Sixty-three percent of his primary types are held in the Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe in Bulawayo (NMBZ), where he worked from 1955 to 1980. His legacy is one of the major collections of African Odonata in the world and the most important one in the continent itself (Vick et al. 2001). There are 112 name-bearing types designated by Pinhey,  His numerous collecting trips led him to associate with such authorities as Dr Henry Bernard Davis Kettlewell (lepidopterist and geneticist known for his research on industrial melanism), Capt. Norman Denbigh Riley (1890–1979)(Keeper of Entomology at the British Museum), Richard South, Edward Bagnall Poulton (Hope Professor of Zoology at Oxford), G.D. Hale Carpenter (Hope Professor of Entomology) and Poulton's successor, Sir Guy Anstruther Knox Marshall FRS (1872–1959) specialist in Curculionidae of the British Museum (Natural History), Baron Charles de Worms and Frederick William Frohawk. Pinhey obtained material from species-rich, poorly accessible areas, such as NW Republic of Congo and near the confluence of the Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia borders. Therefore, his collection includes a large proportion of 'rare' species. Species described by Pinhey and known only from the type series and/or material in NMBZ are "Chlorocypha rubriventris, Africallagma cuneistigma, Pseudagrion estesi, Aciagrion macrootithenae, A. nodosum, A. zambiense, Aeshna moori, Onychogomphus rossii, Paragomphus zambeziensis and Trithemis fumosa". New records have only come to light recently for "Prodasineura flavifacies, Ceriagrion mourae and Paragomphus cataractae". Other rarities are "Chlorocypha frigida, C. schmidti, Platycypha picta, Elattoneura incerta, Allocnemis mitwabae, Pseudagrion coeruleipunctum, P. greeni, Crocothemis brevistigma, Neodythemis fitzgeraldi and Trithemis brydeni." Elliot Pinhey and his wife Nancy had one child, a daughter named Rosalind.