Looking for some advice from the pinball community - I sent my 1974 Bally's EM to a really great repair guy about an hour away from my home. He was great to work with, did nice work, house calls, great advice, great prices ... can't say enough about the guy. He and I were having a hard time coordinating a date/time to pick-up my finished machine because of some sudden family emergencies on my part and sounded like some possible issues going on on his side too (his website had suddenly gone down, his phone numbers were suddenly out of service, etc). I was worried at first but he was communicating fine via email and seemed genuinely interested in helping me get my machine back. Then suddenly, he goes dark ... no responses to email or FB posts, no way to reach him ... I fear my old EM is gone. I have zero animosity towards this guy, I really like him and his work ... but I'd really like to have my machine back as it was a present my family had purchased years before for my folks and my folks had recently passed (that was the family emergency I mentioned earlier). Anyhow, I imagine that there is some way I could pursue this legally but that sounds messy and not really worth it monetarily. I really just wish I could just find out what happened to that machine and see if I could get it back (hope it's not just sitting in some empty shop or something waiting to be claimed ... or worse, in the hands of someone who doesn't appreciate how amazing those EMs are) ... and out of curiosity, I'd like to find out what happened to that guy. Any thoughts/advice from the pinball community? I don't want to mention any names out of respect for the forum rules but any advice would be appreciated.
BTW - The 2018 CalExtreme Event really sparked a new interest in pinball in my house ... which is amazing to me since they are 13 (girl) and 10 (boy) and only seem interested in smart phones. To see them genuinely excited and having fun playing a classic pinball game (almost like they were addicted to them) was AWESOME!