My Story - Pintoxicated.

My Pinball Story.........

Unlike many guys into pinball, I didn't have too many coins in my pockets to play pinball as a kid and couldn't keep feeding the drain monsters of the day, or was it just I was no good?!?!

I remember a few kids who lived near me had EMs in their garages. They never worked but I thought back then it was very cool to have your own machine. The years went past. A pinball shop popped up locally. I went in to have a look only to have my dreams of owning my own machine destroyed. There was no way I could afford a machine. The shop didn't last long, namely because it was way over priced. eBay didn't exist back then, neither did the internet so I had no idea how to go about finding a machine.

I can't even remember why I started looking at pinball on eBay, something somewhere deep down in the back of my head suggested it one night. I ended up buying a BSD off a well known supplier. Like almost everyone's first pin purchase, it was a bit of a disaster and I didn't really get the whole truth about the machine. Luckily I found a guy to service the machine. I watched him like a hawk. The I bought The Getaway - HSII off eBay. This machine was better to start with and required less work than the BSD. I got the same tech to service the machine and once again, watched him like a hawk.......almost 30 machines later, I haven't had another tech to my house, just some board work done here and there on things like heavily corroded Gtb Sys 1 MPU boards.

I was well and truly hooked after my 2nd machine. I didn't really like The Getaway HSII as much as I thought and sold it not that long after getting it. By this stage we had moved to the country and ended up with a bigger pin friendly garage. My next machine was a WH2O and the rest is, as they say, history. I was no longer hooked, I was addicted or as I call it - Pintoxicated.

My collection slowly grew. What started out as an all DMD collection has evolved into a current mix of an EM, 6 x SS, 5 x DMD and 1 x Pin2K machine.

Several of the machines in the attached pic have been sold, some for good reason, others unfortunately to simply pay bills. I tell myself, there will be others.

Oh and that BSD.....about 7 years on it still resides in my collection and if I do say so myself, plays damn nice.