Sorry to hear about Allen's passing Ray. WOW, this one is a shocker. I read this post last night before I went to bed and thought about the memories of my time with Allen.

My brother, Garry, was the one who first introduced me to Allen, Ray and TreasureCove. We just got into the hobby and began purchasing some pins with less than adequate restorations and conditions. Garry started looking around on the web under "pinball restorations and sells" and found a place called TreasureCove and, lo and behold, was in the City of Jeffersonville from which we lived. I remember meeting Allen, Ray and Brian for the first time. Brian is his son who helped with the restorations and I remember one time his daughter helped out briefly in touch ups on the pins. I still have her homemade topper on my AFM pin which is awesome. It was definitely a family owned and operated business. I was impressed with their workmanship and always felt jealous of Allen having a job working in the garage restoring these toys. Sometimes I would just go over to his house and look around his garage (workshop), amazed at all of the cool pinball stuff sitting around. I teased Allen how the money he got from me helped pay for his wife's sports car one year. LOL

Yes, my brother and I ended up buying some of TreasureCove's restorations, with me buying 9 pins (AFM, MM. MB, TOM, TAF, CV, JP, Frankenstein, SS) and Garry getting CFTBL and TZ. My brother and I always teased each other how our pins sometimes smelled like fabric softner to our delight, since his work area was by the laundry room of their household. LOL I recalled the excitement when I called my brother after I finally got the call from Allen saying my pin was ready. Allen's house (and his famous garage door) was just a hop, skip and jump away from my house (maybe 4 miles, tops) and I couldn't wait to get there. LOL I felt like I was just an infant back in the day in terms of collecting pinballs and it's history. Between TreasureCove and Chris Bucci's YouTube videos, I don't know which one influenced me the most in this hobby back in those days. We wheeled and dealed on the pin purchases and I'm sure we didn't see eye to eye on things, but it was always professional and I remember countless times he would come to my house to fix a pin problem I would have (usually for free). Whenever I knocked on the front door of his house, he always let me in to say hi, even just for a brief moment of me walking to his workshop. He showed my brother and I just a couple tips of the trade and an TAF that was so damaged you could see the wood on it. Yep, I ended up buying that restoration from him and I still have most of his restorations in my collection to this date.

I quit buying from Allen several years ago, only because I purchased most of the Bally/Williams pins I wanted in my collection. IMO, Allen's Bally/Williams restorations was his specialty. Since Allen was more of a restorer than a distributor and with me gravitating towards the newer Stern/JJ pins, my interest and money went some place else. I saw Allen a couple of times per chance just by going around town and he always stated he wanted to come over and check out my mancave that he helped started, but I'm sure life got in the way like it usually does.

Didn't mean to make this to a "pinball eulogy", just wanted to tell a story. Rest in Peace Allen and may God look over your family during this difficult time. Thanks for being my pinball buddy.

Larry