I look at things like this a bit differently. When these games broke down and were taken out of service, there were probably few parts to fix them. They became parts games very quickly in order to keep another game running on location. All of a sudden it was a non-running hulk of scrap. And in case nobody noticed, pinball machines are pretty big. So storage was an issue.

Today it is inconceivable to us that a broken game couldn’t be fixed. I can call Steve, I can call Marco. I can buy an Alltek and that dead game springs to life. I can buy those special game specific parts to keep them running right. I can google just about anything and poof, info on how to fix it is served to me on a silver platter. I have online forums like Pinside where I can ask an obscure tech question and usually get an answer.

You used to need to have all the information yourself. If you hadn’t learned all the electronics and theory of the games, you couldn’t fix them. It was a different world.

Feel free to disagree, but as you do, think about having 40% of your collection down, and there were no parts, and anything you learned on the internet didn’t exist. Heck, there are games I never would have bought if parts weren’t available because I’d have a bunch of 250 pound piles of junk to stack stuff on top of.