The Big Lebowski Pinball Project by Scott Forman

Guest Post written by Scott Forman

A lot of time, effort, and love went into this refurbished machine. To all the purists out there, I did keep all the original decals and cabinet. It shows enough wear on the machine to tell the story. All the other parts were kept along with the original shipping box. If someone should want to rebuild this machine and reinstall all the original parts, they could. But because of the age of the machine and the fact that there is no difference in design of original to new, it made zero sense not fixing up the machine. Any pieces that were original to the Engineering Machine design, like the pop bumper caps, were not replaced. The machine had set the stage for the launch of the Dutch Pinball brand and TBL title, it saw the world. Now the machine has finally found its final home and is comfortably enjoying the proper care and attention it deserves. We all love this machine and cannot wait to see what Dutch Pinball comes out with next.

The Search

I had been watching Pinside for nearly a year in search of a nice Big Lebowski pinball machine. The more I searched the more I knew I had to have an early achiever badged machine. It was rare to see one of the early achievers come up for sale, when they did, they sold quickly. One afternoon I noticed a new listing for a Big Lebowski in Long Island NY. The post had only been up for 20 minutes and I reached out to the seller to see if it had an achiever’s badge. The seller thought it did, so I sent over a deposit for the machine until he could confirm that night. I asked him to pull the add, which he did once he received the deposit. That night my eyes fell out of my head when I saw it was ES-01. Not only was it an achiever’s badged machine, but it was the first Engineering Series machines. I did a little research and found that Cointaker had two of the five engineering machines, Barry at Dutch Pinball had one, and the other machine had just been found and sold in Europe for over $30,000 Euros. SOLD