(Topic ID: 231766)

10+ years in the hobby - reflections of some of my experiences

By too-many-pins

5 years ago


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    There are 112 posts in this topic. You are on page 3 of 3.
    #101 3 years ago

    Matt is --- hazmat7719 --- here on Pinside and --- replaypin_72 --- on eBay. He is still in the process of getting 9 van & trailer loads of stuff organized so it will be a little while before he will be able to help a lot of people but he will have a "better" inventory than I ever had. Not because he is doing anything differently than I was doing but because I have continued to buy parts machines for him while we were making the transfer of ownership happen. Since we made the "original deal" about a year ago I have added about another 40 machines to his inventory beyond what I already had here. So he will have well over 100 parts machines in his inventory before he is 100% done with the stuff from me plus tons of parts I already had taken off machines.

    Matt is a great guy to work with and has become a very good friend since I met him last year. He is about 20 years younger than I am so he has that additional energy I have lost over the years. So once he gets organized I am sure he will continue to help you guys with hard to find parts for years to come. He will also be adding a good amount of Bingo stuff if anyone is looking for bingo machine parts. I bought out a guy with over a dozen bingo machines a few months ago and those parts went directly to Matt. So you bingo guys will be happy also.

    #102 3 years ago

    Thanks for sharing your stories, and best wishes for your retirement.

    1 week later
    #103 3 years ago

    Glad to See you relieved the big stress in you life of the parts business. But unless you selling all your pinball stuff and going cold turkey i wouldn't close down your account here. After being in the hunt/game for all these years buying and selling your name is known here and in local pinball circles for years as the man in pinball. Yes you stepped away from the business side of it but some one will call at some point and your going to have to pass that on to matt or someone else be it a machine or box of goodies. It time to make it just a hobby again makes if more fun.

    You also now have a great amount of knowledge that you can still share and tell the wild and crazy tales of the past. After a good day of fishing you can log in and laugh at our craziness. Then tell us about the new relaxed man you will be. Post the picture of the fish of the day making us jealous that your living the dream.

    #104 3 years ago
    Quoted from cp1610:

    Glad to See you relieved the big stress in you life of the parts business. But unless you selling all your pinball stuff and going cold turkey i wouldn't close down your account here. After being in the hunt/game for all these years buying and selling your name is known here and in local pinball circles for years as the man in pinball. Yes you stepped away from the business side of it but some one will call at some point and your going to have to pass that on to matt or someone else be it a machine or box of goodies. It time to make it just a hobby again makes if more fun.
    You also now have a great amount of knowledge that you can still share and tell the wild and crazy tales of the past. After a good day of fishing you can log in and laugh at our craziness. Then tell us about the new relaxed man you will be. Post the picture of the fish of the day making us jealous that your living the dream.

    Even before I am entirely finished with the deal with Matt I have moved sideways into another hobby from my past. I am now back into dealing in model railroad stuff. Sitting around just isn't for me but moving 300+ pound machines around was getting old. So I am back to doing something smaller & lighter again.

    We will be keeping some of our collection so I am not walking away from the hobby completely but I have decided 100% of the "excess stuff" has to go. So beyond my deal with Matt I'll also be selling off my "personal stash" of pinball parts and the last few project machines I was hanging on to shortly and moving most of my energy over to the model railroad hobby.

    I'll still have the "thrill of the chase" and will still be keeping very busy. Just with smaller, lighter, and a little cleaned stuff. But after rebuilding a couple train engines yesterday my wife looked at my hands and said "I thought you said trains were a cleaner hobby". I forgot just how dirty you could get dealing with 60 year old grease in some of those old train gearboxes. They are not all that big but they sure as heck can be a dirty mess when you are working on them.

    Anyway - as far as my Pinside account I'll make a decision on that in a couple months. For now I just need to keep working through old messes and moving on to new messes. The workbenches are interesting right now with a mix of train parts and pinball parts all on one bench. Talk about a mess of little stuff to deal with. And the train parts are much smaller so they disappear much quicker when you drop something like a little screw you had to pick up with tweezers on to a workbench full of pinball parts.

    4 months later
    11
    #105 3 years ago

    My "journey" selling used pinball parts online has "officially" come to an end tonight. I just took the last of my listings down and am in the process of packing the balance of my parts up to deliver to Matt (the guy who bought the parts business from me I have talked about earlier in this thread).

    It has been a "fun journey" and I have enjoyed helping hundreds (or thousands) of people in the hobby getting machines and parts they were looking for over the years. I still have not decided if I am going to close my account here or not but I wanted to say goodbye here (at least for now). I might post from time to time sometime down the road but right now I need to focus on other things in my life.

    THANKS to all my past customers and to all the people who have helped me over the years. Pinball just wouldn't be the same without all of you. In the 12+ years I have been in the hobby over 600 machines have pasted through my hands and tens of thousands of parts have also gone to new homes. I did all I could to "work with and help" as many people as possible get project machines and parts at "fair prices" and it has been a fun journey. But my back, knees & feet are telling me the model railroad hobby makes a lot more sense at this point in my life. If anyone reading this knows of any good model railroad forums please reach out and tell me about them. I am just getting ready to start a new adventure and will need all the help I can get.

    THANKS AGAIN TO EVERYONE! Skip

    #106 3 years ago
    Quoted from too-many-pins:

    My "journey" selling used pinball parts online has "officially" come to an end tonight. I just took the last of my listings down and am in the process of packing the balance of my parts up to deliver to Matt (the guy who bought the parts business from me I have talked about earlier in this thread).
    It has been a "fun journey" and I have enjoyed helping hundreds (or thousands) of people in the hobby getting machines and parts they were looking for over the years. I still have not decided if I am going to close my account here or not but I wanted to say goodbye here (at least for now). I might post from time to time sometime down the road but right now I need to focus on other things in my life.
    THANKS to all my past customers and to all the people who have helped me over the years. Pinball just wouldn't be the same without all of you. In the 12+ years I have been in the hobby over 600 machines have pasted through my hands and tens of thousands of parts have also gone to new homes. I did all I could to "work with and help" as many people as possible get project machines and parts at "fair prices" and it has been a fun journey. But my back, knees & feet are telling me the model railroad hobby makes a lot more sense at this point in my life. If anyone reading this knows of any good model railroad forums please reach out and tell me about them. I am just getting ready to start a new adventure and will need all the help I can get.
    THANKS AGAIN TO EVERYONE! Skip

    Hey, stick around a bit. Just because you aren't selling anymore doesn't mean you can't still be part of Pinside. Happy New Year!

    #107 3 years ago

    I hope you’ll still come to the shows and at least visit. I always enjoyed our conversations. It’s about the friends and meeting people!

    #108 3 years ago
    Quoted from RyanStl:

    Hey, stick around a bit. Just because you aren't selling anymore doesn't mean you can't still be part of Pinside. Happy New Year!

    Quoted from Ballypalooza:

    I hope you’ll still come to the shows and at least visit. I always enjoyed our conversations. It’s about the friends and meeting people!

    I'll still be "involved in the hobby" to some extent but with this Corona Virus I doubt I'll go to any shows this year. At some point we will be selling off some of our collection and hundreds of boards (from our board inventory) but that is a story for another day. I am just thankfully for all of my experiences with this hobby (good and bad) and am glad I took this "journey" with my son (Wayne) but I am also excited to be moving on.

    In the end it was actually really Wayne's hobby but I am glad I got involved and have really enjoyed all the pinball friends I have made over the years. I hate it when people just "disappear" so I wanted to explain why you will not see me here much anymore. I seriously doubt I'll be doing much posting in the future because I really will not have much to talk about here.

    One thing I will not miss is moving 300+ pound machines out of basements by myself. I didn't mind doing that until a couple years ago but now just setting one up or tearing it down is enough work let alone moving them out of basements. Playing pinball is fun but the older you get the less fun moving machines around becomes!

    #109 3 years ago

    I bought two pins from Skip. Both were simple and customer friendly transactions. Thanks Skip!

    #110 3 years ago

    Enjoy your new endeavor Skip. Stay connected to Pinside and contribute when u can. It sounds like u turned a hobby into a business and there’s always a burnout factor with that. Pinballs a great game and hopefully u can enjoy playing again.

    #111 3 years ago
    Quoted from eagle18:

    Enjoy your new endeavor Skip. Stay connected to Pinside and contribute when u can. It sounds like u turned a hobby into a business and there’s always a burnout factor with that. Pinballs a great game and hopefully u can enjoy playing again.

    Typically I have always combined every hobby I have ever been in with a "spin off business" to help support the hobby and over the years doing that has served me well. My walking away for doing the pinball parts is more age related than anything else. I am a very beat up & worn out big old guy who has abused my body for over 50 years and I am paying the price for that. So I just am feeling too old and beat up to continue to move dozens of 300 pound machines around every month.

    But more importantly I was concerned about the "mess" I would leave behind if I died. Having over a tractor trailer full of pinball parts machines & parts around didn't seem very "smart" for someone in their later 60's. If something happened to me my wife and kids would have had a heck of a mess to "clean up". Moving over to the train hobby will leave something easier for them to deal with if something happens to me. As I have told my wife already - "just call an auctioneer and have him come take all the trains and do a train auction and the mess will be gone". She couldn't have done that with tens of thousands of pinball parts and over 100 "junk" pinball machines (that were too far gone to consider saving).

    I still love helping people get parts for their machines but looking at it logically it was making less and less sense each year the older I got. I am having a very hard time letting the last of my parts go and have been putting off delivering the "final load" for close to a year but it is finally time to make that move. Not for me but for my family.

    Anyone who know me personally knows I am half nuts and truly enjoy working more than anything else in life. So the work involved and the long hours never really bothered me. But the constant "mess" always concerned me and there is really no way to "work neat" when parting out 50 to 100 machines a year. Also if you know me you know I NEVER parted out even one machine that was worth saving and likely saved some machines that most people would have parted out.

    So it really isn't "being burned out" that made this decision for me it was not wanting to leave a mess for the family that drove the decision to move over to something more logical for someone my age.

    3 weeks later
    #112 3 years ago

    I think it is time for me to say goodbye to Pinside (at least for a while). I am still "wasting" time here lately mostly trying to help PHOF raise money to be able to open on time.

    I know I tend to over post on some topics and can't seem to help myself with that. So instead of getting more people "pissed at me" I am just going to close my account so I will not be tempted to post more.

    It has been fun!

    Remember to help PHOF if you can at: https://gofund.me/37f7e2b2

    There are 112 posts in this topic. You are on page 3 of 3.

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