It's unfortunate that these things are so damn expensive. My favorite band, Marillion started the crowd funding model that is used by kickstarter and all Indy bands. It would be nice if there was a better and safer model for pinball investors, though. A lot of big money that has been pissed away has really soured people on the "pay to build" approach. Maybe someone can can come up with an innovative "donation" system that can work with larger amounts, time will tell.

Levi, you are in rare form lately, my friend. Is the old lady out of town or did she kick your broke ass to the curb?

Don't worry about them. If you are serious about building pinball machines do your due diligence, but you are gonna need to try to build a single game before you get funding(most likely) just remember pinball is hard and expensive. I wish you the best.