I'm saying kudos to almost everyone I know in pinball. The friends I've made in pinball are the best. Over the years my sense of people has been refined, so bad apples get picked out of the bushel pretty quickly. I'm not saying I completely agree with all my friends, but that I love them all. If you're a friend of mine, you get an easygoing trust, because you probably get invited into my home to play and have some fun. I don't need to call out each individual. They should just know that if you've been in my house more than once, you're probably a good egg.

To you. Yes, you who are reading this.
YOU are the heart and soul of Pinside.
YOU make this site what it is.
Man or woman, young or old, Bally or Gottlieb, Top 100 or turd, EM or SS.
your passion makes us all come back here day after day.
Just log in tomorrow and see what I mean.

I am thankful for all of the great podcasts over the years including my faves:

topcast
silverball podcast
pinball soul
gameroom junkies
brokentoken
spooky
coast2coast
pinheadz
this flippin
for amusement only em & bingo
pinball profile
slamtilt
arcade outsiders
coin rejects
rcade radio

He is not a Pinsider, but I am Thankful for my Dad that travels with me hours upon end to pick up the latest pinball find that sparks my interest. At a drop of a hat, he will change his plans to accommodate my insatiable pinball thirst adventures. We have shared some quality time, including great conversations during our travels. I am very thankful for him and feel very blessed to have such a great Dad who aids in my interest in the hobby.

I'm thankful for lots of great guys I've met in the local pinball leagues over the last year. I'm kind of hermitish, so the welcome I've received has been very positive.

Also want to wish a merry Christmas to my pinball buddy Mneubey for all the pinball road trips and discussions. And everyone else I've met this year.

Happy Holidays!

Thank you for the nice words Wayne. My output in 2017 has been rather low. I have some new testroms on my sleeve but freetime is becoming scarcer and scarcer. I am sorry for that.

I would like to say a few nice words to acebathound whose implementation of the replacement Bally displays was brilliant. As an engineer myself it is nice to see some nice engineering from fellow pinsiders.

Also, a big thumbs up for pinsider Freeplay40 who keeps outputing replacement ramps despite having serious health problems. Respect for that!

Pinsider ChadH .....as an oldfashioned assembly coder myself -the testroms!- my hat off for your unofficial gameroms which are giving some Data East games new vibes. Great jobs piece for piece.

And last but not least my French friends François et Thierry from flipprojets; flip78 and @noflip95. Jealous about their reverse engineering skills. Alway a nice read at the flipprojets website. One of their achievements are the freeplay gameroms for Gottlieb system 80B games which are available for free. Well done and very nice!

Happy holidays for everyone!

Marco

I agree that there are so many people out here who are willing to help - Rolf, Acebathound, Gottlieb Tim, Quench, Big Al, and many, many others. I am continually learning from your posts. Merry Christmas, and to everyone, good health and happy pinballing!

Thanks goes out to Kaneda for his pinball podcast which saves me a lot of time by not having to read through every thread on pinside

I am thankful that my daughter is hanging out with me today while I worked on my TZ refurb. We are doing the Twilight Saga film festival as I type!!!

I am thankful to Robin for this site and for the good friends I have made here over the years.

A Christmas shoutout to zaza who always seems to come along with awesome graphics to simplify explanations. Well done my friend!
—
Chris Hibler - CARGPB #31
http://ChrisHiblerPinball.com/contact/
http://www.PinWiki.com - The new place for pinball repair info

Thanks and Merry Christmas! I'm not sure what I'd do with NVRAM, so please spin the magic lottery wheel another time and pick Winner #2!

depositphotos_9980521-stock-photo-surprised-winner-of-cash (resized).jpg

Thank you ChrisHibler but also a big 'Thank You' to all technicians (present and past) that help others to keep their pin running.
The past 4 years I learned a lot from all of you because of the shared information here on Pinside.

Big kudos to this years DPO organisation to celebrate the 25th annv of the NFV (DPA)in Eindhoven !

Also thanks for signing my pinside shirt and have a talk to you at the DPO'17 :
robin en Martijn - Pinside (will visit you early 2018)
pinballrockstar - Pinball Amigos
Pdxmonkey - John
burningman - Don
steigerpijp - Geert K
Peer - Gerard / the Matrix / DPM
vandepass - pinnovating
KoenHeltzel - DP
Thor-NL - Jelle
unigroove - Jonathan / PinMag
Inkochnito - techchart Peter
PinSound + flippp - Pascal & Frank
pinballwil - m.castle /sw-ds1
Invader - PBS
mgpasman
Kevin O'Connor - designer

Best wishes to everyone !

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I’m thankful to all the local and the not so local friends I have met that share my common interest in pinball through Pinside. I am also thankful for all the great shows I have been too and those that make it happen.

I'm Thankful to my Pinball Buddy Greg, NJGecko. I don't know how to do anything on a pinball machine and Greg and his daughter are always there to help.
Dilly! Dilly!

I'm thankful to the many pinball nerds on this board and that I have met in person at shows and local pinball thingys.

I'm also thankful to each of my children (16, 18 and 23) who now that I have been fully immersed in the hobby going on 2 years, have dealt with my insanity of literally filling the house with so many machines. (yes, machines, NOT tables...) LOL

Merry Christmas to all, and wishing nothing but the best to everyone in 2018!!

-Troy

Thankful for the teams that make the pinball shows happen! Start circling all the show dates on your new 2018 calendars.

Thankful for all the tournament directors that make pinball more fun. No matter where you finish, make sure to high-five the TD for all the work they do.

Thankful for the TZ,FT,LOTR,MET,TAF,JP clubs here that make owning my pins more fun.

Thankful for all the vendors that supply us with the parts to keep our pins going.

Finally, thankful for all the pinball manufactures for giving us new pins to look forward to and enjoy.

Mentioned already but Quench went out of his way to help me over the course of 4 days to resolve an issue. I had banged my head against the wall for 6 months and was about to opt into a custom built wiring harness. He was patient and courteous....can't say enough about Quench.

I'm thankful for the location Zanzabar in Louisville KY and the Louisville Arcade Expo for being some of the first things to get me into Pinball heavily. I have went many places to hunt down machines to play but those 2 were the first.

Personally, I'd like to thank TonyH a collector local to me. I've hardly spoken to him, but I've went to his Christmas time arcade parties for a few years now and he and his wife are always very inviting and his collection is quite good. Next of his parties that comes up, I'll be sure to talk to him more. I see a basement full of great games and I just want to play, haha.

I'm thankful for my great fiancee, who while not technically part of the pinball community, has helped me bring home every one of my machines, cheerfully (well, sort of) attends Allentown with me every year, and convinced me to buy a house with her so I now have a basement arcade instead of a dining room arcade.

Thanks to gdonovan for selling me the last piece of the puzzle (populated light board) on my Royal Guard project pin.

Also thanks to all who posted repair info (any!) I'm always lurking & absorbing whatever tidbits I come across.

I'm sort of thankful they haven't completely booted me off this website yet.

I'm thankful for those that continue to volunteer their games and energy putting games out on location and at shows so we can all enjoy them.

and a special call out to PinballSTAR Joe for always going the extra mile to put those latest and greatest games out on the floor for us. Bringing in TheNoTrashCougar this year was just icing on the cake. Thank you Joe for going above and beyond over and over.

I thought they did for a while...

Im thankful for all the great people I've meet this year travelling through the states to pick up machines for my collection. A lot of really nice people out there.

Well.…..I certainly believe in Karma. Just a shout out to one of my closest friends.....he knows who he is....while he has not joined pinside yet it’s just a matter of time. Anyway I introduced him to our local pinball league and he is hooked. He has been playing for almost 2 years now and finally picked up 2 pins in the last month. An Old Chicago which did not work and he was able to figure it out and get it running 2 days ago. Very proud of him for that. The other game he got is a Flash. Board repair is beyond him at the moment but a great friend of mine is stepping in to do the repair. Just another example that the pin community is full of so many good people the list is too long to mention everyone. Despite some of the negative things in our community there are more good than bad. I do look to pinside for a daily pick me up be it a happy ending such as the Playboy Bulldog incident or tech/repair tip. I am thankful of the people here to share life experiences and advice on anything be it pinball or off topic. I guess most of all I would like to say thanks to Robin for providing Pinside to the community. It’s a thankless job and I am sure he gets more grief than thanks for doing it. Happy flipping to all in 2018!

I'm thankful for meeting a great local community that I just discovered within the last year. We've gone from a few machine s here and there to a collective with 25 and some other locations with 13 and 5. I've made some great new friends getting back into this hobby and have learned immensely from this forum.

Great thread. It’s great to look back at the year and reflect on things that made life better, especially as it relates to the hobby. 2017 holds a couple of special moments for me that come to mind.

The first is from a Pinsider, @T-800, who went out of his way to help me gain a mod (that had become unobtanium) for a mutual grail pin that we share a love for. I’m hoping that 2018 brings more chances for us to share a few games of pinball together... and maybe a fine scotch!!

The second is from another Pinsider, gweempose who went above and beyond the call of duty to help me find a pin I had been looking for (and had just missed out on a previous purchase). Brian not only connected me with a seller with a great collection, but also followed up after the transaction to see how I was liking the pin. Brian epitomizes the spirit of so many great Pinsider’s I’ve met since joining this site.

I do believe that good things come to good people... and these two pinsiders deserve all the good karma they receive.

Thankful to have helpful Pinsiders: ChrisHibler Quench DirtFlipper barakandl acebathound -- just a few of the folks who I have reached out to, or have reached out, over the past year to help solve issues. Also thankful for the local group of collectors who keep me grounded and entertain me constantly.

Thanks acebathound for offering up more free stuff!

I'm thankful to all of Pinside for giving me a small break from life. Something that is sorely needed lately.

Thanks! Merry Christmas everyone. I'll PM shortly.

I’m thankful for the friends that helped me move all my machines into my new place this year.

I am thankful for lots and honestly too many to mention.

Rob Anthony > one of the best dudes in pinball. He is always available to chat when needed, troubleshoot/teach me something, always available to others and a huge resource at shows to keep games running.

Slim and Mike and others > Huge hookup on many much sought after games. 2017 was the year of finding some big ISOs for me personally and it would not have happened without these guys.

The local crew that runs tournaments and in particular Tom G and Paul O and Sean and Garrett and Eric S (and others I am sure I am missing). You guys do a ton for competitive pinball and it is often a thankless job filled with complaints and BS. You endlessly give back and even open up your homes to let in strangers to play and share your collections.

My awesome wife and partner in pinball obsession. She jokes that we both often have our foot on the gas, but never a day goes by that I am not reminded how fortunate I am!

Yeah for 2017 and looking forward to 2018.

I’m thankful for my family and that more and more Pinball companies are coming around.

I'm thankful for a lot of stuff this year! I'm thankful my DMD didn't explode when I plugged it in backwards, and on that note I'm thankful my Stargate is holding up so well. I'm thankful that all the issues on my local arcade's LotR were finally resolved and that I was able to get on the high score list for the first time in years of trying, and that business at the arcade has picked up since a theater opened up right across from it! I'm thankful for the news that The Pinball Arcade is coming to the Switch soon (I've been playing on my iPod touch for years now, and I'm dying to upgrade to a bigger screen and real buttons)! Best of all, I'm thankful for the news that a new pinball place about thirty minutes away should be opening early next year, with tons of machines. That's going to be amazing!

I'm thankful to get into the world of pin ownership this year. Had never before even considered the possibility until I saw three pinball machines in a local basement...err gameroom and thought maybe I should have a few of my own. After countless hours digging through Pinside and making rounds to area dealers / enthusiasts I now have 6 machines as of last night. Thankful that Justin at Midwest Gamroom Connection introduced me to NVRAM and demanded I install NVRAM in the BTTF I picked up from him. Also thankful that the Gorgar I brought home last night in terrible snowy conditions already had NVRAM installed!

Just wanted to say Thanks Very Much to all the folks on pinside and pinwiki who contribute their time and expertise to help folks keep their machines running.

Also am thankful for the TNT videos for reigniting my interest in pinball and my wife for supporting my pinball obsession and am glad that 2017 was the year I was finally able to get my own pin!

Happy New Year all!

Todd and crew from TNT are great! Love the videos! And thanks to Arcade Jason and Johns Arcade youtube channels as well for keeping an interest in all arcade machines alive.

Glad most people seem to enjoy our videos...trying to both interest new people and show other pinball enthusiasts things they may not be aware of or haven;t seen yet!! Posted Video #1350 this past week...and video #1351 goes up before the New Year!