I have had a cftbl for about 8 years, the hologram is still on the green side and has not faded since I have owned it.
When I first set it up I was not happy with the original lame lamp so I put in a 50 watt halogen spot lamp, that really made it light up.
I found out the hologram will fade out if exposed to ultra violet light from fluorescent or natural sunlight so I cover the playfield glass with a sheet of cardboard cut to the same size as the playfield glass. keeps the glass dust free too so no more cleaning I cover all my machines the same way.
as for the serial - my pin dolly has another pin on it at the moment.
The room I keep it in has a mostly cool for most of the year.

My CFTBL still has a green hologram. I bought mine from a marine photographer who had it stored in a dark basement. Never played it, he just used it for his occasional picture portfolio. So, I don't know if it was the combo of a dark basement or not being played or both. Prior to that I'm sure it saw route time as it had nasty ball trails. I did a full tear down restoration on it.

Of course now that I say all that, it'll turn blue tomorrow

Don't know the serial as it's currently underwraps as I'm still moving into my new home.

Could you provide some details? I'm still on the original lamp and while my holo is green, I would like it brighter.

The one I owned was the nicest original WPC I have ever seen. cftbl was not for me, but the hologram was still very good. I bought it from a ex hockey player near me, who had it since 1994 I believe, and bought it from another hockey player at the time. There was some writing inside the cab that indicated a local company had been involved, so I'm not sure if they routed it initially before the sale or if it was HUO and they were the distributor that it was purchased from, but it was perfect. There were very slight indications of coin use, however the guy I bought it from for the entire time he owned it didn't know about free play, and used quarters.

It looked like my HUO LOTR LE I just picked up, only 20 years old....

I used a 12volt 50 watt halogen lamp and transformer that is commonly used as a down-light for domestic home use.
These lamps were very popular when first available. I used a relay to switch the high voltage to the transformer from the original lamp feed.
It might be easier to use a white led cluster on a reflector these days?
BTW the halogen lamp gets very hot so I have set it back from the lamp tunnel

I have a suggestion that is far easier and cheap. I put a green LED flasher bulb from Pinball Life into the existing socket. Very bright and has worked well for many months. I haven't tried a white flasher, so I'm not sure if that would be brighter. It would be much cooler (temperature) than the halogen bulb FWIW.

Shawn

Just got my Creature a few weeks ago; has the original hologram and it is blue. I'm in Chicago. Have toyed with the idea of adding the lamp mod to try and make it green, but not overly concerned with it.

Green or blue wouldn't matter to me at all, I would just love to see it work for once!

Mine's working and green! It's even doing that flexing thing that makes it look like it's moving.
I'm just wondering if I should disable that to prevent wear on the hologram.
Right now the mirror in the cabinet has a big piece broken off but I've ordered a new one.

Mine is green, but someone tried to clean it at some point and left some scratches across it. I would like to find a better one, but it doesn't bother me enough to spend $800 on it.

Mine is more blue then green - but doesnt bother me, has no affect on game play, still looks cool.
I might try the green bulb or mirror trick but not really in a rush to do that.