I look at it primarily from a financial perspective, so for me it depends not only on the machine but how much you value your time.

I do all my own high end restoration work (cabinet decals, new playfield, chrome trim and chrome coin door et al) and I would never consider doing the high end treatment with that amount of labour and monetary outlay involved for any machine that isn't certified by the community as an A list machine unless I had a client/buyer already arranged who was willing to pay the quoted priced on a B list or below machine.

With machines like AFM, TOTAN, CV, MM and the like you can be assured there will always be a market for an "over the top" ground up restoration so you aren't in essence simply pouring money into a bottomless pinball pit.

I doubt I would go to the same labour/ monetary outlay for a Fish Tales as I would for a Medieval Madness.

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Definitely go the plating route, rather than the powdercoating for the ramps. It will look much more high end and the finish will be far superior to anything you can achieve with powdercoating. I use genuine 24k gold for ramp plating which are then hardcoated for protection and durability. Looks great but costly due to using genuine gold so I typically only use this material when plating items with small surface areas (e.g. wireform ramps).

If you don't want to do genuine gold plating you can also look into coloured (or candy) chrome plating which are available in a variety of colours. Lower cost than genuine gold and slightly more costly than regular "silver" chrome plating, but well worth it and unlike powdercoating it still maintains the reflective metallic finish of plating.

Here is a comparison shot between the two types from various machines. Wireforms and the IJ idol are genuine gold plated, whilst the siderails and lockdown are candy gold chrome plated.

Good luck with whatever route you choose.

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Yes, it's too soft for a solid piece and not cost effective either.

Having it flash plated in conjunction with an aftermarket hard clearcoat is a good compromise whilst still maintaining the "upsell" feature of using genuine gold on a pinball machine. Those pics uploaded are with the hard clearcoat applied and it is very difficult to even see the clearcoat.

Had my first ramp gold plated over 4 years ago which I onsold to a client and it still looks as good as new thanks to the hardcoat. A HUO low play environment probably plays a large part in that but these are machines purchased by people that are highly unlikely to ever put them out on site.

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