(spoiler: kind of a loaded question, but feel free to play along)

As of 2015 we can still obtain EM's from free to a few hundred dollars for your basic Craigslist beater with decent but peeling/red-faded backglass, good playfield with some wear, faded cabinet art with some scratches, and "mostly working" in need of a complete shop job condition...

...but what about complete, minty, better-than-new restorations? As far as I know, no one is tracking this. Let's do a little math...

Dave currently owns an EM which has been sitting at the back of his garage for years. He wants it taken to "better than new" condition. Assuming he doesn't do any of the work himself, he orders...

1) A comprehensive 30-hour shop job in which every mech, switch, lamp socket, contact, lever, score reel, stepper, relay, button, spinner, drop target, slingshot, pop bumper, flipper, motor, electrical connection, and jones plug gets disassembled, cleaned, re-soldered, replaced, adjusted, gapped, sprung, tightened, fixed, burnished, lubricated, re-riveted, and/or replaced. I know of at least one shop in Texas which charges a minimum of $750 to do this. Even then, not "obsessively"... but let's assume so for this example.

2) A nice NOS backglass or quality reproduction, new playfield glass, and set of playfield plastics. Let's use $400.

3) A cabinet repaint (disassemble, stencil, strip, sand, bondo, prime, match colors, paint, apply webbing, paint, reassemble). One of our local members is well-known for his quality work in this regard. Typically $500-$600. Let's use $550.

4) Polish, rechrome, and/or replace all external metal parts (coin door, plate, strike plate, legs, rails, buttons, shooter). Let's use $200.

5) Clear coat playfield (strip, prep, fill inserts, touchups, clear, repeat many times). Let's use $500... somewhere between HSA and DIY for a good candidate.

6) Reassemble and test. Did we miss anything?

Shop rebuild: $750
Glass & plastics: $400
Repaint: $550
Metals: $200
PF resto: $500

Total: $2400

At this point we still haven't discussed the "better than new" tweaks. What about installing cabaret lighting under the ball arch, as Gottlieb did for many years? What about stealth LED's? What about double lighting star rollovers? Maybe replace all lamp sockets including custom rebuilds of lamp socket strips and those pain-in-the-ass Bally backbox sockets? If we include all that, let's add another $300... minimum.

At this point, Dave has spent $2700 for an outstanding bulletproofed museum piece. He'd have to sell it for $3000 just to break even if you also count the "base" value for the original game as-is ($300).

Is this too much? Or not enough? Or right on?

True... does anyone want a fully restored Big Ben for $3k? :p

"It's not worth anything until someone buys it."

Well then, I guess a more interesting turn we could take with this thread is exactly which games *would* be worth it?

I'm "going there" with all of my games, so what the hell. Price be damned... just gonna do it.

I just want them to look great and not break whenever I have a party and/or open a barcade or whatever. Hope I never have to sell one, but if so, that the value isn't destroyed by incorrect appraisals.

Case in point: A guy at TPF this year pointed to my award winning original King of Diamonds and said, "That game right there is a $1200 game all day long."

No, pardner, it ain't.

It sold for $1700 because I was in a hurry.

Someone asked about Doozie at TPF 2014 and I said $800 firm. Her reply, "We looked online and your price is WAY high."

It sold for $800.

Too low, honestly. Which is why I never restore for money or commit the process to games I don't feel 100% about.

If you look at my profile page, you'll see the games which are getting "the treatment". 19 and counting thus far...

The $200 figure assumed existing metals were good enough to be reused. Agreed the figure is on the low side and implies a good bit of elbow grease and a pal who runs a body shop.

Funny Dirt... lol I got the hint. But truth be told I think a good number of old Williams and Bally games are just as fun as their Gottlieb equivalents and are built like tanks.

VECTOR is gaining momentum and our project queue is full and busy every night. New members seem to be most interested in restoring EM's. HUO's are great if you can find them... but at this point in time most of the fun is in bringing near-dead ones back to sparkling minty glory. Agreed "better than new" is a bit of a misnomer, but then again, as we go through every single part we correct and upgrade the shortcuts made at the factory.

I hope to feature at least a dozen restos at TPF 2016 which passed through VECTOR. Good opportunity to showcase what we've been up to & meet all the new members coming into the fold.

"Better than new" does not necessarily detract from the game as long as everything is done in the spirit of the original. It takes both an artistic eye and lots of familiarity with pinball to do this successfully.

We take extra care to match colors, avoid using LED's which contrast/blink/color cycle, and preserve the "feel" in as many ways as possible. Nothing will be the same as a HUO in mint condition of course... but the vast majority of surviving games are nowhere near that nice. For them, our evolving process puts them back on par with some nice extras to boot.

It's a win-win.

Well... eight months in and I can confirm the estimated labor/material costs hold up... for those who want it. The market is there.

My 2001 has two buyers lined up at $3500. Has been given "the treatment": Clear coat, stealth LED, cabaret lights, repaint, polished metals, full rebuild, etc. Even so, after all is said and done, it's not really worth my time. Only selling because it is a duplicate.

I'm also doing a commissioned Williams A-Go-Go for a friend's boss as a favor. Same treatment, similar price points. Normally wouldn't have agreed to do it because the time investment doesn't pan out. Maybe $15-$20/hr at best. But this is spare time work and it helps a friend... so... there you go. *shrug*

Realistically, for this level of attention to detail and resto-modding, I'd need to price them around $5000 to be truly viable as a part-time business. But I'd rather spend my time incorporating them into my future barcade concept so all of *you* can come and play them instead of watching my efforts get stuffed away in some private gameroom in suburbia...

Probably closer to $15. It's good for filling my spare time but I don't have any lately! Would be a more reasonable gig if I were retired... though by then I fear Steve Young might be out of business and parts impossible to find...

VECTOR is a committee within the Dallas Makerspace, a non-profit neighborhood workshop. A place to collaborate and share "arcade tech" tricks of the trade and have fun with the hobby. Some people are here to restore their games, some tinker with the mechs, some innovate new parts, some re-theme their games, some want to build new ones from scratch altogether. We're all a bunch of Oompa Loompas in Willy Wonka's Pinball Factory. People also make MAME arcade cabinets too. The last one was a Mortal Kombat X themed arcade cab which turned out INCREDIBLE.

Pics of it here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/DMS.VECTOR/

My next goal is to open a barcade with craft beers and predominantly EM's linked together with social media and live camera aspects. I have about 25 EM's which are all being rebuilt from scratch via a custom process to bulletproof and protect them for the future. The main features of which are:

* custom blended LED/filament bulb recipe to mimic the original look, save power, decrease maintenance, enhance illumination
* clear coated playfields to preserve artwork, re-level the playfield, save time (no waxing needed), and enhance appearance
* 100% disassembly/reassembly of every piece... putting it back together "optimally"... polishing cam/chimes/woodwork/etc.
* replacing all Bally/Williams lamp sockets and any corroded/questionable Gottlieb ones
* polishing metals, fixing/repainting cabs, grounding work

All of this is a fairly OCD process and tremendously time-consuming (which is why it doesn't make sense to do this level of resto-modding as a business). But it makes sense for me, because my ultimate goal is to prepare my "pinball soldiers" for battle with the public on a long-term basis. I want people to have one last honeymoon with these wonderful machines before VR eats their brains forever. LOL

Isn't Seattle where everyone wants to move these days? Lots of pinball up there, I hear...

Hiya Steve. I documented the stealth LED recipe here: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/stealth-led-a-recommended-recipe-for-ems

A growing issue stems from the fact that LED suppliers from China cannot guarantee color consistency over successive manufacturing runs. Thus, the recipe might not hold up over time... so I'm stocking up on the specified Comet LED's for my future conversions just in case. Cointaker's "premium super" already fell victim to the greenish curse... argh! That was my #1 go-to for pop bumpers. Looked perfect.

A lot of people go crazy with rainbow-cycling/color changer LED's in EM's... which is why a lot of this "anti-LED" mentality exists. Frankly, I don't like far out color choices either. Just because a piece of the backglass art is red does *not* mean a red LED will look good behind it! But truth be told, when implemented carefully, a blended approach looks very nice and offers many advantages over all-bulbs. Especially in the pop bumpers which often suffer from twisted filaments and burn out rapidly/scorch the caps. I'd ditch the old 44's though. I never use them anywhere. Too hot, too much amperage.

C'mon by the VECTOR booth and say hello... I'll have at least four games on the floor with "the recipe": 2001, Freedom, Snow Derby, and Pro-Football.

Heh... kind of. It sounds silly but some improvements really are better than what was originally offered. I have an AX stepper relay replacement in the lab right now. Once I get it optimized for production, it will indeed be better than new. Much, much better.

Stay tuned. You'll want some.

Correct you are, sir... but let's not forget I've only been in this hobby for 2 1/2 years. My original goal of EM->SS conversion was ill-informed partly out of lack of knowledge and partly due to laziness. In the beginning, I didn't WANT to learn EM technology... thought SS would be a clean way to bypass all of that "old stuff". Ha! Glad I didn't pursue that angle. Only by taking the long road and rebuilding every piece from a dozen EM's, over and over, have I properly learned the reasons why the original designers did what they did. The knowledge is now serving me well.

After playing the KOD retro project, I can see what went wrong with it. It was a neat idea, but it veered too far from common expectations of how a classic pin should feel and play. But I don't think such ideas are completely off the mark. The Mission Pinball guys have done a bang-up job of creating an open source pinball framework. It can control reels and advance them just like EM hardware... very promising. https://missionpinball.com/blog/2014/11/big-shot-expo-2014/

EM mechs are cool because you can hear and feel them snap and buzz which is part of the experience. But the AS stepper is an exception. It doesn't contribute anything tangible to the experience except frustration. Many of them double-clutch, do not evenly step, have worn gears, or do not make solid electrical contact. Or all of the above. Sure, I can fix them, but I worry about long-term reliability. Especially in a public venue with heavy use. Since the steppers are plug-and-play w/Jones connectors... it will be a simple matter for an end-user to upgrade. Several people have told me they'd be interested at a $50 price point: "Yeah, if I don't have to worry about those little pieces of crap... I'll take a hundred of 'em" kind of thing.

It takes creativity to seamlessly bridge old and new, but I think "best of both worlds" exists and is achievable. I wouldn't completely gut an EM with SS hardware today... it would feel too sterile. However, if the motor and steppers were left inside for the SS system to agitate on cue, your mind wouldn't know the difference. I'd love to convert one and have a contest... "which is the EM?". Perhaps if Herb veered closer to that end and stuck with the original wedgehead form factor... he'd have struck that magic balance.

No comment on whether the replacement will be EM or SS yet... stay tuned. :p