My Comeback

In the mid-90s, my wife and I bonded by playing pinball together in the couple of arcades that were around at the time in State College, PA. Funhouse was our main pin, so years later when we had moved to a new town into a house with lots of extra room, we decided to go find one. We overpaid for the condition but loved it. 

Of course, when you have only one pin you can get bored. Our solution was to get another, and we were fortunate that our FH seller, a small arcade retailer near Baltimore, had a really nice White Water. Again we overpaid but Wh20 was a huge hit. That was soon followed by a Cirqus Voltaire, which I actually got a good deal on. At that time I hadn't even checked out any websites other than the Mr. Pinball classifieds, but somehow we stumbled into a pretty great trio of pins! 

Over time we got a little more selective, trying to find good deals on pins that we knew we'd like, plus a couple, Cyclone and Firepower, that I loved when I was growing up. I even found a nice example of what I'm pretty sure was the very first pinball machine I ever played with my dad when I was like 5 years old -- Drop-a-Card, which I'm currently fixing up. (Of course, it might've been a Pop-a-Card -- I remember the distinctive backglass, which was basically identical for those pins.)

Fast-forward about 10 years and pinball could no longer hold our marriage together, and we got divorced. We sold off all of them except DAC to pay for her to return to school. I miss the very nice collection we had: Funhouse, White Water, Cirqus Voltaire, No Good Gofers, Cyclone, Firepower, and Wheel of Fortune.

After a few years of getting other things in order, I'm finally able to start thinking about pinball again. I'm not a super technically proficient guy or an incredible player, but I'll contribute to pinside when I can. There's a lot more to the story of course, but it's a pretty good comeback and I'm thrilled to be here.