Clear Coating, Mods,Decals... and Cost?

[MultiHack3D]

This is intended as a "whats your thought" on what people do OR dont do to a pin that effects prices.
Obviously this IS highly diverse, AND subjective. Its not intended to prove anything, just get peoples theres no right or wrong here just looking for feedback.

First off, Clear Coating, I read some place ( it was a clear coating tutorial ironically) that it actually reduces the value of a pin?!

The ONLY reason I can see it doing that is if the purchaser is like a purist or something and wants things as Original as possible?

The amount of work that goes into doing a good CC is crazy... to me it looks like more a labor of love then making money, and to my limited knowledge should protect the PF much better then stock.

Also when I see pins posted that say they were CC'ed they are not cheap, there more expensive so I dont know why buddy said that (ill try and find the post if anyone's interested)

Then comes cabinet side art, If your restoring a pin, and its taken a beating, I understand why you would want to patch/sand/prime and apply decals. But if you buy or sell a pin that has that treatment would it not make it less valuable? Sure at first glance its gonna look nicer, but it cant be as tough as the original silkscreen artwork and more then likely not as accurate.

I personally would not want to spend as much on a lets say identical table that had side art added then one thats got small dings and scratches on it.

You could almost turn any cabinet into anything with giant stickers right?! LOL

Would you pay the same price or more for a pin that had cab work done as an original with a bit of bump and grind?

Maybe its like how I said there may be purists out there that dont want any permanent changes and want things as stock as possible.

So would that mean if I carefully touched up the tiny scratches on my old HUO it would degrade what its worth?!

Or maybe filled in the obvious plywood grain pattern on the edges of the head (that many pins have) and perfectly painted it, could I be reducing the value of my pin?! I dunno really, its not that im intending on selling it, but just dont want to do something that would hurt that its all original?

Finally mods, I went to go see a TOM last weekend, and they guy was telling me what mods he put into it (with price tags on each one) But then it hit me... How about if I dident WANT the type of mods he had on it?
Personally, I dont care about a brand new/Old Stock coin door and I would probably NOT spend money on one... or some other gadget that might not be tasteful to me... its gonna make me want to pass personally. I understand these things cost money and TIME to install but its what HE wanted his game to look like, and as a buyer your kinda stuck in a take it or leave it type deal... could be kinda shitty.

Just tossing that out there, wondering how others view these things.

 

[Monkeybug]

Proper clearcoating and restoring a playfield will make a game much more desirable. There aren't many purists that would argue that point.

Mods on the other hand....Far too many people think they spend $$$ on junk and that adds the same value to a pinball. I remember a seller telling me he was charging me more for his LED upgrade. I told him to lower the price and put in the original bulbs since I didn't like LED's. He ended up not charging me for the LED's because it would have taken more time to remove them than it was worth.

 

[Rockin]

I'm , in car terms, in the resto-mod camp. In my very limited experience, I prefer a machine as close to original condition as possible, with whatever work is required to keep it working properly. I have no problem with paying a little extra for a machine I know has been worked on to play 100%. And, I think a 25, 30, 40, year old machine should show some of it's history with a little wear and tear, rather than a new out of the box look. As for mods, I have no interest in paying extra for your LEDs, toppers etc. I want a machine to look as it was intended out of the factory.
Just my 2 cents.

 

[FastEd]

Here are my noobish view on this topic, but, it is relevant to your topic.

I'm currently in the process of restoring a TOM.

It was a nice TOM to begin with and I wanted to:
1) Preserve it
2) Make it look pretty, cause it is a fine looking machine.

1) Preserve it. As mwong pointed out, TOM playfields typically have insert wear and raised inserts, especially around the bookcase. My top priority is to preserve my machine for years of enjoyment. Again, this is my opinion on what is involved in that process. I'll be lowering the raised inserts as well as fixing inserts that have the clear lifting from the inserts. I will Clearcoat the playfield so that no more damage is done to the playfield. I will also add LED's to again reduce the heat generated from bulbs so that inserts don't get raised again.

I replaced both ramps as they both had cracks.

I replaced the trunk because it takes a beating.

I'll add plastic protectors everywhere.

All in the name of preserving the machine.

My decals are in good shape, and unless they were really rough or faded, I don't really care to replace them.

Where I did splurge were in getting all new brass plated legs, lockdown bar, siderails, from the late Mike Chestnut. Because the game looks so pretty that way, in my opinion.

All in all, I probably have spent over $1500 so far (and as some wise person told me, you'll never get that money back). But, I'm ok with that, I'm not doing this to make money on it. I want a machine that will last a while and look fine, in my eyes.

I dunno, these machines are like your babies, you want to take care of them and spoil them once in awhile. Mmm, color DMD...

 

[mwong168]

Clear coating a playfield can be a lot of work because the person who is doing the actual clear coating will expect you to bring in a completely stripped top and bottom playfield for them. That in itself can be anywhere from 40-60 hours of work depending on the game even for a guy like Menace. Now you might have areas that require touch up or wear such as scoop holes. I think I mentioned this to FastEd a few years ago before and broke it down as follows:

$700-1000 pay someone like Menace for basically a playfield teardown/shop job which might include some new parts like flipper or pop bumper rebuilds (I'm just ball parking this number and as I mentioned will vary depending on the complexity of the game so contact him for an exact quote)

$400-500 for clear coat

$??? touch ups and repairs

Without even considering the cost for touch up and repairs you are already easily over $1000. Now does this add $1000 of value to your game?

There are cheaper ways of doing this and you can turn this into a learning experience like FastEd who is doing the tear down, insert repairs and clear coating himself. There are a couple of off the shelf products you can use to clear coat. Here is an ongoing thread called "The SprayMax 2K Auto Clear in a Can Club!" on pinside here and you can see the success and failures people have had doing it themselves.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-spraymax-2k-auto-clear-in-a-can-club

There is also another product called KBS DiamondFinish Clear coat that you can apply with a brush which will give you better control over spraying out of a can. I was initially tipped off on this product from SuperJackpot who found it on an Australian pinball forum and I know bigbossfan stripped his Creech playfield and applied this on himself and it turned out pretty good.

I'm sure bigbossfan will chime in once he is back from his getaway up north at his friend's cottage and give you his 2cents whether his clearcoat and restoration experience was worth it or not. I played his creech a few weekends ago when I was in his area and it looks and plays smooth as silk. I hope Creech will be a long term keeper for him as it is for me in my collection.

Unless this game is a long term keeper or your holy grail I would say pay what you think is fair otherwise if you can't live with the imperfections just wait for a better example to come up and pay a bit more. I personally have no problems paying more if it means all I have to do is plug and play. If the price is right and condition is good then I say just do a thorough top side tear down shop job and polish the playfield with a treasure cove kit before repopulating. Then keep your game clean and wax it once in a while to keep things rolling smoothly and remember to also replace your balls too because if they start getting pitted it can cause playfield wear.

Now in regards to mods it is all subjective to personal tastes. I like mods and have them on all my games but non of them are permanent and can easily be removed and reverted back to stock if the next owner does not like it.

Here is some more advice... before you do anything to "enhance" your game make sure you actually play it, like it and keep it for a while! Unless you have lots of money and time any work you put into your game will only end up benefiting the next person.

I told him to lower the price and put in the original bulbs since I didn't like LED's. He ended up not charging me for the LED's because it would have taken more time to remove them than it was worth.

I've had a seller tell me he put in a $250 coin taker LED kit and I said keep your LEDs and instead deduct $150 off the price. In the end he included the LEDs and accepted my offer. Back then it didn't cost $250 to add LEDs to a game because Comet wasn't around with their awesome OPTIX MAXIMUM leds. It only cost that much because the person was lazy and just bought a pre-assembled kit instead of mapping it all out themselves from the manual or physical game.

1) Preserve it. As mwong pointed out, TOM playfields typically have insert wear and raised inserts, especially around the bookcase.

The centre bookcase on TOM's usually have a faint outlining around all the inserts like this



It is a very difficult touch up to do because there is dithering between the two different colors in the page background. Even high end playfield restorers such as HEP can't replicate this. Here is a touch up and clear coat done on one of HEP's restores

 

[Fifty]

My take on LEDs is that they make the games brighter and help colourise faded inserts. They can really give life back to a game and bring it into the year 2000. That said, LEDs are a personal preference. Personally I like them IF DONE WELL. When I added them to my F-14 I literally spent hours figuring out the best way to do it. I lifted the playfield, physically touched every socket and made notes on what bulb would work best for each location. Angled socket? Flex head LED. Straight socket with minimal clearance? 1 SMD w/o dome. I spent hours doing this and that was solely for UNDER the playfield. Once everything was installed I started studying different LED's for the GI. Then I studied different layouts for the translite. At every step I made sure to try and maintain a decent look and stay away from being tacky. Even after I changed every bulb out I still didn't like the way the orange looked so I swapped it back for incandescent.

Now someone might look at my pin and think it looks fantastic (especially with the LED OCD board installed), but others might not like it. I never expected to get the money back for the LEDs. It was an add-on I wanted. I think the LED OCD board adds value, but if the buyer doesn't think so I will gladly remove it and sell it after the fact.

Clearcoating, if done correctly, I believe adds a ton of value. As mwong stated there are a shit ton of hours put into doing clearcoats. Not to mention the PF gets a full teardown and a cleaning before the clearcoating even starts. Even without the clear, I would still pay more for a fully shopped pin than I would for one covered in layers of dirt.

 

[DRANO]

Very subjective questions.

If I had an all original Gottlieb Knock Out (yeah, the rare woodrial) and the playfield had some small issues but was otherwise mostly okay... and same for the cab... and then I decided to just clearcoat it to protect the it as-is, I would mist assuredly be reducing the value of the machine. But if I painstakingly took the time to restore the playfield with original materials the value would likely go up.

I think one should only restore (ie. touch up, clearcoat, apply decals) if it's something you are doing for your own satisfaction. Even though I'd rather have a re-decaled IJ or FT over an original faded one, the value will ultimately lie in the quality of the work. I've seen a lot of meh restorations.

I guess what I'm saying is that I'd personally rather have an original and do the game myself vs. having to rely on someone else's restoration skills. Others who are less comfortable restoring a game might argue the exact opposite.

In the same note, some mods can certainly add value if they are ones the new owner would have also done himself... and, they will have the opposite effect if they wouldn't. LEDs are a classic example of that. But a fully tricked out Tron with Eli ramp lights, arcade mod, upgraded light cycles etc. will surely hold value since nearly every owner would love to have these.

It's all very situational and dependent on the buyer's tastes and the game in question.
No right or wrong answer.

 

[MultiHack3D]

Fantastic! Thats what I was hoping for!

Just peoples opinions, and see how people feel. There is no right or wrong. I love to here peoples reasoning and angles when it comes to pins.

I appreciate all of your thoughts and sharing them with me/everyone.

I love the way a decent CC looks, even my wife said looking at that restore mwong168 posted "man that looks sexy!".... shes right. You can easily look past the dithering since its so well done... its kinda unbelievable almost what some people can do out there. Thank god they are out there! LOL

Well worth the money for a keeper indeed!

Does HEP use a printer of some type to "make" the graphics? Theres no way in hell thats all done by hand?!

 

[DRANO]

HEP is meticulous. AFAIK he does not use any printers or any other trickery. He's got lots of techniques and they're all a huge pain in the ass

I love me a good clearcoat and have cleared several vintage machines... but that's because I hate playing old games with rough playfields that have sunken inserts. In my opinion those games no longer play how they were intended, so clearing them with the purpose of filling in those inserts and smoothing out the playfield is an act of mercy
I love me some lightning fast EMs!

 

[Bigbossfan]

As Wong points out above, yes I 100% restored my Creetch and most likely went over-board in doing so. Every nut, screw, bolt and metal part that would fit in my tumbler, polished. Rails and other pieces to big, done by hand and buffing wheel. All in all spent about a year working on it. I also got a new cab with decals made by Virtuapin in Michigan. New plastics, Mike D mod etc etc. I also clear-coated the PF with the Diamond Coat above..............although it isn't absolutely perfect, it's close enough for me (who didn't really know WTF he was doing!).

I know I'll never recoup my costs, but to me at the time it was well worth it.

 

[Bigbossfan]

Oh, and I should pass on credit, where credit is due. For those that don't know me, I've had a few incidents of setting things on fire. That and given the fact that I was just tired of trying to figure out putting all the harnesses and lamps back in the right spot, my good bud Terry (Budfan), finished it off for me.

 

[superjackpot]

I believe there is value is leaving a game in original condition - playfield and cabinet. Sure, replace the rusty leg levellers... but I prefer to leave the game as close to original if possible. I'm all about the game playing perfectly, and your being comfortable when playing it. Looks are secondary. I've played many a beautiful game that was poorly tuned/maintained; in my opinion the priorities are backwards in these cases. I'd rather have a collection that plays A+ and looks B-, than the other way around.

That's not to say we all have the same reasons for buying a game or having a collection of them. For some, these are more for show. Gotta mod mod mod... running out of things to add to my pin. "Hey, there's a new mod out!" ...mod mod mod.


Sure an old game with raised or cupped inserts plays poorly. These are often easier to correct by clearing the pf, although you could individually fix them too. Faded cabs, I tend to leave them as is. I agree, there is some merit in having the factory stenciling over the new stickers. I focus on that which you can see when playing the game. But it's difficult to know when to draw the line.

I do appreciate when a beat up game is brought back to life with a quality restore and clearcoat. Do it right and you'll have a beauty! I'm with Wong on this one. If you think your game or the one you are buying is a keeper - go all out. Otherwise spend your money rebuilding flippers, vuks, pop bumpers... or putting some aside for another game.

 

[SUPERBEE]

Im in the middle of a pretty intesive restoration of my Getaway. |
Ive done just about everything from cabinet restore and decals to polishing just about everything i can. Original playfield which is pretty nice but not perfect but im good with it. No clear or major work to it. (at least yet). Full LED and many mods. Is it going to be worth all i have put into it dollar for dollar ? Hell no ! But its sure a lot of fun ! and i plan on keeping it !