https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/search?s=1&q=Hall+of+fame#results

smart guy, but his collection is going to die (get sold off) when he passes on because he refuses to train someone to replace him.

he isn't the only person who can do what he does...

Going to be hitting the "HoF" sometime this week. I have a week pass away from the family and
I'm headed to Vegas with a few friends. Can't wait to see how much more Bad Cats has deteriorated since the last time I was there...

Rob
creditdotpinball.com

Been to the hall of fame. Lots of game very few play right. From what I was told when I was there Tim Arnold has a couple buildings packed with hundreds and hundreds of games stacked to the ceiling.

The Big Hit Shed is full of machines.

Isn't there a las Vargas pinball club that takes care of the games?

No, certainly lots of people can fix pinball machines. But some of those oddball machines don't exactly have manuals. Perhaps it's Tim's ego that won't let anyone else touch them, and when he passes someone WILL take over (hell, if nothing else that place is a cash cow)

Because Tim bought every low production pinball he could get his hands on for under $50 and purposely stashed them away because he knew they'd go up in value. Tim isn't that far from Gene Cunningham

Tim bought them because he is a hoarder. It has nothing to do with value or making money. All his game there are dirty and not functioning properly. Even his pinball circus has wear starting on the playfeild because it's never cleaned. Don't get me wrong Im glad I could go there and play a bunch of different game and it's great he gives all his profits to charity but I wouldn't go there again because I walked away from half the games because they played so poorly. They had a TSPP there and the upper flipper didn't work. I told them about this. My buddy went there 6 months later same thing.

Tim is a collector. He bought every Gottlieb made for his collection. He ran an arcade with his brother and then bought him out. He made enough money to retire and moved his collection to Vegas. I just think Tim loves doing what he does, but has taken on a massive venture Easy to criticize but the guy is putting pinball out there for people. Let's face a lot of us would have massive collections if we had the money and the space, I know I would. Who knows how many more Pinheads there are from visiting the PHoF. Anyone who doesn't know him should really listen to the TopCast podcasts with him

It's worth visiting for sure, but you'll be happier at the Pacific Pinball Museum

Do you know something that we don't? I am pretty sure that Tim has a few more years left in him. He is not that old.

For those criticizing Tim and his ways... What have you done for the pinball that even comes close to Tim's generosity for both pinball and his community?

I know I either heard it on a podcast or a news article that said he maintains 90% of the games. And while Tim isn't near death, anyone can die at any moment.

I commend Tim for what's he's been able to create, but when a LOT of stuff isn't working because he can't keep up with it ($750k/year = lots of wear), it's time to allow others to help out more.

Tim has had multiple stents put in.... the most recent one being this year...

Tim needs to hand reign over to someone else, If something should ever happen to him.. there will be a huge vacuum with many people laying claim to run the HOF

Over & over I see post saying what Tim & others are doing wrong that are in the hobby or running retro arcades so how about we put a little logic to the entire issue of "poorly maintained machines". Most home collectors have 10 machines or less (unless you are totally crazy like some of us in the hobby). How many people with home collections have all their machines running 100% at any given time? I would bet less than 10% of us can say every machine we own works like it should!!!

Now take into the fact that someone like Tim has 20 times or more machines being played daily than most people own. What percentage of his machines do people think should be 100%?

Tim is retired (and has been for years) and doing something fantastic for his community. Tim doesn't give a shit who thinks what about how he does things. Tim has done things his way for over 40 years and things have turned out very well for him. Why would he want to change now?

How many of the rest of us have retired before we were 40 years old? How many of the rest of us have run arcades? How many of the rest of us have given hundreds of thousands to charity?

Before you bash what Tim is doing how about you let everyone know how much money you gave to charities last year or how many hours you worked for nothing last year?

Is Tim perfect - NO! Could things be done better at PHOF - FOR SURE! But for one guy to do what he has done is pretty amazing if you stop and think about it.

I have only been to PHOF 3 or 4 times but I was blown away. What a collection and add to that fact all the money he takes in goes to charity (and he even brown bags his lunch to keep cost down) is pretty amazing.

Tim's goal - plan and simple - is to give as much as possible each year to charity. His goal isn't to please everyone who walks through the door.

And as far as Tim's long range plans - that is and should be his business. If he has things set up so all his machines just get sold off once he passes on that is his right. He doesn't owe anyone in the pinball community anything.

As far as "machines in his collection" again who has the right to complain about him having "all those machines in storage". Tim wanted the machines he has - he paid for them - what gives anyone the right to complain about him having them in warehouse. At least he is sharing over 200 machines from his collection with anyone who wants to see and play them. Again - how many of us have done anything like that?

Enough said!

I'll decide when enough has been said.

He should hire someone to help maintain the machines. How can new people get interested in pinball if the machines they play are not working correctly and/or are filthy?

My brother was there this weekend, said there were three guys fixing/ cleaning pins. Said every pin he played worked well, with no major issues. He was there for a few hours. He's been there in the past and said things seemed improved over previous visits.

Well, that is very encouraging! Good to hear this.

That's good to hear. When I was there a few years back (and this was a wednesday, so it was hardly crowded, and they had a couple days to recover from the weekend), MOST of the pins at the PHOF worked, maybe 10 of them off. Riviera extension was a joke. Freddy display wasn't legible, WPT and CSI DMD starting to go bad, a gottlieb right flipper didn't work at all (and the ball went directly into the right flipper so you had no chance of saving it), the left flipper on cue ball wizard was cracked in half, and sadly Tim was there while I was playing all of these, and he was just collecting the money (didn't have any tools for fixing machines).

I don't want to bash him, he can do what he wants, it's his money and his machines. But if you're truly passionate wouldn't you want everything working so others can enjoy that experience. Like it's been said on here (and many other posts), if you don't maintain pins on location, people who aren't pinball players are going to get a bad impression of what pinball is and never want to play again, and then the hobby dies. In a way, pinball routers are ambassadors.

"Oh, that's one of those machines that's always broke, not sure why people play those things".

I was out there at the end of October and has a great time. I played all the rare stuff I could find. Goin Nuts, pinball circus, all the gottliebs I had not seen before, and plenty of others.

Most were pretty clean and played well. I did notice that almost every game was not leveled or pitched well and that was frustrating, but it appeared to me like they were moving lots of things around recently?

I had a good time for 4hrs or so. The rarities were worth it alone. Probably played goin nuts 20 times.

There were 2 guys actively working on games and cleaning them when I was there, both were not Tim FWIW.

By estimation numbers documented in Replay magazine, 2% of all coin drop pinball in the *world* is played at the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas. Pinball would not have the face it has now without the PHoF. And Tim does good things with the money, no one takes a salary at the PHoF. All money goes to charitable organizations. So frankly you guys can say all you want, but no one here (or anywhere), and i mean NO ONE, comes close to what Tim has done.

Well Said!

Over & over people keep talking about what Tim should do to keep pinball alive or to impress new players - etc. PHOF is not their because of pinball. PHOF is their to raise money for charity. If it was just about enjoying machines Tim would have continued to just hold parties at his house like he had done for years before PHOF. But Tim decided he wanted to share his machines with the general public to raise money for charity and for that I think we should all be thankful for that.

As I always have said in the past - things could be done better at the PHOF and there is always ways to improve. But when you think about the fact that everyone working at PHOF (including Tim) are working for free to raise money for charity the place is pretty impressive.

People who just don't get it never will but personally I want to thank guys like Tim & Clay for everything they have done for the hobby & their communities.

Impressive, yes. Do they need to work for free? no. Every non-profit has expenses, you couldn't possibly expect anything to run without money. I think most people are saying they shouldn't run it on a shoestring budget. I know it's about charity, and they donate PLENTY of money every year (not sure who they're donating to now that the salvation army has changed their structure). Seems most people are just saying spend a "little" more money if they can't keep up with servicing, or god forbid put some warm colored LED's in the EM machines so they don't look like glowing crap with the super brights. Get real leg protectors instead of jamming cardboard behind the leg bolts. And perhaps sell legal fresh popcorn instead of the 2nd day used movie popcorn he's been rumored to sell by many people I've talked.

I'm sure I'll get flamed for this, but to keep bringing up the "people work for free" mentality is retarded. If a group of car enthusiasts decided to be charitable and open up a free oil change place, and take all the donations in and give them to charity, but let's say every 1 out of 50 cars leaked all the oil because someone didn't get the drain plug all the way back in, could you then say "Hey, I did that oil change for free, what are you complaining about?" Imagine one of those guys came to your door and said "hey, give $25 to this charity and we'll give you 8 weeks of newspapers.. then the newspapers never came and you complain, and the salesguy goes "hey, I'm volunteering, don't complain to me". People are feeding quarters into pinball for a service, they should all work, not to mention some people specifically fly from out of state JUST to go to PHOF and nothing else in vegas.

IIRC Tim has to file non profit/charity statements... theyre out there.. you can see what the guy is paying himself...

reminds me of the stuff I've heard about Gene Cunningham.

people keep saying so what if the machines are broken and dirty, he's done so much for pinball ... is he really doing a good thing for pinball by exposing people to broken, dirty, malfunctioning games? he could be turning people off that might otherwise get into it if they'd played games that worked.

I've been there more than once and leave thinking the same thing everytime. If I were in Tim's place, I'd spend some money and make the PHOF the best it can be. If this involves giving less to charity, so be it. At least clean the damn place up. I'm sorry, but the place really is a dive.

But I also agree, it's Tim's place and he can do what he wants. And obviously does.

Perhaps having broken, dirty games helps people to be prepared for when they play pinball on location back home?

All sorts of bitter beer face in this thread.

I don't go to shows or any of that stuff, but the impressions you get of this hobby from a distance, both here and on RGP, is there are a lot of snarky, bitter, envious, jealous, petty people in it.

This thread is unfortunately proof of it.

I've been to the place several times. Not all the games worked properly. Most did. So what? I at least got to see games I'd never seen or played before, and it helped, at least in a couple of cases, to get me to decide to seek out and buy and restore those games.

LOL at the DMD type guys here bitching about the games not working. Hell, you find that kind of stuff in games on location all the time, where there's only a couple to maintain.

Quite a few of you guys need to get laid. I'm serious.

and on the east coast , Todd from TNT did a video recently and well that place looked amazing!

I seriously thought about going to the PHOF boot camp for a week or so. Not sure if Tim's system 80 Gottlieb skills are up to par.

As Tim operates a charity, the organization's tax returns are PUBLICLY available information..

ORGANIZATION NAME******STATE** YEAR FORM*PAGES*TOTAL ASSETS**EIN
Las Vegas Pinball Collectors Club NV 2013 990 21 $1,928,301.00 26-0060884
Las Vegas Pinball Collectors Club NV 2011 990 18 $1,357,968.00 26-0060884
Las Vegas Pinball Collectors Club NV 2011 990R 2 $1,357,968.00 26-0060884
Las Vegas Pinball Collectors Club NV 2010 990 14 $1,416,298.00 26-0060884
Las Vegas Pinball Collectors Club NV 2010 990R 1 $1,416,298.00 26-0060884

2013 total revenue $745,202.00 , $22,235 given to charity

People don't seem to understand... The market for Tim's effort are tourists. Not pinsiders that expect every game to be perfect. You guys are not the market. You are the 1%, Tim does not care about these people. They complain the most and spend the least. He wants tourist that have no problem dropping $20 for an hour, and leave with a huge smile.

Tim hates it when a busload of kids comes in on a field trip and generally leave a mess...

how would fixing his broken games not benefit that goal?

Nope. Haven't seen it.

I saw that episode and my opinion of Tim immediately went DOWN when I saw what he did!

*RANT ON*

The original stepper unit in that golf ball slot machine was rusted, but not badly enough to throw away!
Tim yarded it out and haywired in some 1970's Bally stepper in there. The original stepper could have easily been dunked in Evapo-Rust and come out looking fine and working fine. There was no need to go through with all that haywiring.

*RANT OFF*

I did not want to comment on this earlier, but I just put my flame proof asbestos suit on.

Tim has been on the show at least 3 times previously.

Hmm. Would've thought it'd be a much larger percentage given to charity than 3% with the way people say he only does the PHOF for charity donations. I've been there and love the place, but I have a hard time believing it costs him $720k to run the place. He must be putting a large portion of that towards paying off the building as fast as possible.

If you look at the filing... he has expenses... IIRC he cleared $300k~ish

He paid it off a year ago. That's when he called the pinsider's who play there suckers:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/pinball-hall-of-fame-is-out-of-debt

But all that haywiring entertains the masses. Watching the stepper unit soak in Evaporust, not so much......

I forgot about that

"so it now costs us just 12 dollars a year in fees to open our doors"

Sooo, where'd the $722,955 go? Couldn't have all gone to electricity and parts.

More to charity going forward, "General Corporate Purposes" or none of our business.