I'm yet another guy who took some great pics ~2008 when all the parts went to PSPA and again ~2012 when all the parts (and machines and some tooling) went to Planetary.

Circa 2012 (can't actually remember precisely what year it was) I received a full tour, not hosted by Gene but by the company responsible for selling his assets during the bankruptcy, of the house and all of Gene's building before Planetary took possession. I had been to Gene's compound and satellite building many times before and thought I had seen everything, but on that day I was taken through several rooms and buildings I had never been in before. In short, it was a crazy, surreal world this man had created.

I hope I still have the pics somewhere, but I fear they may be lost for the same reason so many pics are lost; digital black holes. If I can find them I will post them here.

Terry.

Damn it! I took those EXACT pictures. I just gotta find them.
Terry.

As for Atlas, I put a bid in for all the pinball parts at the end of their run, but I did not get them. All of their stock was somewhat cherry picked by that time, but there was still some value there. I think my bid was $35,000, IIRC. I admit that was too low, in retrospect.
Terry.

I've driven down that *lane* many times. Its a gravel driveway.

It's not my place to say what the winning bid was since it was not PBL.

I was simply clarifying that other bids could have been made once the original bid was placed. Were they? I don't know. I didn't end up raising the bid. That's my business and I feel comfortable sharing that bit of info. Beyond that, I am not at liberty to say, sorry.

I found it odd that Gene had so much stuff left in ~2012. About 4 years earlier he had supposedly sold everything to another pinball parts seller(s), yet he still had rooms, no buildings, full of parts in his possession when I took the pre-bankruptcy tour of his properties in ~2012.

The debtors list was insane as well. I remember places like the local donut shop being on the list. Crazy.

It was the offical bankruptcy auction. Are those federal? Heck, I don't know. Luckily I have never had to gain much of an understanding of what is all involved in bankruptcy proceedings.

Nothing was sold before the *auction*. It wasn't an auction in the typical *live auction* sense. PPS had put in a bid and that bid had to be topped before a certain date. I think Wayne cleared up how it all worked with the documentation he posted.

Gene was also not able to sell or even touch his stuff during the proceedings. I remember us walking by a pile of ladders and Gene asked the guy from the auction house that was leading our tour if he could borrow one of them for something he needed to do. He was told *NO* in no uncertain terms. Wow.

My biggest fear about buying Gene's stuff was that the second I became the new owner Gene would be my mortal enemy. Basically, the second his stuff had a new owner the bank would no longer be keeping Gene from the stuff, so it would now be my responsibility. Guards at multiple locations would have to be installed around the clock until and as the property was removed. Gene had a long history of hiding and stealing his own stuff.

"You don't do business with Gene as much as you do battle with Gene" someone once told me, and truer words were never spoken.

Not only were the pinball machines, pinball parts, and building included in the bankruptcy sale, so was his house and everything in it. We're talking forks, blenders, plastic plants, cheesy-as-shit artwork, guns (yes, guns), etc, etc, etc.

Some of the rooms upstairs had been pretty much cleared out, so I don't know what happened to that stuff. Also, the master bedroom walk-in closet was empty as well. To say this was a *closet* doesn't really do it justice though. It was probably 400 square feet. Maybe I'm stretching it a bit, as memory can be a funny thing, but it was BIG and empty. Both hot tubs were still there; one in the grotto and another in the master bedroom. There was a stairway that led directly from the grotto to the master bedroom, so make of that what you will.

Gene did not care if they worked or not. Most were never plugged in. It was all sad, sad, sad.
So in short, whatever condition he bought them in, things were only going to get worse. All his buildings leaked. During one tour it was raining outside and there was literally *A River Runs Through It* situation going on. We would joke that the only reason he had pinball machines was to keep the ceiling from hitting the floor, because LOTS of ceiling had fallen and was just sitting on the machines.

One of his buildings was an old horse stable. He hadn't changed a thing, except that horses were no longer in the stables, only piles of heaped together pinball parts. It was a total mess.

This, exactly.
If Gene sold his parts and/or machines then he wouldn't able to parade you past them while saying *I own all this stuff and you never will*.
His pride and stubborn nature cost him everything in the end.
I know what he paid for all the WMS parts (a fair amount of people do). I also can somewhat guess what the street value ~2006 was when they would have been worth the most, before tons of stuff got remade because of his hording and his impossible nature as a businessman. He should have died rich on a yacht, but he died penniless in a rundown ramshackle place.

They had no website until ~2005 (my memory for exact years has never been good, so someone please clarify it they remember the year better than I). IPB sold through distributors; first only Bearcave (IIRC), then after that venture fell apart reselling went to places such as Mazzco, Marco, BAA, etc. Gene dropped by my house unannounced at some point wanting to make one of his hand shake deals concerning the reselling of his parts and I politely told him that this was not part of my business plan. I had seen way too many of his dealings end in tears.

When the IPB website did finally appear, it was very rushed and thrown together looking (uh, that horrible welcome page with the pinball sounds). Most parts didn't have a picture or a description. My two favorite categories were *Metal Parts* and *More Metal Parts*. Classic.

No not free, but almost free.