Pinball is a disease.

No one says, “Hey. I’d like to fill my home with machines the size and weight of a refrigerator” or “Give me a hobby that will consume all of my free time (that includes activities like polishing screw heads).” And yet here I am.

I would like to say that my story is very similar to the others here. I didn’t start out like this. I only wanted one machine. Really. I remember when the movie “Big” came out and Tom Hanks had a Pinbot in his apartment, that I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I even checked into buying one and I think they were around $1200 new, which may as well have been $12,000 in 1987 for me. I did end up buying some arcade video games a few years back but always wanted a Pinbot. Finally in 2009, I found one about 5 hours away on Ebay for $600. Fully working but with some wear. I bought it and drove it home. I was in heaven for about a week and then it hit me. I realized that it could be nicer. I shopped it. It helped, but something kept nagging at me. “If I only I fixed the broken sling plastic, then I would be happy”. I was content for a few weeks. “Then that player 4 display was so much dimmer than the others.” Fixed that. Happy now. (I think you may be familiar with this story.) Found another Pinbot that needed work for $200. Fixed it up and got it playing. Now I could concentrate on REALLY fixing up the original Pinbot. I totally disassembled it into an amazingly huge pile that filled my entire 2 car garage. Touched up and cleared the playfield, re-stenciled the cabinet and bought just about everything you could think of NOS and after a really long year it was complete. I am finally happy. Sad thing now is that I have 5 machines (picking up #6 tonight) and they all nag at me except the Pinbot. I find myself just staring longingly into the glowing playfields looking for something wrong and always seem to find it.

I can’t stop. I could have OCD or something that I don’t think I had before Pinball.