There is no more “gold”. CPR doesn’t grade and stamp their playfields anymore.

My 2 cents:
1) Consider playing the game for a while, put a few hundred games in, before deciding on a restoration and gauge your love for it. You’ll spend more on a full blown restoration than you’ll likely get back in a sale if you lose interest, and even more so if it doesn’t get finished. A new playfield, back glass, boards, cabinet repaint, etc can jump up over $2K or more pretty quick. It would suck to spend a lot of time and money only to find that you are left with a game you aren’t that into, and could have had more game for the money.

2) Make sure you are comfortable with (or better yet enjoy) troubleshooting electrical and mechanical issues since it’s a big part of pinball ownership. If you go the route of a complete tear down and replace a bunch of components, odd problems inevitably creep in, even if the machine was working 100% before you start. It’s much easier to diagnose problems if you can replace parts one at a time and test compared to swapping a number of components at once.

3) if you don’t like trouble shooting (or lack the time or skills) consider seeking out a local reputable pinball tech for help getting a machine up and running. If they don’t do in home service, ask if you can watch while they work (they might decline), or if they can give you a detailed walkthrough of what they have done. The process of diagnosing issues is an invaluable resource.

4) I find it actually a lot easier to start pinball restorations as a hobby with Electro Mechanical machines from the 60’s and 70’s. The machines are widely available, cheap, simpler, and parts are plentiful. The schematics are easy to read and troubleshoot. They only require rough soldering skills, basic tools, and an multimeter. I think they are a great entry point into pinball ownership and restoration.

All that being said, it is a lot of fun to work on pins and good luck with whatever you do.

There is some side discussion about that wisdom of that on here. Adding molex connectors everywhere adds both cost and additional failure points. The only upside is to save from having to possibly pull out your soldering iron when performing service. To each their own.

Like I said, to each their own.

There is no case in which splicing a connector into a solid strand of wire adds to the reliability. The crimp is a failure point, and making good crimps is both a skill and dependent on your crimp tool and materials. A loose pin in the housing becomes a dead short that fries a transistor. A loose connector is another failure point that causes intermittent issues that are a pain to troubleshoot. Older games where the dye leaches out of the insulator causes bad connections.

I test my crimps with a 20lb dumbbell

Sounds like a lot of extra work.

I prefer a good crimp over a shitty soldering job.

It's not a one or the other choice. You will still have a solder joint at the coil terminals even with a molex connector. It isn't eliminated as a possible failure point.

You might be able to get your costs down if you buy connector housings and pins in bulk, but it is probably more than 25 cents each for most of us if you are only ordering a few. Example: $5.50 for a 3 pack before shipping https://www.parts-express.com/Molex-2-Pin-Connector-Kit-0.093-3-Sets-092-552. On my current project that has 17 coils and relays, it would add an extra $33 to the build cost before shipping, not including say $50 for a good crimper if you don't already have one, and any extra wire you need.

I'm for connectors to allow easier servicing of larger assemblies like drop target banks with multiples switches, relays, coils, etc. where unsoldering each component wouldn't be feasible. Because of that, these are usually included from the factory.

I'm not for adding connectors to simple 2 and 3 wire coil connections that rarely need to be disconnected and aren't difficult to solder. If you need to replace a coil when you have a molex connector, you will need still need to solder on a lead with a molex connector, so you haven't saved any time or effort. And if the coil has overheated, it's quite possible the connector housing has too.

If you like adding them, that's cool. It might save you from having to solder something over your cabinet with the playfield raised or over your brand new playfield, but it doesn't provide enough benefit for me to want to do it.

Nah any of them work fine. They'll even survive the dishwasher without any trouble (the labels of course, not the label maker).