My pinball saga...

Here's our story...

I remember playing pinball when I was a teenager, back in the 80's. My parents were on a church bowling league, (this was when gamerooms were dubbed as 18 and over...) there was a gameroom at the bowling alley, but it was closed off. I would get quarters from my Dad and sneak into the gameroom to play pinball. (my Dad thought I was putting the quarters in the gumball machines) ;-) I remember playing Haunted House, it was always REALLY quick games, cause all the flippers never worked!! :-) Fast forward a year or two, at another bowling alley (no age restriction at this one) a school friend of mine's Mom worked there, so we went to see her after school one day. I met my future hubby there...While we were dating, we played lots of pinball. Space Shuttle and Black Knight are two that I specifically remember...Black knight was removed, but SS stayed, and we played it alot! :-)

After we got married, we got away from pinball for a few years (late 80's and all of the 90's). We had kids, and no time or money to drop in location games. Fast forward to 2000. We were house hunting, and our new house was gonna have a basement for our pool table (family heirloom from hubby) and we came back to pinball...found E-bay...and realized that you could have a pinball like the ones we remembered in your house. :-) So in 2001 when we moved in, we got our first pin, Williams Space Shuttle...Still have it, it was the first game I restored and it will not be leaving anytime soon!
That was the beginning...we decided that our one pin looked lonely, and we needed another one to go with it. And that if we got another one, we would still have one to play while we restored the SS...:-) We continued to scour E-bay and we also started going to auctions in Columbus Oh. and Indianapolis In. we in a short time had added a BK, Road Kings, Sorcerer and Gorgar to our growing collection...You all see where this is going right? :-)

Our first plan was to have an 80's theme. We were gonna have one Williams pin from every year in the 80's, and a few classic vids (Pac-man, Space Invaders, Donkey Kong and Robotron) We completed that particular goal, with a few years having doubles and even triples...so we decided we wanted all the system 7 games, all the sys. 9s, all the sys. 6s....:-) At this point the pool table as well as all our living room and dinning room furniture and around 10 or so pins (in some stage of restoration) are in storage units.
In late 2010, we had all the sys. 7s, 9s, and all the 6s, 5 EMs, and 7 sys 11s...We were getting ready to join a pinball league, and we felt that we needed to branch out and expand our collection a bit and have some newer DMD games. Highest on our list being AFM and SM...so during 2011 we accomplished that, and added AFM, SM, and even a Congo to our collection. We felt we had a good array of games, and a little bit of everything now even a Zac. Farfalla...2013 came along and we added our first NIB Metallica premium Roadcase, and have since added a CSI. Started and run (along with help from others in the league) a local league from our Cincy Pinball Group with 30 folks playing.
2017 has brought some changes to the line up not too many as we are (shall I say) "content" with what we have ATM. Since I retired from doing restorations for others (in 2011) and have just been doing my own games. I have also been custom painting trim and some figures and PF toys for different games. Keeping up with friends and enjoying the hobby!