Oooh, oooh, oooh... how does one get on that list?

That's frickin awesome!!! I love how you are out of breath just describing it... and I'm not far behind just imagining it.

You truly are a pinball rockstar!!

This sounds like an awesome idea. I took the liberty of setting up an online pool to help track entries and to keep dozens or more posts from derailing this thread. The link to the pool is here... http://bebepool.com/pinzap. Forgive the “baby pool”, as that’s all I could find online.

@pinballrockstar, if you don’t want to do this or otherwise think this is distracting from the thread, let me know and I can delete this post. Obviously we will need to have your participation to announce the date/time when no black nail is visible to determine the winner. Time is GMT+1:00 (Central European time?)

This is the introduction text on the pool page. “Pinballrockstar on pinside has a black thumbnail due to a rubber mallet injury. This pool is for fun to see who can guess the date and time closest to when no black portion of the nail is still visible. For the purposes of this contest, the nail falling off will constitute no black nail remaining, even if there is black residue in the nail bed.

For “your name” please put only your pinside name. No registration is required. For birth date and birth time (sorry, could only find baby pools online) put the date and time you think pinballrockstar will notice that zero black is visible on the actual thumbnail.”

I'm pleased that you are willing to participate in the silly fun we're having about your thumb. But, of course, it was expected, as most of your posts are about the silly fun you guys are having every Friday. I absolutely loved the "Crazy Amigo style pinball" post that you made... can hardly wait to get a Dialed In and try that myself.

Also... I am thinking that I will put a close date on the thumb pool of around Jan 31st (or at a minimum mid-Feb) to avoid some late votes with more knowledge of how far it has progressed. Might also be nice to avoid "intentional" direct photos of the thumb til the pool closes, since there's enough info already to make a fair guess for everyone and some people have already guessed. Lastly, just realized you can vote multiple times if you want, but that wouldn’t be fair. So in the interest of fairness, I will allow you to change your guess by posting another guess and I will delete the first/earlier ones.

Quite a few pics of that wonderful Black Nail today!! I have tried to keep the "Thumb posts" to a minimum as to not derail the thread, but please forgive the one interruption here for a final update. For those who aren't aware of what I'm talking about, read posts 2268-2277.

Here is another link to the poll that was setup to guess when the black would be completely gone from the thumbnail. http://bebepool.com/pinzap

To be fair to everyone and prevent late guessing from being much more accurate, I am locking the poll next Friday. There were several pics today so if anyone wants to update their guess, go ahead and enter a new guess and I will delete all but the last guess once the poll closes. This will allow early guessers to be on the same footing so to speak as those just entering the contest now with more recent pics. Oh yes, and PLEASE be sure to use your pinside name when entering (no email please)... I already saw at least 1 guess from a name I couldn't find on Pinside.

Thanks Mic and again, pardon the interruption. Absolutely LOVE the way the backbox is turning out!!! Carry on...

16 guesses in for the black nail pool. Officially locked today and posted here for reference...

Now we wait for Mic [edit: Bas will confirm] to monitor and let us know when it's all gone. Moved quite a bit over the last week it looks like.

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Dammit.. I meant Bas... been a long week (really long). I realized I referred to you as Mic twice now even though I know better. Oops... sorry.

yeah, but if you wake up in the morning and it's gone, we want that to be the time. I purposefully guessed a morning time as I thought that might be the time you'd notice first... like when brushing teeth or something.

Now, if Mic is with you when you wake up, we need to talk!!

I get so much joy from catching up on your build status every Friday... and I've learned so much in a short amount of time about how some of the parts of my own pinball machines work by watching you assemble them from scratch. But the complete lack of any ego on your part just floors me. People criticize the smallest details that seem perfect to most of us and you have absolutely a great attitude about it and always a pleasant response. I can assure you that I don't have anywhere near the skill needed to pull off a thread like this, but even if I did, I would either be pissed or crushed within the first couple of pages of posts and drop it right away.

Keep up the good work. And be sure to post how we can get some of that pinball Amigo merchandise when you're ready to sell. I see that you're giving some away to the best guesser for the nail contest, but I would definitely be willing to buy some if I don't win. I see this as a great way to support your efforts.

I entered the actual time of your nail clipping post into the bebepool.com website and it automatically scored the guesses. The original guesses involved BOTH the DATE and the TIME.

You can view the results at bebepool.com/pinzap

Scroll down a bit on the page to see the results. However, to be honest, I didn’t realize when I started the pool that it would score both the "Date" and the "Time" of the birth (nail clipping) as two separate items and assign a score. So, if you take absolute closest to the date/time as a single score, it looks like cosmokramer is definitely the closest at approximately 4 days 16.5 hours, with cybermarco coming in second at a little under 5 days 9 hours. (someone else can possibly check my math).

TL;DR Cosmokramer is the closest guess... Cybermarco scores consolation points for also getting close to the time of day of the last clipping.