SHANGRI-LA ... The reason why there are models with metal or plastic-flippers can easily be answered - since this was a very succesful machine (4900 units, most of them went to Europe where 4-Players were demanded) with a very long production-run (ranging from serial-numbers around 74000 up to 85000) this was also the time when the plastic-flippers appeared again. All Shangri-La machines with plastic-flippers I ever saw had high serial-numbers above 80000. But the majority of them had metal-flippers and lower serial-numbers.

Absolutely. When operators parted out their older machines they kept the metal-flippers becuase they were hard to destroy. In the mid-seventies you could see lots of newer 2-inch-models from ALL manufacturers, especially FMBC, FIREBALL and NIP-IT fitted with metal-flippers.

Also I'm sure metal-flippers were not an ordering-option on machines like APOLLO. If there were some APOLLO's with metal-flippers they must have been Test-Samples.

And from 1962 on there were generally 2 rubber-rings fitted on each flipper. It's not only on the flyer, this was real. 2 rubber-rings look much better than one, also it protected the flipper from getting broken. It's neither original nor better looking when people fit their 2-inch-flippers with just 1 rubber. It also was the case that most operators fitted the pre-1962-machines with 2 rubbers to protect the flipper from getting broken. No idea where this "new" trend comes from to return to just one rubber.