When I got my first 2 pinball machines, both EMs - Bally Bon Voyage and Bally Monte Carlo - they did not have any decal inside the diamond on the coin door. It was just empty. I then got Strikes and Spares which is early SS and it does have the typical Bally decal.

As I am working on them and fixing them up, I thought maybe I should get some of the decals and put them on there. But then, when I started looking at a bunch of photos of other machines of that era I noticed that the vast majority are without decals, just plain coin doors. And, the picture on the flyers also does not show the decal. That includes Strikes and Spares as one example shown here. I noticed that for a later SS Fathom the flyer does show the decal on the door.

Was there a specific era where the decals came in and then were put into common use? Or is it one of those situations where it was kind of randomly done by the factory? Or maybe, an option to be ordered?

So my basic question is, should the decal be put on the coin door for the older machines, or left off if you want to aim for keeping originality?

Maybe I am overthinking this, but this is what I do, it is a mental sickness.

Strikes and Spares Flyer Front (resized).jpg

Fathom flyer back (resized).jpg

OK great, I'll put them on! Except.... nothing can be easy in pinball.

I was just reading a thread here about the decals, which now I can't find again with the Pinside search function (which seems to be somewhat variable in the way it returns search results). Someone (I think maybe it was Forceflow?) was angry about the decals that you currently can buy and would never use them, because they aren't right compared to the original. Something about the thickness of the lines, and the direction that the red triangles point to on the bottom.

Well, then I looked into this to see if I could figure out what he was talking about, and yes I did see it and now I can't unsee it.

Here is the decal from the Marco online store:
coin door decal bally Marco (resized).jpg

Here is one from a random Ebay seller:
coin door decal bally Ebay (resized).jpg

Here is one that apparently was sold by pinballrescue, which is now out of business. This image is really hard to find, I can only find one instance of it in the Google search results where it shows up as a link the the pinballrescue site, which when you click on it takes you nowhere because their web site is gone.
coin door decal bally Pinballrescue (resized).jpg

In this last one, the red and yellow lines are all the same thickness instead of the red line being fatter like the repros. Also there are 5 red triangles pointing down instead of 4, with the one at 6 o'clock pointing straight down. In addition, the inner circle on the old one is smaller and along with that the distance from there to the yellow circle is larger, and this results in a more pleasing-looking shape for the red triangles versus the squat look of the repros.

It seems like a small thing, but hey not in the pinball world LOL where things have to be perfect. Details matter! I suppose this has something to do with the copyright control of the image, or something. The bottom line is, the old design does look better!

I was sitting here goofing around on the computer after work and I drew the whole thing as new vector art, EXCEPT the logo. All the other shapes were easy. But getting the logo right the way its set up with the blue and the black is testing me. I've got other things to do so I'm letting it sit as it is for now, maybe I'll come back and try again. Here's what it looks like so far.

Just noticed the top and bottom tops of the diamonds peaking out from behind the circles, will remove those next time I look at. Also need to fix the inner white diamond inside the yellow. (OK that was crap, fixed those little issues so this looks a bit better).

coin-door-decal-BallyV1 (resized).jpg

Well, yeah, of course. This is what we do!

OK I was off on another project today, and I saw this. This will drive you even crazier. Here is the logo from the covers of Bally parts catalogs, 1979-1981 era. This one is even different as far as the layout of the red triangles. You can also see the laziness of the graphic designer in the letter B, the empty space inside the big looping part was just left solid white, it should be transparent and showing the red triangles behind it.

bally logo 1979 parts catalog (resized).jpg

This is my latest vector drawing, it looks pretty close. I'm working on coin doors these days so when I'm done I might try printing a few of these and see how they work. (Edit) Updated image shown, improvements made based on the line drawing which can be found on the exploded parts diagram for the front doot in the 1981 Bally parts catalog.

front door emblem 1980 parts catalog (resized).jpg

coin-door-decal-BallyV4 (resized).jpg

Dupe

Dupe