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I also agree that there’s more around than what that formula would render but maybe not a huge percentage more.
Here’s 3 of my machines using that formula.
1970 Flip a Card: 1800 made.
2020 left: 56 machines
1975 Wizard!: 10,000 made
2020 left: 470 machines (approx.)
1962 3 Coins: 1100 made
2020 left: 20 machines (approx)
I think there’s definitely more out there in most all cases. I could see those numbers being: 90, 1000 and 45 respectively. Just a guess
Quoted from CrazyLevi:Some games got trashed more than others. Games like Wizard look amazing and made tons of money on location. Probably more likely to be held on to by ops, given to nephews etc.
Ever watch the Tommy movie?
Almost all the hundred or so games that get trashed in that movie are total dogs. Tons of Chicago coin garbage, very few titles of any real note, even today. Lots of "duplicate" dogs as well. I don't imagine the production paid much if anything for those games, some british op was probably happy they hauled them away.
Yeah I agree about the Wizard. It was extremely popular because of the movie and Ann Margaret- Roger Daltrey and people would view it more of a collectors item.
I guess my question would be, how long a period of time after 1980 did people view the average EM as dated or worth nothing?
I could see plenty of parents in their 40s or 50s taking the old non working Ro-Go to the curb for Otto the garbage man.
Quoted from CrazyLevi:Total guess here but I would bet it wasn't until the late 90s and the rise of eBay that anybody thought their old crap like that was worth anything.
That makes sense. I never thought about having a pinball machine in my house until I joined eBay in 2003.
I can thank them for getting me back into it I guess.
Quoted from Dono:Got a call from a guy in Chicago who was looking to sell a bunch of pins from his father's estate in VA... made an offer based on some pix and after some negotiations bought them. There were seven total games: four woodrails, one 60s EM, and two early SS games. Those games hadn't been played in 20 years +, just sitting in a climate controlled family room collecting dust. I'm sure that scenario will be played out hundreds if not thousands of times over the next several decades; some amazing gems yet to be uncovered.
I just picked one up just like that. A 62 Williams 3 Coins that sat in a farmers Indiana basement for over 30 years without anyone touching it.
He is a licensed electrician and said when he tried to turn it on again some 25 years ago, it wouldn’t power up so he just lost interest.
It was in surprisingly good shape under the playfield and manually tripping the lock relay got it going again. I think this is rare because in my business I’ve probably been in over 1500 basements in a pinball friendly town and I’ve only had 1 customer who had an EM in their house, a Williams Strat-o-Flite.
Quoted from Gott72:This fire ended my fascination with pinball machines in 1978, and killed a dozen machines. The game room in this bowling alley was in the upper right where you can see an open back door. I saw a large swath of different machines through the mid-70s in that room. I can remember BEAT TIME, BRISTOL HILLS, KING KOOL, SPIRIT OF 76, CAPTAIN FANTASTIC, GULFSTREAM, OLD CHICAGO, SPACE MISSION, FLYING CARPET, NOW, OUT OF SIGHT, KING PIN, ASTRO, etc.
The games were packed with players during nights. No other game rooms were around in this area, so that was an end to an era. I could only find one or two games at local 7-11s.
[quoted image]
So that’s where my Space Mission came from.
Seriously I hope no one got killed. That was a hell of a fire.
Quoted from Gott72:It was after hours on a Sunday night, if I remember. About 9pm some kids were playing in the back corner and LIGHTING PALETTES ON FIRE FOR FUN. Yeah, that must have been some fun. The flames got too high, touched the tar roof paper hanging over the brick wall, and WHOOSH! The place was a super inferno for a couple hours.
Sad, really, because it was also the first place I ever saw an electronic arcade game as well. People were lined up in the hundreds to play a single BREAKOUT.
They had a dozen EM pinball games rotating in and out every week. The distributor probably saw it as a hot spot, because the same games rarely stayed around for a second week, but they'd show up again a month or more later. I remember KING KOOL rotating through continuously until almost the end, along with PIONEER and SPACE MISSION and OLD CHICAGO.
That’s messed up. My two favorite places where I fell in love with pinball were an ‘Aladdin’s Castle’ arcade at the local mall in Louisville in 1978 and a bowling alley in Delaware where I spent the summer of 1979 with my Dad.
Sad to think of them in that way.
Quoted from Gott72:That bowling alley in Delaware... which was it? Fairfax Lanes is the one in the photo above. Burned in October 1978. Was off Rte. 202 about 5 miles south of the PA border. It was a good family place with plenty of lanes and life until it got torched. Good game room and pool room as well.
That’s pretty weird that the bowling alley that burned down was in Delaware too.
Not the same one obviously because I was there in 1979. The one where I went to play pinball is still there. It’s called Pleasant Hill Lanes and it’s between Stanton DE and Wilmington.
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Louisville, KY