I've bought games where a ball was living under a playfield plastic; obviously lost to the previous owner.

It's in there. Look harder, probably wedged under a plastic...

"Enter the Twilight Zone."

On a multiball play once the ball did not launch. The pin lost count of the balls in the trough. It continued to play in multiball with one ball. When the ball drained, the pin did a ball search. Then I had to turn it off. Damn opto's.

Chances are the ball is jammed under something. Use a bright light, to search for it. It could also be stuck by a magnet.

sometimes on my JP the ball will fall out when T rex eats it and fall into the bottom of the cabinet. like 1 outta 200. I opened up the game and cant figure out how the hell that can happen.

Did you lift up the apron to see if any came out of the trough? Had that happen to F-14 once.

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It will show up ... it may be a long time, but it'll show up. Likely next time you shop the game.

My favorite "ball has vanished" finds, right in visible view, but took a LONG time to actually spot ...

1) WMS Indiana Jones ... ball vanished ... looked, looked, looked ... finally spotted it in between the biplane's wings.
2) Twilight Zone ... ball vanished, looked looked looked, then tried to take the glass off and couldn't. Ball was atop the left ball return wire rail exit. When you tried to move the glass, the ball rolled and pinched the glass.
3) Twilight Zone ... ball vanished, never found it. Next shop job, it "reappeared" behind the right-side powerfield sign.

*read the title and immediately thought of ToM* ; D

I've had a ball get stuck behind the slingshot on MM. I wouldn't have believed it was possible unless I had watched it happen

See if is next to the scarecrow figure

I had a ball literally vanish before my eyes on my TNG.

It disappeared under the right (IIRC) sling during multiball. I don't know how it snuck under there, but it did after some magic combination of slingshot activation and richochet with another ball.

If I had not see it happen I would have been looking for it for quite some time (assuming it was lost in the subway system or ?...).

During the VFW Showcase about two months ago, there were three cases of disappearing balls that I was aware of. Amazing how they can suddenly hide on a player.

Yesterday, a customer was playing my SWDE….I was having a beer at the bar and I heard the machine keep doing a ball search. Intrigued, I went to see what was up. The gentleman said that during tri-ball a ball had disappeared. We searched, nudged and nothing came out. Finally found it...The ball had gotten stuck up inside R2-D2's head….so weird!

Not always. I shared this but was playing my old RFM. When shooting at the saucer I hit right side standing target and the ball slow rolled to the top edge of the PF ramp. It was in up position and the ball found a way to go through this backside and fall into the cabinet.....

So much for multiball.

I had one to disappear in my WOZ. Found it months later nested in some cables under the mini-castle playfield. From where it was, it seemed totally impossible to have hopped up there! Probably couldn't happen again in a million years!