I understand that he’s an invaluable asset to pinball, but I steer away from buying gottlieb games because of the antiquated methods that he uses for his business. It’s cool that you can talk to an expert directly, but if your a noob to the hobby and don’t know the exact part your looking for when calling then he can be a bit of a dick at times.
I’m sure if he were to create a proper website, have his inventory properly listed and made it easier to deal with he would do more business.
If he would sellout to (let’s say Marco) then I’d imagine the old molds and tooling would get more use, and that there would be a lot of games that could be repaired more easily.
Eg. my buddy had a Hollywood heat, the ramp was melted from a light directly under it. That ramp was unavailable as far a Steve told us. At the same time I had a Tee’d off, game. We noticed that they were virtually the same ramp. The only difference was that the tee’d off ramp had an extra bit of plastic to mount lights on. That ramp is available so he bought it and dremmeled off the extra bit of plastic, fixing his machine. So if The mould is available for the teed off why can’t it be used for Hollywood heat ramps. I’m sure that demand is part of the issue. But I feel that if a larger modern vendor had access to all of Steve’s stuff, then more parts would be made for all of these old games.
I’ve heard rumor that he doesn’t even know for sure what he all has, just because he has so much stuff. It would be sad if it never gets used to it’s full potential
