2017 must be the year of the boat anchor as my clientele ask for late model Solid State DMD versus EM machines on a consistent 20 ratio.

I imported half a dozen of them in my container as space filler last year to test the market and still have four of them packed up and untested since unloading.

When we are dead, most of us probably won't care anymore. Just like my old man probably doesn't care what will become of his Clydesdale beer stein collection.

My mission is to enjoy fixing and playing these coin operated machines as long as I can before I forget how, lose interest, am no longer physically able to, or suddenly drop dead. The world has a way of cleaning up whatever we leave behind.

I have yet to ask to be put in anybody's will.

There's a few collectors around here with hundreds of machines in warehouses and stuff that they have been "waiting to get to" for 20 years (and refuse to sell at project price until they get to fix them up). Makes me wonder what will happen to all of that. There are a lot more EM machines around than we think, they're all just loaded up in barns somewhere. Even though I know some of these people as friends it admittedly makes me a little sad. The whole EM pinball resurgence thing is going on right now and these things are in the dark and cold holed up for their 20th Christmas in a row and missing all of it. To each their own, I just hope they don't all get thrown out when said people pass on.

Seems like a lot of people in this hobby don't have a plan for these things either, although likely a private matter.

It's a losing battle. Around here "information should be available/PBR is wrong about one single thing" = "SCREW STEVE AND ALL HE'S EVER DONE FOR THE HOBBY!"... when that is obviously not what we mean at all. There's no in-between for a lot of people and also the whole thing of internet copyright/SOPA/etc. is after a lot of people's time here, I could see how the effects are hard to grasp. Oh well. Also, criticizing Steve to a lot of people is like saying the pope did something wrong and you're ostracized for even thinking it.

Keep fightin' the good fight.

To summarize: We'd totally buy schematics - but if you don't want to, the option should be there especially since you likely own the machine.

I've heard a lot of that myself. Every once in a while you hear about one of these hoarders cutting them loose for one reason or another. It is a condition I don't understand but is quite common not just in pinball.

Just happy to say I'm not like that. If it's not being used or has potential to be used soon, it out the door or shit canned. The less you have, the easier it is to keep track of and deal with what you do have.

Check out the Netflix series Black Mirror's episode "Hated in the Nation". It's story line is just that: Bees have all but been wiped out and now they have AI robotic drone mechanical bees that have taken their place. Of course something goes horribly wrong with this "Solution". Maybe the mutli-percent higher powered and ever increasing number of cell phone/internet towers has something to do with the Bee die offs?

Lots of other possible culprits (some nefarious) schemes as well but that one is a good place to start....

We will get you a high seated walker. No problem!

My clientele desire just the opposite. Most aren't looking for DMD games they want EM and early SS done up to look and play like new condition.
And I get very good money for my restored EM and early SS pins.

I cannot work it out, some titles go for over $1500, others cannot sell for $800
the pinball shed just opened a container of EMs (60's era Bally) and seem to have already sold most of them

I should not ask, but what EMs are you sitting on?

Fair point. In my case I am delberately targeting sales towards new entrants to the hobby who are looking for their first machine purchase as my primary goal in importation is to help expand our userbase down here in Australia rather than simply catering to the existing one.

Most of those first time buyers are in their 40's with some disposable income who remember playing that era of 1990s machines but are baulking at local NIB Stern pricing and looking towards an alternative with an era of machine that is of similar level in complexity.

From what I understand, pinball shed is selling most of his inventory in house on the local forum with the full cooperation of the Admin (funny that ) to the existing userbase which would virtually guarantee a sale regardless of title.

If you are genuinely interested in buying I can drop you a PM with the titles I have on hand, but I will want to at least get them powered up first since I have made it a rule not to sell untested regardless of the end buyer's skill set in pinball repairs.

It's called running a business, son. You don't give away your product.

Where do you think the other guys who sell EM parts are getting their parts? You think they're reproducing stuff? Ever notice the stuff they sell is always higher priced, and not by a few cents, either.

As for the condition of your games, well, we'll leave that alone...

Not his product, it's the product of people who've probably been dead for 20 years. Steve is just the lucky guy who paid for the Gottlieb cash cow. Dishing out cease and desists over schematics for 40 year old hobby games makes you a loser IMO. Maybe a successful loser making a lot of money, but still a loser. You can sell the product without enforcing the copyright to people wanting to not make profit from it and just fix their games.

That makes sense. I'm happy to spend the extra $2 to make the buying experience 100x easier though. Have done it before, and will continue to do so. Can pay with PayPal, zero phone or e-mail contact, instant ordering, and not having to deal with you-know-who is probably worth the $2 on its own. Although, I don't think I've bought a lot of Gottlieb-specific products before, haven't really ever had the need. Things like plastics and whatnot already come pretty mint on my games - usually just end up buying light bulbs and pinballs which thankfully the copyright-hounds can't get their grubby fingers on.

Excuse me? I encourage you to come over and take a look. At least it's not a cookie cutter collection.

You insulting my collection is not doing wonders for your argument. Clearly we do not agree but you don't need to be a jerk.

Wow, so you guys can't fix your gottliebs without schematics?

You guys got bigger problems than not having an extra $16 in your pocket

I'd like to be the trash collector in that neighborhood.

If the holder doesn't protect his marks he loses them. You have a lot to learn. But it's usually the ignorant and/ or uninformed who run their yaps the most.

Steve isn't hard to work with at all if you aren't an asshole. Just a thought.

Probably the only valid point. I'm not saying it's just Steve, it can be Steve and the Gottlieb copyright owners or just them or whatever combination. I am not targeting just Steve, I'm pretty sure the Gottlieb copyright owners have more of a hand in the legal end of it anyways. I'm pretty sure they're the ones who sent the cease-and-desist to IPDB. I'm glad Steve sells printouts of the schematics, that is a good service for the community, I'm just saying that enforcing it to be the ONLY method and not letting people share online is hurting the hobby, especially its future when his business goes away after he retires or passes away. Perhaps Gottlieb/Mondial will find a new business to distribute them however I'm sure eventually that whole thing will fold too, speaking long-term, and the issue will then be lack of Gottlieb schematic documentation as a whole rather than people enforcing it/who's selling it.

Ouch, that's going to leave a mark.

Oh, and everybody here complains about how awful the owner of PPS is, but the Williams (and Bally) schematics are free game to share and distribute online (and are able to be used here much more than the occasional Gottlieb schematic snippet posting), as well as being freely hosted on IPDB. Food for thought.

And yet PPS,etc can leave them be just fine. Every time I've ever heard that line trotted out in the past it's usually followed by lawyer calling it BS.

He's also hard to work with if the last guy was an asshole, or you ask a a question that an asshole asked, or if you've got a question very similar to a common question but differing in one subtle but important way, etc etc.

If PPS can do it I'm sure it's not a necessity, and if it is in Steve's agreement and not PPS's, it's fault of the owners of the Gottlieb copyrights then. So regardless, it's somebody's fault.

movementlol2 (resized).png

Anyways, I'm off for the night. You guys have fun and sorry about the thread, the original intent was cool and hopefully it can return to that.

No, they would never go after anybody they thought might be infringing on the B/W licenses.

http://www.pinballrescue.net/Decals_Apron_Bally.html

it is a "millennial" thing. they are entitled to everything, and everyone gets a trophy

Time mememe (resized).jpg

I've Met Steve he's a solid dude. Without PBR we'd be fuct . If you spent the last 40 years taking calls with people asking for a doo-Hicky and a Thingamabob you might develop a noob screen filter mechanism yourself .

If you take the time and give him the part number and know exactly why you need it, he's not just good to deal with he's great. He works his ass off to keep our EM's up and running .

It's not just schematics it's thousands of signature parts that he's invested his life and profits into developing and manufacturing. Steve has acquired more tools and machinery that you could visualize in your wildest LSD induced hallucinations. I have no idea how much money he has tied up in his work shop but I'm betting even Norm Abram would cream his shorts.

If anyone that thinks otherwise is entitled to to their opinion. But I'd argue you couldn't be more wrong if you tried.

Key word, *can*. PPS are still major assholes, but even they *can* let people put the schematics up. Eg, it's not a legal thing.

Wow, you're stretching now eh? Also, great job reading your own stupid image.

Me too!

Amazing how no one is complaining about any of that

Sure why not! They've got $10,000+ remakes to sell!

I am not a reprint I am a free schematic!!

Sorry phil-lee ...it popped into my head and I couldn't resist

Wow, you're stretching now eh? Also, great job reading your own stupid image.

lighten up! i was just poking the bear... and no they will not save us.
funny how people get their panties in a bunch over nothing. it is just paper 16 bucks but no one complains about a 9.00 coffee at starbucks?
when everyone comes to the realization that everything revolves around money the better off you will be. nothing is free someone has to pay for it.

I think the reason that EMs remain so cheap or hard to sell is because they're not very friendly looking "under the hood," and they somehow gained a reputation as being unreliable (which is undeserved, imho).

When discussing lack of game depth or rules as a driving reason, I think that for the casual player, even with games with deep rules, they'll still aimlessly flip the ball around without knowing what to really shoot for.

Funny people getting worked up, says guy trying to get people worked up.

... Except for digital copies, which are free.

Yeah, those remakes they've totally been making since the 90s, and all through the time that they've been allowing people to distribute pdfs and roms.

Also, not what I was talking about.

Steve Young and PBR don't belong in the same conversation as the word greed Just because people don't want to pay for schematics. If you can't afford schematics then you can't afford the game. Come on....

wrong! someone has to pay for the bandwidth to host it.

shooting fish in a barrel

Well, try getting one from them then. Believe me, they have more ways to make money than reproduce parts for 40+ year old pinball machines and sell them at the lowest possible price. Oh and I don't think they want to bother with that either.

Agree. Williams games are easy to order parts because of the manuals redily available online. Finding correct part numbers for gottlieb games is next to impossible.

On the same note, Gottlieb EMs are easier to actually get parts for, Williams and Bally not so much.

Not to mention the great situation where you pick up a Gottlieb without any papers, and then try to order some parts....and a manual. Can't hard the part numbers if you haven't gotten the manual, but it's senseless to make multiple orders.

I've got one of those online parts catalogs right here. Very convenient as I have several machines covered in it. Now who am I going to order these parts from?

http://www.planetarypinball.com/reference/partsmanuals/WMS_Parts_1962/files/assets/seo/toc.html

Couldn't help myself ... prisoner fans don't come along every day....last 2 people that I thought had any idea what I was talking about wound up referring to iron maiden (with no idea what it was from) lol.

Had to throw a little humour in here.

WE WANT INFORMATION! INFORMATION!

You are number 6! And don't you forget it...

My 2 cars liscense plates years ago were:

URNMBR6

And

NUNMBR2

That's way cooler than the guy I worked with back in the 70s that had

R2D2

and

CP3O

on his Subarus....

Im guessing way damn harder to get those though, lol.

Probably. This guy was some kind of a Star Wars nut when it first came out. I was thinking he might be the only one of his kind.

People are taking it too personally, just because I think schematic information should be free to share if you own a copy (not even GIVEN to us virtually for free by Steve, I am talking about Bob sending Joe a scan of his factory original El Dorado schematic and Joe putting it on his website for all El Dorado owners to utilize, not Steve giving free handouts), doesn't mean I think Steve should stop selling them or earning money from them, and he probably wouldn't because as we all know print copies are pretty nice and a lot of people want them.

Copyright is a killer. There are people out there that say piracy of movies should be free but I'm not even that kind of person and totally get why companies would want to stop that - but we're talking about extremely niche old documents in an extremely niche hobby (and 3/4 of the participants can't even read them), yet we aren't allowed to share them around like the documents of the rest of the manufacturers. And the only way you can even use the document in question is if you legally already own the machine in the first place (otherwise it's pretty useless), which originally came with two copies.

The guys who made and wired, designed and painted these machines are all pretty much dead. The machines themselves wore out their corporate value decades before they entered anybody's collection, going into obsolescence and all of that, in terms of the original creator. (Which is why Steve was here back then and why he is here now, obsolescence of older parts/machines and then the eventual complete death of Gottlieb) Even if Gottlieb the company was still around we all know they wouldn't be selling Bank-A-Ball schematics out the back door of the factory, or 1960 metallic posts, and I'm not even saying that Steve/Gottlieb should give up with the copyright enforcement for the parts - just the documentation to keep these machines running. Especially since they came with the machines to begin with.

God forbid Steve dies or the place burns down and the database is lost and backups are forgotten about (ESPECIALLY if the copyright is still enforced preventing sharing online after that), then yeah you'll probably find an El Dorado schematic pretty easily on eBay but good luck trying to find a Mermaid schematic whether or not it is enforced. I would imagine out of all the stuff he has he probably has some copies of rare schematics as the only examples left in the world that nobody needs now but might need down the road - and even letting us share wouldn't fix that, but that's a different story. At least if we get a headstart on preservation of these they won't be the only copies left one day.