Quoted from Rik_:

Fun story time. My fiance and I would head down to the corner bar every Friday night for beers, and after awhile started playing the pinball machine they had set up, a beat up Medieval Madness. After awhile, it got routed out for a Scared Stiff. It was shortly after this we learned that the sister bar, a mile down the road, had a machine as well, Playboy set up.
Fast forward to the pandemic, and we missed playing pinball. After trying to locate a machine locally, we settled on owning our first pin, Avatar. I think we payed 4,000 for it, and told ourselves that we would use it to trade up to our grail, MM. Our next machine, Playboy, arrived due to Captain Jack and a over enthusiastic woman who decided to push down my finger on the mouse button after I had said the bid was over what i would pay haha!
A few more machines were purchased in the coming months, a Sega JP and a Stern Indiana Jones, which we ended up trading both for our Scared Stiff. Second machine of our pinball dating trifecta acquired!
During this time, Avatar had gotten a bit stale, and we ended up talking to a guy with a BK:SoR Premium that was interested in a trade. $1300 later we had worked out a deal and started enjoying the verbal beatdown of the Black Knight. I enjoyed the challenge of the pin, but the woman didn't, so when someone reached out to trade a BM66 straight across, we jumped on it.
Fast forward to 6 months ago, BM66 was getting blown up, billion points games, and the challenge was gone. After posting a few times looking for trades, we ended up trading for a decked out EHOH premium. Loved the game, became our favorite, hated having to take the glass of all the time to tweak things. After poking around locally for a trade, we were ready to make a deal on a GZ when I saw an ad locally for a HEP MM. The holy grail of our holy grail.
I reached out, expecting a "not looking for trades" response, or worse an already taken response. Instead there was interest for a trade, due diligence taken on both sides, and a deal was made for EHOH +$6k. The trifecta was complete, and the promise of Avatar -> MM was held!!!
Sorry for the long read, just like the story of how it all came together and finally happened.