What is it?

Over the years we Pinsiders, as passionate pinball enthusiasts, have bought, owned, sold and wanted a good share of pinball machines. We always managed our collection in an accounting program, which worked, but was far from convenient. This got us thinking that it would be very helpful if there would be some kind of collection manager where we could manage the machines we bought, sold or wanted to have to put on a wish list. So that's why we decided to build just such a thing.

Why do I want this?

So why would you want to use this feature to manage your pinball collection? Let us give you some reasons:

• The collection manager will give you great insight in the pinball machines you currently own, the ones you owned in the past and the ones you will hopefully once own. That is to say, you can put these machines on your wish list indicating your interest in them. As a bonus, all of your machines are linked to a lot of relevant information at the click of your mouse button.
  
• The collection manager enables you to keep track of the prices you paid for machines you bought and the prices you collected for machines you sold. You can also keep track of the production date, the serial number and other usefull information of the machines you currently own. This information could prove useful if you ever need to use your insurance policy for instance because your machine burnt down (let's hope this will never happen).
  
• Because the collection manager is an online application you can access it from everywhere.
  
• You and your pinball collection can be included on the World Pinball Map.
  
• It's fun to show other Pinside users which machines you have in your collection and which machines are on your wish list. Off course other Pinside users won't be able to see your private information like pricing details.
  
• You can receive email notifications when pinball machines on your wish list or machine parts of machines you own are spotted on the pinball market watch (coming soon).
  
  

If you don't want to manage your collection online, you can off course also choose to only use the wish list feature. And if you don't want other people to see your machines, you can also choose to keep your collection private. The first time you add a machine to your collection you will gain 50 karma points.

First things first

This help text assumes that you've already created a Pinside account. Go here to read how you can create one.

How does it work?

Interested already? We certainly would think so! But how does this thing work? Actually, it's not as hard as you might expect. We will demonstrate you this by going through some examples with you.

Scenario 1

Suppose that you currently own a Monster Bash in great condition. You wish to put the machine in your collection manager, so other Monster Bash owners will be able to find you and you can share information with them. You bought the machine on a pinball show in Las Vegas from a fellow collector: mr. Peter Inhead for $4000.

To include the machine, you first need to go the 'Collection' page in the 'My Pinside' section. 

Screenshot: your pinball collection still empty.

 It's kind of empty at the moment, don't you think? Let's change that. On top of the page you see a 'Find machines'-box. Not surprisingly here you can select the machines you'd like to add to your collection. As you see, you can specify a lot of different search criteria in here, but for now we're interested in adding our Monster Bash, so this is what we will fill out as machine name.

Screenshot: finding a machine by name.

After you have filled out 'monster bash' click the find button and the machine will magically appear in a list of search results.

Screenshot: found yourself a Monster Bash!

Now you can choose to add the machine to your wish list, to your current collection or to your collection history. Since we want to add the machine to our current collection, we'll have to click the 'Add to current'-link. Doing so adds Monster Bash to your current collection.

Screenshot: now the MB is part of your collection.

So that's all there is to it. If you wish to, you can now click the 'Edit details'-link and fill out the machine details like the purchase price, the production date and the serial number.

And this concludes example 1. That was not as though as you might have thought, now was it?

Scenario 2

Now let's assume that besides the Monster Bash from example 1 you still have room for one more machine. You want a somewhat older, but popular machine, so this could mean that you are looking for machines from the early 90's. Let's also assume that would like to purchase a machine that's rated well in the Pinside Pinball Top 100.

The criteria specified above might sound complicated, but with the search feature it should prove a breeze. So let's try to find some machines that suite your taste. Instead of a name, in this case we fill out some other search criteria. Because we are looking for a popular machine, for manufacturer we choose 'The big six', which include Bally, Data East, Gottlieb, Sega, Stern and Williams. We're interested in the early 90's, so for Released we choose '1990-1995'. And we want a machine that's rated well, so for rating let's select 'Higher than 6/10'. Now after choosing these options (don't forget to erase 'monster bash' from the Machine name-input box), click the search button again and the following results should be returned to you.

Screenshot: more machines.

Note that there were 74 machines found matching your criteria, but that only 9 results were returned to you. This is because your search was limited to 9 results. You can change this by adjusting the Limit-option. Also note that the machines were returned sorted by date, earliest machines first. This is because of the Order-option. To receive the results sorted on for example Rating, select this option instead of Date and to get the highest (best) ratings first, choose Desc (descending) instead of Asc (ascending). So to receive the 30 machines from the early 90's with the highest rank designed by a manufacturer of the 'The big six', your query should resemble the screenshot below.

Screenshot: the same results displayed differently.

As you can see, at the moment of writing this guide the query above returns Twilight Zone and Indiana Jones as the top results. Now suppose that we would like to add these 2 machines to our wish list. All we need to do is click the 'Add to wishlist'-links of the 2 machines and they will be instantly present in your wish list.

Screenshot: TZ and IJ added to your wishlist.

Scenario 3

As a final example let's assume that somebody saw your wish list and notices that you're looking for an Indiana Jones, a machine he owns. He is looking for a Monster Bash and offers you to trade machines. Because he offers to pay you a large amount of cash on the side, you agree to this deal. So how do you process this deal in the collection manager?

First of all you need to move the Indiana Jones from your wish list to your current collection and to move the Monster Bash from your current collection to your collection history. As you might have come to expect by now, you can do this by simply clicking the 'move to current'-link in the Indiana Jones-box and by clicking the 'move to history'-link in the Monster Bash-box.

Screenshot: moving machines around.

After you did this you might want to edit the details for the 2 machines, so you can fill out the purchase details for Indiana Jones and the sales details for Monster Bash.

In conclusion

If you concluded all three scenario's your machine collection should look like shown below.

Screenshot: the fruits of your hard work.

Going public or keeping it private?

You can choose to keep your collection private so only you can see it, or to make it public so all Pinside users can visit it. Like stated before your machine details like purchase and sales prices will never be available to the public, so you don't need to worry about that. If you share your collection, Pinside users will see the same that you see when you go to your personal pages in the 'Community'. You can find your personal pages by clicking the 'What others see'-link on the 'Summary' page in the 'My Pinside' section.

By default your collection will be shared. You can change this in the 'My Pinside' section on your 'Profile' page in the 'Your profile page' box by unchecking the 'Display my pinball collection and wishlist'-option.

About privacy and responsibility

Please note that we will never give away or sell any of the information you provide us with to 3^rd parties. If you choose so on your 'Profile' page, other Pinside users will be able to visit the machines in your collection and on your wish list, but they will never get to see any private information like pricing details. Also note that although we do everything we can to protect the information in our databases, Pinside .com can not be hold responsible if any of your information gets corrupted or deleted. It's your own responsibility to keep backups of vital information.

Check out our 'Community Rules' to learn more about these conditions.