I am officially a member of the club now. Thanks to a very nice Pinsider I was able to get an all original (unhacked and unmodified game). It has some bruises and wear and definitely needs cleaning but I am so glad to see no modifications were made/added except for NVRAM. This game even has incandescent lights still.

My plans - LED OCD boards and a Pin2DMD. That's it - I want it to look and play as original as possible with just a touch of upgraded technology. I'll also need to find a way to "repair/cover" the right in-lane switch that is a bit chewed up.

Full cleaning and flipper rebuild etc ahead of me. If anyone has any tips / tricks / recommendations for things I should check/fix/look out for while stripping/cleaning please let me know. For example I read a post on here that a flasher under the ramp is so hard to get to it makes sense to LED it while you have the game apart.

This game is going next to my Funhouse. Rudy is already concerned about the creepy and kooky neighbors that have moved in.

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Question - when I got the game I had trouble making the ramp shot (the bear kick ramp) from the right flipper. I would estimate that 3/4 or 4/5 times it would come back down. Left flipper I could make the shot all day long.

I have since rebuilt the flippers and while the right flipper needed a new coil (heat definitely shrunk the sleeve and was impacting the mechanical movement) I haven't improved on that shot much in a couple of test games.

Can someone please confirm that this shot should be more difficult from the right flipper or should I keep digging for a flipper issue?

First off - your cat avatar photo is great.

Second - thank you for this. I appreciate the confirmation. I've often struggled remembering which games need the bat lined up with the tip on the hole/pin versus just above it and on this one I did line up just above it (like my Funhouse). So you've confirmed two things for me!

I'm about 20-30 games in after my rebuild. I would say the right flipper is do-able and I have made it a number of times and it seems improved frequency from prior to the rebuild. When the ball rolls off the lane guide and I try to make the shot that way it seems "harder" and more likely to come back down. It seems if the right flipper randomly hits the ball another way it is more likely to make it up the ramp.

Left side - just above the left upper flipper. There is a path the ball goes through with optos. Also the bookcase has optos.

I apologize - I read ccbigsoo7's message too quickly and didn't notice he was specifically asking about Thing.

You have to dig for good deals and post wanted ads and talk to fellow collectors in your circle. A sub-$7k AF isn't impossible to find these days but you won't trip over them (I paid 6.5k two months ago from a fellow pinsider I had never met before). Not everyone in the world demands inflated prices these days. Some are more reasonable.

As with all things patience is the name of the game. Many people on here agree through anecdotal analysis is that people with money and boredom (pandemic related on both accounts) want instant sanctification of a new game and that has driven costs up.

I did notice in my close tracking of this game over the last year that games above $8k do sit for a long time and have gradual price drops or come off the market unsold. While I admit that sometimes that is people avoiding fees but I think (again I admit anecdotally) that a lot of people are asking for crazy numbers and NOT getting them.

To sum up - the market on all pins is definitely crazy and stupid - but I actually think it LOOKS way worse than it is.

I don't care for toys on my games so all I did on mine is I added LED OCD and GI OCD as well as a Color DMD (actually I did a Pin2DMD). I also added the magnet board for protection of the playfield. My game already had NVRAM otherwise I would have added that as well. If your game had corrosion and got repaired I'm guessing a socket was installed so you could put NVRAM in easily if it wasn't put in there already.