How to get me to blow my load

Well, Centaur arrived today and I had to change my pants twice. It's in about as good shape as I would expect for the $225 range... not pristine by any stretch of the imagination, but not completely thrashed, either.

There are a couple of wear spots where we would expect, along the ball launch trail and in a few high traffic areas. There is some discoloration where the plastic posts hold up the lanes along the top -- my wife noticed this and thought it was fading, and it took me a while to figure out what it was (when I did, she took my incredulous tone to mean that I couldn't believe she didn't know what it was, but I was incredulous because I'd never seen anything like that before). There is mylar protecting most of the playfield, especially the inserts... it doesn't look as bad in person as it does in the pic -- there's a lot of glare from the flash. There's also an OK touchup job around the baby Centaur head on the hilt of the whip... I've seen worse (like the white-out touchup on the pool balls of my EBD or the Xenon I saw where they loon repainted the bonus light circle over the head -- I wish I had a picture, it has to be seen to be believed). See a nicer version here. But let's face it, I didn't pay for a beautiful reproduction, I paid for one that's been around the block a few times, and not as many times as some. I think it's a good playfield for the price and for my purposes.

The back definitely could use some cleaning... I can test out some cleaning techniques that I'll need when I sell my spare playfields in a few months. I was happy to see the teardrop shaped pop bumper mounts, as I recognized those from when I disassembled Fathom... one less thing I need to buy.

I made my first purchase for Centaur... a guy on Mr. Pinball was parting out a Harlem Globetrotters playfield, and I bought the inline targets from him. That means I can keep the EBD one that I have, because if I can rebuild Centaur from scratch, I can also rebuild my thrashed EBD as well.

OK, now I have to pause while my brain plays the Harlem Globetrotters cartoon theme song ("*whistle whistle whistle* hey! what? chicka chicka boom, Globetrotters, chicka chicka boom, oh yeah"). If only I could turn my massive knowledge of trivia to profit, I would be in great shape. I was a contestant on Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and I came within half a second of winning the fasted finger round once and just missed my second chance -- I put H.L.Menken after Edward R. Murrow temporally. Would that I had won, because the woman who did choked before she got to the $1000 level, so she went home with zilch -- she didn't know what a tome was, poor fruit.

Yeah, OK, there was that business of Pinball Rebuilders Strictly Cash and all, but that was before my eBay auctions sold for less than half what the same items sold for a month and a half ago. I discover this anew every year: Stuff stops selling as well and at all during summer. Maybe because people are on vacation and not nosing around eBay. I dunno. But I'm going to wait until fall before I start selling again, much to the chagrin of my bank account and my pinball restoration projects. So we'll see what I choose to afford until that time...

Not much else to report... I'll be trying to shirk dog duty (no pun intended, eww) as much as possible for the next few weeks so I can start the rebuilding project.