a whole list of things. Well, hold on before we move forward. How much time do we have? Like five minutes?
    32:26
    Six minutes. What was that? Which Adam Sands family were talking about? How long ago? When? Oh, yeah, that one. I'll make a note. I have so many games here. Okay, I have something for you. This was sent to us by our friend Grant in Australia. Do you remember seeing the picture of the 8-Ball Deluxe made by, I guess it's Taito, T-A-I-T-O Pinball? Yeah, I saw the picture. You know anything about it? Yeah, Taito just, they took everything and they cheaped it out and copied it and gave you a plastic version of what it was. What about where? They're Japan or? Well, Japan. Taito's out of Japan. They did the same thing with video games, too. Their video games were a cheap copy. What did they do? Just license the... No, they didn't license. They just, I don't know, they just took it. Yeah, they stole. Yeah, they did the same thing with Pac-Man and some other games. They just kind of took them. I think. I had never seen one before. That's why I'm asking. Tato was always like a, almost like a today's Chinese knockoff of something. It's like the Rolex watch you get down in downtown New York. You know what I think? Right, it kicks for the first 10 minutes and then it stops. Yes, exactly right. Oh, one more thing about that, the wife that decided to buy this guy a game, he called me talking, because I guess Stu sent it to me. It is a Time Warp, Williams Time Warp, great looking game, not a great playing game. It had the banana flippers, but you can take the banana flippers off and put real flippers on it, which is what you should do, because they're a really crappy idea. Disco fever are the same ones. So he said, yeah, my wife just bought this for Father's Day for me, and I really like EMs. I have a couple of EMS. I don't know why she bought me this, but she wanted to buy me something for my father's day, so she bought this. And she bought it from a guy on, I don't know, Facebook marketplace or something. Spent $2,600 on a time warp, which is a lot of money for a classic, for a Williams like that. It worked one day. And it worked like one, well, it worked one day. It worked, but then the saucer's not kicking out right, and then she's all, so finally I said, listen, you know, with these games, I just, you're going to need a lot of, you're going to need a boardectomy and other stuff. It's like planning on spending a couple grand, at least over a thousand or more to really do my thing with it because it's parts. All these parts cost money. He's all, okay. So basically, another one where she didn't do her homework. She just said, I want to buy a pinball machine. Didn't really know what to buy. Emotion takes over and then you get into the auction thing if it's on an auction and you get caught up in the action.
    35:03
    It's so true. Let's see. We've got three minutes. I have a lot more to say. Do you have any more stuff on your side? I've got little snippets. I've got something that I think we can occupy the next couple minutes with.
    35:20
    Okay. What's going on with your big engine? Or is that one of your stories? No, no. The only thing with big engine, I did realize that the playfield does have a little bit of warp to it. I did not realize. A little bit of warp going on. So I was wondering why, you know, after I tuned it in a little bit and pitched it right, it's like, this is kind of weird how it's kind of going to this side. So I had to level the game kind of like truing a bicycle tire. You know, you had to like, this thing has to go a little bit. You had to overcompensate. Overcompensate. And I got a happy meeting where it actually plays pretty well now. So, yeah, so I play once in a while. You know, it's, it's, um, and Peter likes it. Did you set it up for, you know, tournament play or get people over? I did. I had people over, set for tournament play. I was going to do a whole, um, I tried, yeah, I had a bunch, I had a big blowout for people over. I had, how many people do we have over? Memorial Day 15. Memorial Day, 15 people Memorial Day. I wanted to do like a small thing that I said, well, I've got to invite this guy too. I've got to invite this guy. We started inviting couples like, boy, I know a lot of people. But the problem is when you invite that many people, it was a good time, but you wind up working the party. I didn't really get to, you know, and this is the way it works. The way it works. This is why I want a smaller gallery. That's why it's great going to a party instead of hosting. Right. It is.
    36:49
    And Maureen works very hard for it too. Keep the spinning plate spinning. So I was going to plan on doing a beautiful day. People outside, inside. People are going to little separate four people groups and hanging out, a little coffee clutch, whatever it's called.
    37:05
    Clicks. Clicks, yeah, a little clicky thing. And I was going to do a tournament. I was going to do a coin box on Star Trek Next Gen and a coin box on – actually, I'm going to talk about that game too later. And a coin box on Big Indian or Big Engine.
    37:24
    I even took all the score thresholds off Big Engine. And so that the only knock you would hear is when you get the special for the drop target, which is tough to get. And I was going to basically say, if you get a special for the drop target, add 10,000 to your score. I just all planned out. I had a tournament. And then I just – people just – they didn't really want to do a tournament. No one really wanted – there's no – they didn't really want to – they just want to play some pinball and hang out and have some food and talk. Okay. So I'm not going to fight the crowd. Of course not because that's the whole other piece of work, running a tournament. I've got to run a tournament. So I'll run a tournament? Great. So I can not do that. All right. It's a little pressure off me. We can just, like, talk and do the other thing. So it's more of a big social deal with some pinball playing, you know. So, you know, that was fun. The Star Trek Next Gen, that's working out really well, but I'll get into that later because we have under a minute to go. Okay. Well, let's cut it here and we'll come back and do another second.
    38:36
    So, George, where we last were, there was a little bit of a delay to get back to part two here Because, I don't know, there was some commotion going on in the other room. And I swear, I was hearing this.
    39:01
    I thought it was that. I thought it was a Daylix from Doctor Who. But actually, it was Joy Behar and The View. That's what I was hearing. You're at your mom's house, aren't you?
    39:11
    Oh, God. You're down the cake, right? I'm at the cake. Oh, my God. I want to watch my show. It's like, oh, please. I rather I don know get a root canal Get me out of it That all I hear The whole show it a quick little diatribe here The whole show is a formula Every show, every time, it starts out with, let's talk about Trump. Look what he did today.
    39:38
    And then they go into some liberal book reading about some other book. Today was like some old stripper, 60-year-old stripper that doesn't want to strip anymore. Well, no one wants to see you strip anymore, honey. You're 60 years old. It's so stupid. Okay.
    39:55
    Move along. Nothing to see here. Sorry, I just had a vent, George. Yeah, I don't blame you. So, I don't know why my blood pressure is high. I do. I'm certainly high.
    40:12
    Yeah, it'll do it. So, anyway, I got some more stories here to tell. Do you want to hear some stories? Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. That's good. That's one of the reasons people tune in. Yes, yes, yeah. I get some colorful stories and colorful customers and so forth.
    40:31
    So we got a call from a lady in Bolton, Massachusetts. So I worked on her stuff before. Nice lineup.
    40:44
    They have a dialed in, a medieval madness, a Munsters, and an attack from Mars. An Attack from Mars. That's a pretty serious lineup. Oh, yeah. It's a coin. Yeah, it's a nice lineup, and I basically, you know, day-spot all of them several years ago, and she called me and was like, yeah, I don't know what's wrong, but the two of the games, they don't work at all. They're just dead. They go, two games are dead? That's kind of hard to believe that both games are dead. What do they have in common? Power. It's like, you sure that they're plugged in? It's like, oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, I'll come out, but, you know. I think it's going to be something stupid.
    41:24
    And it was. I went to the back of the machines. I guess they moved the machines. Maybe the cleaner came in or something. They had the cleaner come in. They moved the machines a little bit. And they don't have a plate on the back to hold. There's just a plug, almost like a computer plug that plugs in the back of these newer machines, not like an old-school Bally that's a cord hanging on the back. You can't really unplug it. You should yank it from the wall. These things, you can yank it from the back of the machine. So they were out maybe an eighth of an inch out. I just hit him an eighth or an inch in, boom, all the games came back on. It's like, well, okay. I mean, I could charge you for, you know, travel time in here, but while I'm here, I might as well clean your games. Look at your games and, right. Yeah, do my thing. So we did our thing. We stayed for like three or four hours and got a nice check out of it and did a bunch of little stuff. And I did find some stuff wrong with some stuff, you know, from playing them. So it worked out really well, but she felt so dumb that that's what it was, but that worked out. Well, you kind of said that. Yes. Yeah, well. In a very indirect way. Indirect way, but, you know, I just say, you sure? Is it plugged in, you know?
    42:29
    Bob just came up from Florida. Yeah, and so he was hanging out for the week, and he was, you know, he comes up and goes to Vermont for. Did you say he lives in the villages? He does. Under a pineapple under the sea. An upside down pineapple under the sea.
    42:48
    Okay, sorry. He's not in that part, I hope. I don't know. I don't think he is. But a lot of people are villagers, so is, I think, I think Matrando's there, too. Yeah, he is, too. Yeah, Matrando's there, too. Oh, that's right. He did say that.
    43:04
    Yeah, they're all, they're all villagers. Yeah, don't go there. Move along. Yeah, okay. Move along. Different strokes, different strokes. People like different stuff, so whatever. Don't even say that. Just move along. Hold on with my inappropriate bell. Darn. Hold on. Wait for it. Wait for it. Where is it? My assistance. Delay. There. Okay. Hit it. Good. So Adam said, hey, why don't you come over? I got Bob over here. He slept over a couple nights and it's like, I don't know. I got a bunch of work to do. I have pinball work. It ain't going to do itself. It ain't going to fix itself. So I said, I'll be over a little while. So I did some more work outside on the deck working on the Gorga from New Hampshire a little bit, try to get that buttoned up. They said, what am I doing? Bob's not here that long. I should go. So I just like stop what I'm doing, go over there. And they're outside in the back deck, you know, parting their brains out. And they were wasted at like two o'clock in the afternoon. Actually, all afternoon, I think from 11 o'clock till seven. And they're outside at a shooting gallery. I guess I saw a bunch of BB guns in the back deck, like a whole selection of them, rifles and everything else. And Bob went into Adam's shed and got a bunch of stuff and said, hey, what are you doing? That's my wife saying, no, don't worry about it. So he kept putting out things in the shooting guard like you shoot at. Oh, no, you mean like garden ornaments? Yeah, garden gnomes, things with metal on them. Garden targets. Yeah, garden targets, right.
    44:27
    Mr. Gnome got his head blown off. Yeah, it was a blast. He put out a pot and pans out there from a freaking laundry line, hit those a couple times, clang, clang. So I had a couple shots. I was doing really good. So that was a fun time. I was like, boy, I wish I came over earlier. I should play more hooky more often. I'm too dedicated to my craft. You wouldn't get any work done. I know. It sounds like that might be a daily activity down in Florida.
    44:55
    Yes, it is. Go to the head of the class. Yes, it is. Let's see. Oh, how about a, well, Doctor Who. Now, I do have a Doctor Who. That I'm going to make a really sweet one for speaking of Florida. He's in Florida. He contacted me a couple of years ago. We talked about him. And it's going to be this year. I had to be delayed because I had some health issues early on. But his is going to be like over the top. So it's take a lot of time. But I have started work on it on that Doctor Who. Did we ever do that game? No.
    45:30
    I don't think so. Which one did we do? Because I always confuse them. Doctor Dude? No. Doctor Who? What else? I don't know. I'll look it up later. Maybe you're thinking – I know what you're thinking of. You're thinking of the murder mystery one. What's that? Yeah. What's that called? Everybody knows what we're talking about. Whodunit. Yeah, that's the one. Why do I get those always confused? Because it says who. Whodunit and Doctor Who. That's why. Okay. Well, that makes sense.
    45:58
    So, you know, our customer down in Florida, your game is coming. I'm planning on doing it, finishing by the end of this year. Playfield Swap, all kinds of good stuff in the game. But he has been waiting a while. So that little caveat there, I did take in like an emergency triage on another Doctor Who that was a wreck from Nantucket.
    46:21
    And this one, you know, he said, oh, my buddy, he's managing a property down there for his godparents. They're in Houston, Texas. They're coming in in early July. This game hasn't worked in, I don't know, five years or so. They got it from a place in Las Vegas. I go, oh boy, what's this going to be? Then he said, it hasn't worked. Then I said, well, you're going to be into it for X amount of money. It's like, well, I'll fly you over here. It's like, thanks for the offer about that one, but I'm going to need to drive over there and a stipend and meals and a hotel. It's going to cost you some dough plus the game. So, well, maybe I'll bring it to you. All right, bring it to me. Well, can you get it done within the month? And I go, that's a tall order. I get to like, you know, I can shuffle him in between jobs. So I shuffled in between jobs, you know, try to, you know, wear a lot of hats on that one. So like 45 hours later on this stupid thing. How many? 45 hours on this game. He brought it to me. Hold on to your wallet. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I basically, I did a little, I had to cut my rate down a little bit to make it all fit. It's like, I'm working for free now. This sucks. But he had the game set up. The game was playing. I saw the video of him playing the game. And it was kind of playing, but it had problems. And he said the sound is weird and some other things are weird with the game, but it kind of works. Okay. So maybe it'll be the lower end of the range. Well, that'd be good because I don't think it needs that much work. I say, well, I'll be the judge of that one. I'll let you know on that one. So he brought it to me, talked with him. He left. That afternoon, I set the game up, put the legs on. They all kind of go on, except for the back left leg. Put the bolts in there. Trying to screw them in. I'm screwing into air. There's nothing there. It's like, wait, how did this thing go on? I open up the game. I look inside there. It is all torn apart. Like there's no wood there. There's no bracket there. There's no T-nut. There's this air. Like, this guy, like, couldn't get the nuts off, so he ripped it off. And then I'm seeing that I say, okay, this long, like, five-inch screws. Do you think the caretaker did it? Yeah.
    48:42
    He didn't know what he was doing. Well, he took the other legs off fine. I think this one must have – well, I think this one probably had some other stuff going on. I mean, this stuff was ripped apart. I think it was ripped apart from Vegas, and they had some kind of weird thing in the back to hold together, maybe a rubber band or something. I don't know. But it was all missing. But he gave me all eight bolts, so the two bolts went to something. So I don't get it. And he didn't say anything either. Like, maybe you want to tell me these things before you drop it off. Oh, yeah, this is that. Not full disclosure at all. So it's like, okay. So I've taken these long screws, these square-head screws. Like, do I have a square-head bit? I never use that, but I've got to run it somewhere. Okay, there's one. Took it out, took it out, three of them out. As I did all that, the whole cabinet starts falling apart. It's coming unglued. It's like, boy, this thing is all falling apart. Now I've got to spend time gluing it back together, lining it up, getting two-part clay epoxy, wood epoxy, getting that in there, muffling all that in there, getting all that good, put some wood in there, putting a new T-nut structure thing in there, a real expensive one, a big Williams one they put in. So this is before you even start. I've been starting. This is like an afternoon. An afternoon on this thing. This is the unexpected part of the. This is part of the unexpected part. This is part one. They didn't tell you anything. They told me nothing. Surprise. Yeah, I was working. I don't think how I said I even sent an email. You never convinced me. How was this set up and working? How will you not tell me that this was like this? This is adding to the cost. I'm not going to eat this. This is adding to the cost. So I did all that, and then I'm starting to go through it. Then I'm looking at the elevator thing, that big toy in the middle there that's always a problem. And it kind of works. Oh, that's good. But the little is like five or six optos in the middle, like five optos in the middle, that little mushroom cap thing you're supposed to hit. And, of course, they always are faulty on these games unless you rebuild them. I think two worked. So the game won't work with – it won't do the right thing unless these things are working. So I knew I had to take that apart. I took the whole thing out of the game. Everything has lubrication on it from, I don't know, when it was first made. But lubrication now turned into glue, so nothing's working right. So you've got to clean everything. I had to clean all, take it all apart, clean all that stuff, put new lubrication in there, all that stuff. Then I had to put the new board set from Doomass, Dumbass, whatever his name is there, Victor, who made a new set for the board game. I put those in and it didn't work either because the clearance on the on the receiver and the sender optos, they aren't right. This little in between thing, the mushroom cap thing keeps hitting them. Say, OK, take it apart. I must take this part three times. It's a pain in the ass each time. So I had to put shims in there. I got that right. Then I started working. Oh, then I started working. Put all that back in. Then I'm working on. OK, let's work on connectors and boards. They had someone put a cheat sheet, one of those K-H-A-R 5-volt power supplies, a cheat. If you don't know how to rebuild your driver board, you put one of these in there. Or if you're too lazy to rebuild your driver board or whatever, you put the cheat in there and it kind of gets you by. It turns the 12-volt extra into a 5-volt for the MPU. And some people do that. I was doing that years ago. It's like, no, this is a better way. Let's fix it the right way. So I don't use those. So I rebuilt that board, got it good. The MPU, no battery damage. Put an NVRM on that. Then I notice burnt connectors. And then I notice going driver board. Let's do this wiring over here. In the secondary, it comes into the board. Oh, what's this blue wire? Why are they stuck together? It's like stuck together. You know they have like a lamp cord from 1960 lamp and it's two wires, two brown wires. And sometimes you want to pull them apart. Well, same thing with these two blue wires. They should be two separate wires, but they're stuck together like a 1960s lamp cord. Because they're burnt up. There was a fire about to happen. These things were so melted and so hot, these wires. It was all melted together all the way down the harness. So it's another problem. I had to figure out that. Take all that wiring out, get rid of the fire hazard. Then I go to the transformer. Oh, this was a European game that someone, quote unquote, converted. Oh, gee. Okay? And they converted it by instead of – it's a conversion way to do it. What you do is on the plug there is a jumper. You take out the thing and you jumper it the right way. It's pretty easy to go from 220 to 115, 110. Well, whoever had it – no, no. They chopped out that jumper and they put a bunch of wires together with electrical tape and a tie wrap and called it done. So, let me stop you.
    53:36
    This was probably in a very nice house in Nantucket. Yeah. They are fortunate that they didn't burn their house to the ground. Get them in a cigar. Yes. That's what I told them. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And what did they say? I mean. They won the trumpet. Well, first, first, well, what they said when I told them all this stuff, I basically told them, And he says, oh, my clientele is very upset. They're very upset by this. They thought it was a working game. I don't understand the whole thing. It's like, okay, here's some pictures. Here's some video.
    54:13
    Here's a whole 40 hours worth of work I've done with timestamps and parts and everything else. And here's the fire hazard. It's like, you know, I'm a craftsman. I care what I do. I'm not going to give this back to you as a fire hazard. Then it's on me. Right. I've got to take care of this. Then you're responsible. Yes. At first he said, well, I think we're just going to chuck it. We're just going to get a new game. Then I said, okay, whoa, whoa, whoa. So now you're saying you dropped the game off my doorstep as an orphan, and now I've got to try to get my money back out of it and sell this thing? The cabinet sides are all faded to crap. It's all faded. The cabinet itself, the bottom of the cabinet has a big crack in it like someone freaking punched through it. So even if I could put decals on this thing to sell this to somebody, you know, I don't think so. I mean, I'm not going to get a lot for it, no matter what I do to it.
    55:07
    So he finally got, I said, listen, I said, send this to your client. I put a whole list, and this is my whole list. Send this whole thing to them. It's like a two-page thing. And what I did and why it needs it and why the price is this way. He got back to it, oh, oh, they understand now. Okay, no, that sounds great. And I sent them a video. It's like, oh, they said the game looks awesome. It's pristine. That's great. Okay, no problem. We'll send you the money. We want to pick up the game as soon as possible. So they're going to wire me the money, which is great. So it ends up in a good thing, but it's just like, it's always under the hood. Actually, this one here is actually over the hood. The whole thing looked like crap. Now the game, I have it on my YouTube channel. Now the game looks and plays fantastic. Now it's like, you know, but 45 hours. Sounds like this game could have been a contender for a new cabinet.
    55:59
    Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm trying to find. There are companies out there that are building them, I guess. I don't know for that particular game, but they're out there. Yeah, I need to find that. I need to find, because I know. Well, there's somebody in your backyard, but I'm not going to talk about them on the program. Okay, good. I want to talk to you about it before. Yeah, talk to me about it later on the download. You know who it is. Okay.
    56:25
    Okay. I got a couple things. Okay, go ahead. I started earlier. I got some Virginia news. We're going to get a show.
    56:40
    A what? A pinball show? We're going to get a pinball show. Wow. Okay, how'd this happen? I can tell you where it's going to be, but I can't tell you anything else. In your basement. No, no. It's in Fisherville, Virginia. How far is that? It will be at the Augusta Expo Center. That's all I know. How far is that from you?
    57:04
    Hour change, maybe. Give or take an hour. North, south, east, west of you? I think west. Somewhere off 81. No, it's in a good look. You know who chimed in was Nick from Roanoke. I'm going to screw it up. Is it the Virginia Pinball Museum?
    57:29
    Yes? No? Don't know. I don't know much about the Virginia stuff. Yeah, if you saw the – anyway, he confirmed it, so that's a good thing. How do you find this? Is this a pin side thing? How do you find about – No, no, no. This is Irv again coming through. He's going to be my new local correspondent. And he also invited me to a pinball tournament, but it's on July 5th.
    57:53
    And I don't know what the weather's like where you are or where other people who are listening are, but it is like 90 and humid today waiting for the rains. Next week, over 100.
    58:06
    Inhumid? Oh, that comes without saying. I wonder if Virginia is the same type. We have friends that want to invite us down to Nicaragua for like a week or two and say, OK, well, just understand it's hot and it's humid. I said, well, are there a season when it's not hot and humid? Yeah, maybe like for a week in January. Yeah, no, we've had some beautiful weather. But anyway, I have a I have a list if you want to go through it. It's one you and I kind of put together on the fly. And I don't know if it was a Tim Sexton list or not, you know, our good friend the stash.
    58:45
    Yeah, porn stash man. Okay. This is in no particular order. You can comment accordingly. Do you remember the conversation of the worst game tournament?
    58:58
    You don't remember us talking about that? The worst kind of tournament to run? No, the worst game tournament. Like every game is horrible Oh yes yes yes Okay Like you know games that you normally wouldn put in a tournament at all Oh right Okay Okay Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So these are some of the ones we came up with, and I added a couple, and then I'll comment on one.
    59:24
    El Toro. I wouldn't say that's a bad one. It is worse. Okay. Well, you come up with one when we get to the end of the list. Lost World. Yeah. I played Herbs. Nice game, but no. No. Your favorite, Stink Ray.
    59:46
    Yeah, no. Those are all good games for the worst tournament, right? Well, I'm saying anything like Carhop and Hardbody.
    59:56
    Okay, I didn't have that. How about Thunder Turns, one of your favorites? Yeah, that's a good and crappy game. Okay, the one that I talked about last month, Three Musketeers, El Stinker, Rooney, McFaddy. How about Popeye?
    60:11
    Popeye, yeah, that's okay. You came up with a couple. How about Shrek? Yeah, that's a family guy. It's a family guy. How about yours and my favorite, Sinsad? That's not bad either. I'm thinking of a really bad game. Okay, well, here's one you'll definitely agree with. Pokemon. Yeah, I agree with that one. I played that again a couple of times. Don't get it. Don't get it at all. How about, I don't know how Sonic the Hedgehog is going to do, but it's a Steve Ritchie game. We'll come to Steve in a minute. How about Led Zeppelin, another Steve game?
    60:51
    Is that Steve game? I've changed my opinion. On Led Zeppelin? Yeah, I like the pro version. I don't like that elevator thing. I don't understand what that thing is, but I like the pro version of that game. Yeah, it's not a bad game. That was at the arcade, and I played it a couple times. I thought it was pretty good. Yeah, it's not a bad game.
    61:12
    Okay, so I'm taking Led Zeppelin off, but how about Blues Brothers, the game I never got to play because it was always broken?
    61:20
    From the people who brought you Thunder Turds? How about ABBA? Well, same company. Yeah, of course. That's a triple. That's Tic-Tac-Toe.
    61:30
    Yeah, those are a lot of crappy games there. Pretty much any game from Gottlieb from mid-80s. But don't you think that would be a fun tournament? These games are never played in a tournament. Now you put all good players on all these crappy games. You know, I think basically from your terminology, they're crappy games because they're not good players. So that's one thing. Then you've got the tournament. These are terrible games because these tournament games can be exploited. There's some games from the mid-'80s from Gottlieb that I can rob a million points from your score, from the player one score. That sucks. So those are bad tournament games versus a bad game that you're going to put in a tournament. It's two different things. But from your point there, yeah, they're different. Like El Toro, some stinkeroo games that are boring to play.
    62:24
    Yeah. Okay, so you mentioned Steve Ritchie, right? Yeah. So he's got his new game, Sonic. And it got me to thinking, and I know you didn't watch this during, I think it was during COVID. Remember Ryan McQuaid, the guy who did the homebrew of Sonic? Yeah. He was on YouTube night after night for months making the game and then was hired by American Pinball, I think it was, to make the game. And they didn't get the license.
    62:58
    Okay. And now he's not even, I don't even think he's in the pinball business anymore because I think they laid him off. Oh, that's terrible.
    63:06
    That's what I was thinking of. Sorry, Steve, but, you know, that's what I was thinking of. That's terrible. Right. Terrible.
    63:13
    Oh, well. That's how the pinball bounces. You want to hear a rumor? Sure. I heard this rumor a year ago. It's out on Pinside, so don't shoot the messenger.
    63:27
    It was Stern's in Trouble. I was told a year ago at Pintastic that there's a warehouse with between 2,000 and 5,000 unsold Stern games. John Wick, Venoms, Dungeons and Dragons, Foo Fighters, among others.
    63:55
    What do you think about that rumor? It could be true, but wouldn't you think in the corporate world they would just take them, put them in a dumpster and then call it a loss?
    64:05
    I don't understand how they could get it. Because it's a private company, you'll never know. It was a public company. They'd have to disclose that they were writing it off for whatever reason.
    64:21
    I don't know how you do it, but I heard this rumor a year ago, and it just surfaced on Pinside now. Oh, it did? Oh, wow. I'm a really good, reliable source. I'll let you folks at home figure it out. Not too hard. Wow. Right. So you wonder what they're going to do. Are they going to, like, fire sale them? I'm wondering if it's true.
    64:44
    It doesn't make any sense, though, if you have all that stock. No, it's not. The warehouse alone, unless you have the real estate, that's a lot of boxes. You're paying for that. Of course you are. You know better than anybody. Oh, I know. I know you know. That's a good rumor.
    65:04
    Oh, you know what? I got that Gorgar took for the pinball duds, the guy in New Hampshire there. He wants to make a real nice Gorgar for him. And as I'm going through the playfield, cleaning up and so forth, I was going to just, you know, I basically, because they put a prophylactic on the playfield, a playfield protector. We all cleaned the playfield, but that way it took out the dished inserts.
    65:27
    So, but it wasn't done right, of course, there's a quickie thing. So he said, oh, can you fix all that? And it's like, yeah, okay. So I took the playfield, so I have it at home. I've been going through the game. They're building the underside. Then I magic raced at the top side, took the playful protector out, magic raced it and make it nice. So I got it clean, but it's still, you know, lots of ball swirl in the black. The blacks aren't black, the kind of gray from the ball swirl. Then I noticed a really cool feature that the pinball duds did. So some insert, the extra ball insert in between the flippers must have come out, and they glued it back in. Unfortunately, they glued it back in upside down. So not too much attention to detail going on there, guys. Let's step it up a bit, shall we? So I said, you know, I looked on CPR's website, and they finally, it was in stock, a Gorgar Playfield. It's like, okay, I'm buying that. I told the guy, I'm putting this in your game, but he's willing to throw some money my way to do it. So now I'm going to make a really nice game for him. And then I'm going to take the other Gorgar I bought from Allentown to have a spare Gorgar. I think I might put this in that cabinet. This cabinet's better. But then I'm going to be stuck with a Gorgar that has a couple holes in it. And this and that. It's going to be like a Gorgar, I don't know, Frankenstein for sale for somebody down the road. I don't know. That's the other thing. I've got to figure all that out.
    66:55
    Then I got a call from a guy, a guy in Revere. This guy, you know, rough and tumble kind of guy, says, yeah, yeah, pinball mechanic, yeah. It's like, okay, yeah. No, I got a pinball, and one guy I talked to before, he doesn't work on them. He's from Boston. I said, oh, Boston pinball? Yeah, that guy. I'm just going down the list. It's like, okay. You're where? Revere.
    67:23
    Okay. So what's the game? Oh, it's from Marks. It's a toy pinball from Marx in the 70s. Oh, come on. And I said, yeah, I don't work in those either. Like, no one works in those. You can't get parts for them. Why do you – it's like, is it going to cost you at least hundreds of dollars to put in this thing that costs like 20 bucks? Why do you want to do it? Well, it's kind of an antique, and I played it as a kid. I got it on Facebook yesterday, and I picked it up, and I wanted to get it running. And I'm an electrician by trade. It's like, okay, well, you're a smart guy. Mind is your electrician. Figure it out. Take it apart.
    68:00
    It's got a yellow light not working. Got some wires here that are not hooked up. They said they asked me more questions about it. This conversation was going on way too long, but I was driving anyway, so I didn't really care. I had a dead day at the time, so I'll just entertain this guy. You know, remind me of the Jerky Boys.
    68:14
    Hey, should I bring my freaking toolbox, you know? Yeah, it's one of those flip jack things. Yeah, flip jack things. Yeah, the flippers, the flips. Okay. You help me out then. All right. I want you to come over here. You get your hands right in there and get your hands fucking dirty and you see what the problem is. All right. We'll see if we can fix this shit up. Okay. All right. If I get in your way, anything like that, you fire me down into the fucking yard. Okay. All right. So, yeah, that was a strange call there.
    68:46
    I just got to actually work on my Rush LE I sold to the guy in York, Maine. Real nice guy, Don, several years back. He called me because... You got out of that at the right time. At the right time. I just pulled the record. That game just... I see a lot of them for sale. LEs? The LE for sale? No, but... I'm missing LEs. I see them for sale. I don't think they held their value. No, the Ellie's doing okay out there, but it's like, and it still has a playoff protector on it put on it. It's still, you know, still playing great. But he had a couple issues with that. I guess the drop targets on the left were sitting a little too low, so sometimes the ball would get caught there. And I didn't realize, but Stern has an adjustment for that, which is great, a level adjustment, so I could bring him up with it. So I brought that up right. He wanted me to, you know, just day-spot the game and clean it up. And, oh, and I put a real knocker on this game. So these games from Stern came with a digital knocker that you can turn low or high. But it's a fake knock through the speakers. It sounds like crap. So when I had the game, it's like, I don't want that. I want a real whack knocker against the wood. So I got one from Pinball Life, put it in there. And in my place, it sounded like a regular knocker. In this guy's place, because he said, yeah, can you also do something to mute that knocker? My wife loses 10 years of her life every time she plays the game. She gets shocked by it. So what do you have in a room with no wall hangings and hardwood floors? He has it in a big basement, wide open basement. It's echoey. So let me see. I'll check it out. So I made a game go off on it. It's not like a shotgun going off in the basement, like, ba-boom, and echoed. It's like, wow, now I know why she doesn't like it.
    70:39
    You know, that might be something some men might be interested in if they're maybe looking to shorten somebody's life. Yeah, maybe.
    70:55
    There's probably a market for that. They might be. Not this household. Instead of the knocker sound, replace it with a shotgun sound or a machine gun sound. That's what this one has. It's a shotgun sound. Boom. It's like, wow. So I said, okay, it is a little excessive. So what I did, so I learned a trick from the Addams Family. Addams Family has a thing called thing knocks, like knock three times during the seance. And it's a regular knocker, but instead of hitting the side of the cap directly, it puts a blue rubber pad, hits that, so it's more of a thud. And even when you win a free game in that game, it's a thud, not a knock. So it's almost like someone knocking on a door really, you know, like, you know. So I said, okay, I'll just put a blue thing on this against the wall on the back of the camera where it hits. I did that. It's still a shock gun sound. I thought you were going to say you put a hole in it. No, no, not that bad. No, it's still, it was still loud. And it's like, okay, I'm just going to go take it off. And I was going to unplug it. And then I put the digital one on there and I put it on this. I put it on low and I say, come on down here. Let's see your thing. He says, oh, she's going to love that. That's that's perfect. So can I go back to someone later? Oh, yeah. I'm leaving it all there for you. You can go back later. You can put it back because he likes the loud sound. I think that's great. But she says she loves playing a game, but she can't stand that sound goes off. So it's like, OK, you got to keep keep the happy wife thing going on. Then I got to revisit on the way down the Cape the other day down where we are now in Cohasset. I sold that customer my hot dog and that beautiful hot dog that you have. I got the same place that you did. The game is still in gorgeous shape. So I look at it, it's like, wow, this hot dog. And I don't think he really knows what he has. He's an older guy and he's got the grandkids coming over once a year. It never gets played. It's still pristine. I almost feel like it should go to some collector who's going to really appreciate a minty hot dog because you don't see these. There are people out there that would buy that game in a heartbeat. What do you think they go for for something like that, for a mint hot dog with a plate feel like that?
    72:59
    A nice cab. Nice back. Everything's nice on it. It's already done. I mean, if everything's nice, yeah, who? Right guy? $4,000, $5,000? Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Five or more. I mean, to the right person? I mean, mine's all new old stock, except I kept the cabinet the same. So, you know, if he's got a really nice cabinet, which is probably rare, yeah, it's probably worth a lot of money. Yeah, and nice back glass, too. Everything's nice on it.
    73:31
    If he's an older guy, you might want to keep tabs on him. Yeah, yeah. When you want to move this on. Or you might want to slip the card to the widow, or excuse me, to the wife. Right, that's better. To be a widow. So kind of jumping the gun there. Jumping the gun there. Give the guy a chance. Wrong metaphor. Anyway.
    73:54
    And then I'm going to go see, actually today when we're done, I'm going to go see in Mashpee a Lord of the Rings that we worked on last year. Had some, did a day spar on it, but it had some weird problems. It had a lot of battery damage. And I swear I fixed the battery damage, but sometimes it's like a fire. It just keeps going. No matter what you do, it'll still creep in somewhere. So he just said he turned it on when he got back from Florida and it does the typical Stern thing from that time frame and he had battery damage or some weird communication problem with the MPU and the driver part. Everything just goes, it's like a blinker on a car, click, click, click, click, click, click, with the lights going on, off, on, off, on, off. So it's not booting up fully. So I was very fortunate to, I looked online, it's like, okay, I already worked on this board once. What am I going to do with it? I said, okay, let's look on Pinball Life and Mark or whatever. Who has this MPU board for the Stern game from this time from the early 2000s? I got a sticker shot. I can't believe what they want for a new, and it's not even Stern. I think we talked about this. What's the board set again? It's an MPU for a Stern White Star. Okay. Or maybe it's a SAM. $8.99. $9.99. No, it's $1,000. $9.99. Wow. Yeah. And that's for a remake or an original? I think it's a remake. I think it's a remake. It might be an original, but I think it's a remake. Okay. And so I so and I know a couple of years ago, I forget why, but I saw one, a good one, a good used one for Simpsons. And not only Stern games use the same board, the Lord of the Rings, Simpsons and a couple of the games only is a certain style of board with that. You only had a couple thousand games. Right. And the old the other Sterns, the sister games from that generation don't work in these games. You have to get this particular board. So the other boards you can get for cheaper. This board for this game? No way. So I scored this board for like around 500 bucks years ago from Pinball Life. It was like a used good board he had lying around for The Simpsons, all populated. And I bought it. I was going to use it for a customer. I went, I'm not using it. And then I think I was going to return it to them and do a restart. I was like, I don't need this thing. I don't need 500 bucks sitting around. But I think I thought I did. And I said, well, let me look around a little more. As I'm looking around to find some other partners I'm looking for, I stumble into, wow, I have this board still, and I need it right now for this account. Perfect. So I'm going to bring this board with me. It might solve the whole problem, and that'll be great. So that'll be another Lord of the Rings. I work on a lot of Lord of the Rings these days, a lot of that early 2000s Stern stuff.
    76:44
    I think that's all I got. I saw a Triumph concert with PJ. I've been to see Triumph in Boston. Before you talk about the Triumph concert, how much time do we have left? Less than a minute.
    76:58
    We got to go. Do you want to end it here? Sure. Okay. Thank you everyone for listening to the Classic Pinball Podcast. This has been Dr. Dave. That has been George. Have a wonderful, blessed day and a wonderful summer.
    77:12
    Keep on balling, people. Pinballing. Keep on balling, people. Over the edge, the story of Peggy and what a woman feels when she must find out for herself the things her husband does not know and face the fact that life must go on even over the edge. Stay lit and tilted, okay? That's better. Thank you. I stole it from you. You stole it from me. Oh. What's the balling people? What's that from? I don't know. I just made it up. Oh, okay. Okay. Well, I like to say lit and tilted better.
    78:10
    Say goodbye, Dave. Goodbye, Dave. Goodbye, George. Till next time, Classic Pinball Podcast. Rodeo Bro Dad. Hasta la vista, baby.