Haven't had to start over personally, and I'm sorry to hear about your hardships, but I'm impressed with your attitude and the way that you are handling it. Good luck with your sale and I'm sure everything will work out right for you.

You have to do what is best for you and your family. Pinball should be last on your list of priorities.

Absolutely! Several Times.

I had to sell off 40 or so pre war games, to fund a child and move
I sold off 30 games, when my tech passed, and couldnt find any repair help for a year...it was depressing.
and Today....I have to sell to pay bills being on a fixed income, but not all at once...
Add in the minor ones, and Ive done so 5 times.....

I always come back and start again....1/2 hour pinball saves hours of therapy......

Save the best...at least for last.....its only temporary, my friend.

Being a small business owner i hear where you are coming from and can feel your pain good luck and nice to have assets sell

IMG_1055 (resized).PNG

I can completely relate to your situation, I am also a small business owner in the construction trade and went trough the economic downturn back in 2008 through 2012. It was a very hard time for lots of business owners and I as well lost a lot of money those years. Luckily things have gotten somewhat better, hope for you as well. Hang in there pinballs can always be replaced down the road when the time comes

Sorry for your situation. Lots of people are faced with the same if not very similar situations. We should consider ourselves to be fortunate to have the opportunity to have nice things. But at the end of the day all that matters is your family and friends have good health. These are just possessions. Sure they are cool but like you said they can always either be reacquired or played elsewhere for a much lesser cost then owning. I wish you the very best of luck and we all saw the movie Rocky you can lose it all and quickly get it all back again. Famous quote "I ant hear no Bell"

That said when you see people selling games please no insulting prices Market Price. I hope those games are sold for good money your fortune changes and you are back here showing us pics of your NIB Games.

All the Best!

I had to start over about 12 years ago. Sold all my pins (12) when I had to move to a new town. I missed some of the old pins, but it's no big deal really. Family first. Some other pins came later.

Sorry to hear about the situation, hope you get a place that you'll enjoy!

This is the part of the hobby that honestly I find very positive. There are not that many hobbies that you can get your investment out of with relative liquidity and stability. Aquariums? Audio / Video Equipment? Sports Cars? Poker? Craft Beer / Wine Brewing? Gooood luck getting the bulk of your cash out for the average hobbyist.

If you're smart in your pinball purchases they can be used for situations just like this.

Once you have your new place, you'll know exactly what you're putting in it

*fistbump*

I'm about to sell 3 of my 5 games...to pay off debts. Maybe 4, depending. The Future Spa I have right now is a project machine. It will need 1k worth of stuff to be a keeper for me, and a new backglass on top of that, so I don't even consider that game 'in my collection' right now, and I don't have hardly anything in it.

However....WPT..Metallica...Farfalla... buh-bye. That will take out 95% of my "pinball fund" and guarantee I can't afford a NIB for years to come, if ever again.

I had to sell my 4 pin semi-high dollar collection a few years back to help me and my family get through some hard times of medical expenses and unexpected financial shifts. We've slowly rebuilt our collection back to 2 pins (1 pin a year since) and looking to get a 3rd hopefully before this year ends. Wife fully supports me buying these expensive toys as she knows how important a hobby this is to me and to have in our home in making our lives more positive, happy, and family oriented. Plus, seeing first hand selling these pins off and bailing us out of a hardship puts things in perspective how nice a hobby this can be.

Good luck to you Cosmo, it's a rocky road and at times depressing building your pin collection back; but patience is bliss and keeping site on the bigger goal is much more rewarding in the end.

I've purged twice in the past. Once for financial reasons and another for being burned out collecting and restoring. Good luck man! You can always find your way back if you want to.

I had to sell off all my pins about 2.5 years ago. Moved from NorCal to SoCal and started over. Only pin I kept was my Cyclone which was in storage about a year and half. Now there is a shiny new DILE sitting next to it, my first NIB pin.
Best of luck!

Good on ya for understanding what's important. Pins are things that can be replaced.

Don't be a stranger and keep us posted!

Family-first and foremost. Everything else is not even close second.

I know down the road when daughter enters college- I will need to make the same decision to 'start over'. And im ok with that.

Pinball will always be there when you're able to jump back in!

Good luck!

Exact same story. Back around 2008 when my small business took a large hit and I was not drawing a paycheck to stay open we had to sell our Creature From the Black Lagoon, Tales of the Arabian Nights and Theatre of Magic.
Even though we never have replaced those exact titles we have several new Sterns in there place.
Gotta do whatever life calls for.
We are now in a situation where my town is destroyed by hurricane Harvey.
I run a Family Entertainment center.
It will probably be rough again with 60% of the towns homes under water.

I'm starting over in life. Good luck. 1 pin now theater of magic.

I did it, not for financial reasons, but for giving my then 5 & 3 year olds the downstairs den and creating a play area & classroom in 2003. Sold my 5 keeper pins (TZ, ToM, RS, NGG, WH2O), regretting it ever since. Now one kid is in college and the other isn't far behind. Started back over this spring, albeit in a much more expensive hobby now, and up to 2 pins now (MMr & LOTR). Looking forward to restoring a project pin again shortly, and also have been enjoying playing in tournaments and leagues, something I never did before.....

Hope to see you around here, now and in the future.....

Good luck, Kramer. Sometimes hitting restart can be the best thing you can do. I'm doing something similar with my career, and it's difficult, but the outcome (I hope) will be rewarding to the nth degree. Besides, sometimes the adventure is just as fun as the outcome!

Good on you. Pretty much in the same situation. Have to sell all my pins. We bought a house 6 months ago with the intent of building an in-law for my mom. She went into the hospital suddenly three weeks ago today and we started the renovation the following Monday. Long story short she'll be okay long-term but we need to get her here ASAP. The budget took a massive whack last week and the pins have to go. I know I'll get back in the game probably next year but for now I'm solely concentrating 100% on the family needs.

Things like this can be a bit of a bummer,but only temporarily. The funny thing being once this has passed and you reset, you get to relive the joy of the hunt that we all have /had in this hobby! That is a very exciting part of pinball to me. Best wishes on the new home.

Never had to sell then all, but I have a small collection and had to sell my prized game to pay adoption bills, not an easy choice but the right one. Kudos to you for having to make a tough decision for your family, it's worth it and you will be back on top someday

I fairly often feel guilty for collecting games. I mainly have arcades, but still have a lot of money sitting in them that could be used towards bills/setting us up for the future better if I sold them. That said, we have a nice house, wife doesn't have to work and kids have a very comfortable life. So, we're not doing horrible as is. I always view them as: they're just games. If I have to sell them to provide for my family in any way; they're gone. I can always get something different in the future.

I had my entire collection and house burn down back in 2007. Everyone was safe... LTG was awesome and sent me a Dennis Nordman signed translite for POT to get me started again. The first pin I got was Lady Robin Hood to replace the similar Cinderella I lost. Pins I HAD to get back were FT, Wh20, WCS.

Good luck, when your ready select your favorite pin and Hunt It Down.

DSC05221 (resized).JPG

DSC04169 (resized).JPG

I did a forced "start over" once I realized I am a pinball addict and my ideal collection is my current collection + 1. In the late 1990s/early 2000s, I had one of every top 10 pin in pristine shape and I was out of room, but I still wanted more. At that point, I could have become "that guy" with a storage unit of pins, or I could downsize and rotate pins in. I chose to sell everything and just bring in 1-2 pins at a time. Did that for over 10 years, and now I have the arrangement where I help an OP with his new pins on route, so I get to have almost every new pin for at least a few weeks before they go out on route, where I can play them, too. Best of all worlds.

But in your case, it's definitely the priority to take care of family, first.

Bummer dude. There are many fun games in the $1000 range that don't get the love they deserve. If I'd be in a financial bind I would sell my expensive games and keep the cheap ones. I own several games in that lower range and they get about the same play time as considerably pricier issues.

I realize how hard it must be but remember...its just stuff. When you want or are ready for more stuff, it will be around

Feel you dude.

I haven't sold down to "zero" but I went down to just the basics (my TZ, her WCS) a few years back when my wife and I both got laid off. Things will get better and you'll get back into it.

Great attitude! Keep kicking ass! The one thing you can be confident in is that you did it once which means you can build it all up again.

I've purged once and am slowly rebuilding, only to probably purge again at some point.

*deep breaths*

I think about doing this from time to time. These days I have more vids than pins but same thing I imagine. We go through spurts playing stuff and sometimes I wonder why the hell all this money is standing around and no one enjoying it. Good luck to you and think about how fun it will be to build the collection back up!

Quite a bit of our business is based on commercial and residential construction. That period was brutal, but we are still here.
Great attitude and correct approach K-Man!

You are here, you are healthy, you have your family, everything else is just tangible items and items can always be replaced. You have made friends in this hobby some close by others a bit further but I'm sure your always welcomed to go to any of them including my house anytime you feel the urge to shoot the silver-ball.

I had around 80 video games and 10 pins in my collection back in 2004. I went through a nasty divorce and all that mattered was walking away with my two girls that I had at that time. The ex fought me all the way, financially. She didn't want the kids, just to make things difficult on me. I had to sell everything to pay the lawyers, and don't regret it one bit. I walked away with my kids and that was the goal. Fast forward to now, 13 years latter, the egg donor has not even tried to contact the kids in 12 years. About 5 years after the sell off, I stopped at the house of a person that bought my GnR, and asked if I could buy it back. They agreed on a price slightly higher than I sold it to them for, but it came home with me. The game now holds that stupid sentimental value of me coming full circle and will probably never be sold. It was the only game that I really wanted back. I never really got back into collecting the video game side of it, although my business that I own is selling them. But my pin collection has grown quite well.

they are only games, and as many say, the hunt is half the fun

If I sold what I have now I'm not sure I could ever replace them. The money would leak out towards car repairs, or buying new tools, etc. and suddenly I'd have no pins!

I've owned almost 300 pins in the last 20 years and my high water mark was 33 at one time, up on legs and playable. Now I'm down to four on legs and five in progress. I wish I'd kept all my games now, what with pinflation - all those $100 Ballys are $1,000 now!

Being an entrepreneur is risky business. I've lost everything - twice! Business, house, cars, toys etc. Had to start from nothing and build back up. It's tough but you learn from it and really appreciate things a lot more the next time around.

I've sold pins to raise money when needed. Since you have access to the pins in Banning, I relate that to the pins I have access to at the VFW. I have zero desire to ever buy another pin. I have what I want and will someday sell all but a few. I don't need to tie up space anymore. I'll keep a few slot machines and may buy another one or three since they are usually not on free play anywhere.

Good luck friend, you have the attitude of a winner, this is just a bump in the road.

If you know anyone selling those fancy schmancy Aruze ones that have been out quite a while now with the big LCD and reels on steppers that do goofy crap... "Crystal", "Howling Wolf", "Dragon Orb" etc...I've been trying to figure out how much they go for aftermarket....really hard to track down lol. I even emailed the local indian casinos..they tell me to talk to Aruze...Aruze doesn't sell to individuals and won't give me any distro info. LOL..

It is literally easier to buy enough weapons to murder a hundred people than it is to find information on these games when you're not a casino. Insane.

Yup...2009 we lost 400k being overweight in stocks and RE...hit the reset button and sold all pins and cars...pissed off and insanely determined, I took my last 100k and went all in on stocks...started rolling off those profits back into RE like I didn't learn my lesson and today we're sitting at just over a milly...waiting patiently for it to collapse once again in this musical chair economy with a fistful of cash ready to swoop up everything when there's blood in the streets...

In the span of 6-8 years ago, my collection went from 28 down to one. The one that was kept was my joust simply because Bill Davis had my playfield for years and the parts were completely disassembled and in scatted boxes at the time.

But, that's the thing about life... "life happens". ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

One thing that I wish was that I had a better memory about all the people I sold 'em to. Many were RGP guys and I met some great people as each game found a new home. (So any of you that got one of my games from me back when I lived in Burbank or N.Hollywood, I hope you enjoyed them as much as I did.)

Now I'm slowly rebuilding the collection and lookin' to find some of the titles I really miss, along with picking up a couple NiBs. (Now with the B.D. cc and new plastics, the Joust is pretty sweet and I'm happy I was somehow able to hang on to it.) As I currently look to replace my Judge Dredd, I'm reminded of the guy that bought mine. Big guy, totally forgotten his name but he declined the dolly I offered and just bear hugged it, picked it up, and walked out of my game room and down the driveway with it. While it was sad to see it go, it's nice to have a cool memory of that one as I waved goodbye to it.

I'm a life-long entrepreneur that has boomed and busted multiple times. Currently on a boom, but I always saw my pinball collection as a cash reserve if it ever came down to it. That's how I rationalized building it in the first place, I'd have to be ready to let it go and certainly would to fund a new business or something.

We're in another bubble right now IMO

A good time to buy a house is 5 years ago... or 5 years from now.

I don't know shit tho. Just seeing the SP500 near 2500 pts & sky high real estate prices make me think we will see SHTF soon.

Hopefully I'm wrong because I like money.

I couldn't agree more. The odd thing this time though is everyone is saying the market is over priced and it's a bad time to put money in because the correction is right around the corner...normally when the crashes hit is when everyone is feeling super confident about the market (not when they are skeptical like they are now).

A crystal ball would be an awesome thing.

Our current bubble (and the 2008 one) is DWARFED by the one China is about to pop. 4.5 TRILLION in bad debts floated on state sponsored or supported banks. When that pops, the quake will be felt around the world.

Well Kosmo

At least 3 of us think you should BUY MORE PINS instead of future negative home equity.

Start drawing up those WTB ads!