Research and stalking done, orders have been placed, now waiting for them to arrive so they can be sent back out at the same time.

I’m in the same boat, I hope none of our gifts get into the hands of the porch pirates.

Just found out my package was delayed due to my Santa being sick with the flu. Hope your feeling better now Santa.

Eagerly awaiting my package arrival

Hey everyone!! I received my secret Santa gift today. Well, actually not just 1, but 2 gifts from 2 different Pinside Secret Santa’s. Unfortunately, something happened with my original Santa so I never received a gift. After that our awesome organizer, facilitator, and liaison John (aka LesManley) made a post about someone being left out and several other Pinside members stepped in and sent me gifts. I love the people in this community and those acts of kindness continue to show how great you all are. Now on to the gifts!

The first gift had an awesome set of hanging pacman ornaments and several stickers. They put a note in there telling me they were probably too late for the Christmas tree this year but I may be able to find somewhere else to put them up year-round. If not they will definitely be on my tree next year with my Santa playing pinball and defender game ornaments.

The second gift had great stuff too!! There was several promotional plastics as well as tools and Metallica merchandise. The Dirty Donny guitar pick keychain was my favorite and will definitely be going on my Metallica machine. Magnetic pick up tools are always useful and this will be my first with a light on the end, very handy.

Thank you very much Secret Santa’s and John for putting this all together.

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So another update here, a small envelope arrived from a 3rd Pinside Santa. Inside the envelope was a pop-up book style pinball machine. I quickly folded it into position and was surprised at the detail it had on the playfield since it was able to lay so flat. It also had a note on the back that said “Good things come to those who wait (Just wait a little longer)”. I will let everyone know when I find out whatever that is.

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So another update today . . . I received my 4th gift from the 4 pinsider, turns out this one is from my original (no longer so secret) Santa. Looked into it, it was shipped a couple days ago after the post by LesManley, not sure about the rest of the details of what really happened with this gift but I was excited to open it.

Inside the package I found 3 tranlites! I collect these and put them up in my shop. I went down to Michael's today and bought poster frames for all three so they could be hung up with my others. I noticed that the Woz one was signed but I am not able to make out the signature, perhaps another pinsider knows who it is? Thank you for these gifts, they fit in great with my collection.

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I thought that originally but then I looked up information about Jersey Jack and saw that it was owned by Jack Guarnieri. So does the ower Jack sign his name Jersey Jack or is this done by another employee?

So yet another update here, a large envelope arrived from a 5th Pinside Santa. This is so much fun opening these surprise gifts, you guys really are awesome.

Inside the envelope was a note, a classic Mopar Vintage car calendar, and a Dialed In pinball machine t-shirt. The note said how he (Thanks so much Rey!!) had done some Facebook stalking and noticed not only do I love pinball but also just about any motorized vehicle. My wife and I frequently attend car shows during the summer and enjoy snowmobiling during the winter. The Mopar calendar was perfect, my #1 dream car is a 1970 Plymouth Roadrunner. I also host a local pinball league and actually have very few pinball shirts so I will be wearing my new shirt at our next meet.

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It’s update time again, two more gifts arrived today, a tall skinny box the size of a poster tube and another the size of a big shoebox. These are the 6th and 7th gifts from Pinside Secret Santa’s! Im not sure how may of these gifts are going to show up but I can tell you I have never been so excited to check my phone when I get a doorbell app alert.

The first package was from “Pinside Elf” (the tall one) and had a gift wrapped in tissue paper inside. There was a note written on the paper that said “these are to hang on the wall” and wished me a Happy New Year. After unwrapping the rest of the way I found 2 tranlites: Who Dunnit and Funhouse. They both were great looking and perfect to hang up. I ordered more frames right away and I will post pictures of them once I have them hung up with my collection. Thanks Pinside Elf

Onto the second package (big shoebox). Upon inspecting the package, I commented to my wife that whoever had sent me that package had used a box from a Color DMD, I recognized it from installing one a few weeks before in my fishtales. After opening the package there was a note on top signed “Merry Belated Christmas from Replacement Secret Santa”. After a bit of a chuckle I set the note aside and saw a wire harness and instructions with the words COLOR DMD at the top in big writing. I immediately thought to myself, NO WAY, it can’t be!! I moved the bag with the instructions and harness aside and sure enough underneath it there was a brand new Color DMD LED. I couldn’t even believe it, this was way above and beyond any gift I thought anyone would give in this exchange. This gift was so overly generous, I don’t know who you are but if you’re ever in Bakersfield, you have my address, I’d love to meet you so I can shake your hand and buy you a drink. THANK YOU SOOO MUCH!! I already know exactly which machine I’m going to put this in, I have an Attack From Mars that is begging for a color DMD upgrade. I will post a picture as soon as it’s installed.

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Had a chance to spend some time in the shop today. Framed and hung up the rest of the translites I received. They look great with the others in my collection. I may need to find a new place to start hanging them soon since I am running out of wall space.

Also installed the color DMD in my AFM. It looks amazing, just the finishing touch this game needed.

Thank you sooo much to all of my Secret Santa’s for the awesome gifts and LesManley for putting all this together.

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Found another gift in the stack of mail my wife brought in yesterday. This one was small and hid under a magazine in the pile of mail. This is the 8th gift that I have received. Crazy right? I love you guys, whoever gets me as their Santa next year is going to score BIG!! On to the package.

As I said, it was quite small and very thin so it had me puzzled at what it could be. No return address or note with this one. When I opened it up I found 2 decal mods for my Addams Family. The first was a bookcase decal and the second was a think box decal. These are perfect because completely tearing down and going trough everything on my TAF is my next big project. It will be a while before I can install these but I’m sure they will look great when I do. Thank you and Merry Pinsmas to you too!

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Update time again, I thought I had received all my gifts but apparently not! A large box arrived yesterday from the same person who sent me the pop-up book style pinball machine, the person I earlier referred to as my 3rd Pinside Santa. This was the person who wrote the note “Good things come to those who wait (Just wait a little longer)”. I now know what “good thing” are. I am so blown away, this is going to take me several posts, stay tuned.

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Here is what I received yesterday, a large amazon box from Texas. Inside the box was 2 notes and 5 wrapped gifts. The first note was a well written rhyme that talked about not receiving a gift, searching for my gifts and hoping they put a smile on my face. They most certainly did!! I recommend reading it. The second note was some information that went along with each of the 5 wrapped gifts and I will talk about it in the next few posts.

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In the first wrapped package there were 3 gifts: two custom mounted pictures from my Facebook and a crimping tool.

The pictures are awesome, they are mounted on ¾” thick material and they have little kickstands that come out of the back that allow them to be stood up at an angle so they can be placed on a flat surface. The first picture was of myself jumping a snowmobile in Lake Tahoe last year. This is a particularly memorable picture for me because although the picture turned out excellent, when I landed my handlebars buckled and I landed with my face on the glove box and thought I broke my wrist. Thankfully it was just sprained but it took over two months to heal which ended my riding season and definitely hindered my pinball playing abilities. The second picture is of my wife and I also on snowmobiles, it was taken at the beginning on January just before we left to drive home. My wife and I love the pictures and already put them up on the mantel. The person who sent me this gift wrote in the note that they had ridden snowmobiles before and loved it but they were not as daring as I was. That is probably a good thing considering how I ended my last season.

The crimping tool was a request I had made. When I put together my initial Secret Santa request email together I was having (still having) issues with my Indiana Jones due to crispy molex connectors. I have a friend that brings his crimping tool by when I have an issue so I can borrow it but I thought it would be nice to have my own so I was not reliant on him. Problem solved, time to replace some connectors!!
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In the second wrapped package was a tube with 2 gifts: a translite and poster

As I have said in my previous posts, I collect translites and other pinball and arcade art to hang up in my garage shop. Included in this package was a mint condition Big Bang translite and a signed by Jersey Jack Willy Wonka promo poster. I purchased extra poster frames last week since they were on sale so I already had frames ready to go. I framed both last night and hung up them up on the wall. The Wonka poster fit in perfectly with my signed WOz translite. Started hanging them up in a new area because I ran out of open wall space in the first room. That is a good problem to have

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In the third wrapped package was box filled with several pinball mods.

My pinball collection changes often but there are a few machines that will never go anywhere. Two of those machines are my No Fear and The Addams Family. I have had both machines for quite a while but never did any mods to them other then LEDs and Color DMDs. I decided to put a request for mods for those two machines on my Santa list. In this package I received plastic protectors and flipper bat toppers for both machines as well as 2 more decal mods for TAF. There was also a pin with the cat from Cirqus Voltaire thrown in for the fun of it that I hung on the speaker grill of my CV. I already put the plastic protectors and bat covers on my no fear machine and they look great. I am going to save the mods for TAF because a complete teardown on that machine is in the very near future.

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After unwrapping the 4th package, I found a box with the words “Neon Sign” on it.

I love neon signs; no mancave, game room, or bad a$$ garage is complete without at least one in my opinion. So of course I was excited when I unwrapped a gift with the words Neon Sign on it. I quickly opened the box and found a “Game Room” neon sign with an outline of an arcade game. As many of you may already know, they pack these signs in 30,000 pieces of foam that always becomes static charged so when you are removing it all, 7-10 pieces end up sticking to your fingers and you need a second person to help remove them all. Approximately 5 minutes later we had a sign!! Plugged it in and it worked and looked great, very bright. Hung it up right away in the corner of my pinball room right next to the entrance to my shop where I keep my arcade games. It fit perfect in the spot and I love it, thank you very much.

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On to the 5th and final package: “Coca-Cola and pinball? There’s art for that, too!” -Pinside Santa

The quote above was the description for my last gift from this Santa. In my living room I have a pool table, a few slot machines and a whole lot of Coca-Cola and Budweiser stuff. They work well with each other because they carry the same red and white color scheme. For my last gift, my Santa found something that I did not even know existed: a metal Coca-Cola Pinball machine sign. I am not sure if Bally ever actually made a full size Coke pinball machine or not, Pinsiders feel free to chime in if you have any info, but it was a very cool sign. It fits in perfectly in my living room with my other Coke stuff.

Thank you for the extremely well thought out awesome gifts. They all already have their own places in my home and I can’t wait to start the overhaul on my TAF.

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Wow that's awesome that you could stay cool, I would plan on replacing that very very soon. You don't want to risk starting a fire, definitely got toasty!!