After about seven months of on and off work, it’s finally time to unveil a new project.
https://golden-gallery.netIn the early 2000s, one of the most incredible resources a TPIR fan could have was the Golden Gallery. It not only gave fans backstage glimpses of Marc and John’s visits backstage, but also gave new fans a look at both alternate versions of TPIR from around the world and some of the most memorable moments from TPIR’s different “eras” throughout the years.
The Golden Gallery, along with other fansites like Brad Francini’s “Salute to Pricing Games” and Tony Harrison’s tpir.tv, were instrumental in helping me to understand the pricing games and some of TPIR’s most famous moments from history. And it seems I’m not the only one. These are incredible resources for somebody without cable in a pre-YouTube world, who wanted to dig into TPIR’s rich history but didn't know where to begin.
However,
Problem 1: the Golden Gallery hasn't really been touched in over 15 years. It’s still around, and it’s still incredible. But it has been ported multiple times, and for the past decade has resided on slideshow software from 2006 that isn’t particularly suited to mobile phones or modern displays.
And
Problem 2: As of 2025, there aren’t a ton of online resources targeted to new, casual TPIR fans that want to deepen their understanding. There used to be, but many of those sites are now defunct. Bringing the Golden Gallery back as a modern, mobile-friendly site would be wonderful, but if the only ones who know about it are those who have already seen all of the photos in it, its usefulness is limited.
The modern hardcore TPIR fan has many incredible resources at their disposal. From Steve’s timeline to tpirstats, from the Wayoshi discord tools to Adam’s recaps, the learned TPIR fan can do incredible things with them. However, most of these assume users have a base familiarity with the show.
Put yourselves in the shoes of a casual fan that might want to learn more about TPIR. If you’ve never heard of the “Shell Game cheater”, or if you don’t know how to play the Check Game, is there a place you can learn?
Brad and Tony’s sites are backed up on the Internet Archive, but new TPIR fans aren’t going to be coming across them. The TPIR wiki exists, but it’s quite a bit more in-depth than the casual fan needs or wants. The official priceisright.com site exists, but it is a little
too basic and hasn’t been updated in many years.
This new project is looking to fill that void! With the help of a few other trusted longstanding members of the forum pooling our resources, poring over video, and putting our heads together, we’re working on something to fill those voids. A new sister site to golden-road.net, by the name of…
https://golden-gallery.net
This is as of currently just an alpha build, and portions may be unfinished, but it’s in a place where it’s ready to get some feedback from the broader community.
What is Golden-Gallery.net?There are four main aims of this project:
1) Preserving and bringing the Golden Gallery to modern devices4500+ of the photos in the Golden Gallery with their captions are preserved on golden-gallery.net as part of the “
Classic Gallery”, in 99.9% of cases exactly as they have been for the past 15 years. But now it’s a lot more bingeable and searchable, and with some Wordpress magic, looks a lot better on mobile devices and modern screens.
Full disclosure: Marc has seen an early build of this, and has said he liked what he’s seen. Prizes and Steve have been kept in the loop, and they have said they've liked what they've seen.
Both Prizes and I have contacted John multiple times during this process, and he's difficult to get a hold of. We've done everything we can to let him know of our desires to put this together. We haven't gotten an answer over the months, but he hasn't said "no". This has been under development with the assumption that neither Marc nor John have any objection to us re-porting the Golden Gallery. It’s in a state where we feel comfortable showing it off to the board at large.
Marc and John, we are aware that this project uses several thousand of your old photos and captions. We hope this is something you approve of. If either of you see anything, anything at all about this project that you do not like, let us know and we will be happy to abide by your wishes.
2) Helping new fans get familiar with the pricing gamesA new addition is the
Golden Game Gallery, which is like the game guide on priceisright.com… but better! It aims to include the rules and screengrabs of the most memorable playings of each pricing games over its history. You'll get the rules to Shell Game, sure, but you'll also get to see set and rule changes, the Shell Game Cheater incident, that Jackpot January special playing for first-class airfare... and all of this backed up with links to the FAQ, tpirstats, and LiteBulb's strategy guide in an easy-to-read, scrollable, bingeable package.
A major inspiration was Brad Francini’s Salute to Pricing Games at his Game Show Central site, which has been defunct for over a decade but is backed up on the Internet Archive. This aims to modernize it. How, exactly? Try playing around with it to find out.
This area is under development. Doing a good job takes time. All of the pages for games from the half-hour era have drafts ready; the current plan is to drop new pages in batches once a month or so until they are complete.
3) Helping new fans get familiar with a basic history of the showAnother section is the “
TPIR History Showcase” or “Tiny Timeline”, where TPIR’s 53 year long history has been broken into 10 “eras” featuring major changes, tweaks, memorable contestants, and a broad evolution of the show.
This is intended to be a companion piece to Steve’s timeline, but on a much more of a smaller, birds-eye view scale. If the timeline is TPIR’s version of a comprehensive history, the PHS aims for the tone of a TPIR magazine piece that a casual fan could pick up, skim a few pages, watch a few videos and put down and return to scrolling it again in the future.
These are the most difficult to research and put together. The pricing game pages are priority #1 at the moment. The only section in a reasonably finished state right now pertains to the
half hour era. Other sections might follow as the pricing games are finished.
4) Helping new fans understand a basic history of Golden-Road.netAny long-running internet forum is going to generate lore and history that makes it difficult for newcomers or outsiders to understand. An
“About” page has the aim of bringing newcomers up to speed on memorable moments from Golden-Road.net history.
From Daniel Rosen’s sockpuppeting to the Perfect Bid, from alt.tv.game-shows to the Superfan show, a basic timeline of memorable moments & links are provided to help newcomers who may stumble across the site help understand exactly what it is we do at golden-road.net and why we matter. Every page links extensively to the forums and other “hardcore” TPIR resources, so a fan who wants to dig deeper can be richly rewarded, but it isn’t required for a casual scrolling experience.
Is that a lot? Yeah. It is kind of ambitious and is probably at least a year or so out from completion. But this is designed to be the ultimate resource for the casual fan. Hopefully they can find something they like here, and hopefully it helps them integrate with the not-so-casual fans.
The current focus is:
- working on completing pages for pricing games from 1975-1980
- preparing a page on the hourlong expansion and showcasing memorable contestants and history from 1975-1980
- preparing a draft of Haven contestants from 2023-present, since there’s no time like the present to capture current history
- general bug fixes
Updates might drop once a month as they come in.
What do you think?Please let us know if you have any feedback. Do you like what you see? Are there broken links? Are there bug fixes? Is there inaccurate info that should be corrected? Please let us know here.
Do you know anything about web development or CSS (the style language, not the forum game)? Are you comfortable with Wordpress and do you feel like you can help polish the look of the site? Hit up my DMs.
What ARE the best, most memorable, contestants from 1975-1980? What about the pricing games? What’s the best, most memorable playing of Take Two or Hole in One? What are the Drew moments that deserve to go down in history? What would YOU want to see on this site?
And if you like what you see… please consider sharing it with new TPIR fans once it is in a more finished state!
This is a labor of love, and it’s designed to be a resource that’s easy to share that might inspire the curiosity of other TPIR fans in embryo and get them to want to dig a little bit deeper into the history of America’s Longest Running Game Show.
https://golden-gallery.net
