Quoted from Yelobird:Oddly I agree with you view lol. In 20 plus years of collecting from co-workers, general friends, and thousands of clients I have Yet to run into another person say "Hey, I collect/own pinballs also!" Not once. Add to that any of said groups that come over to visit all Love the games Until they ask "how much does one of these cost?" then they look at you like you're a nut and simply just enjoy the play time. Marketing outside the underground channels of the hobby would be a Huge waste of capital that only We would pay for in purchase cost. (Cargument) May be why we don't see many Ferrari commercials or magazine adds lol. Elite collectables.
This might be a regional thing. My town has a dozen barcades, multiple pinball leagues, multiple tournaments going on every night of the week in non-pandemic times, a big local show that draws 5,000 people, we do classic arcades at other big drawing events, we do a packed Game Collecting 101 seminar at the local Comicon that draws 60,000 people of a weekend, and there is a ton of younger people with high paying tech jobs. Pinball and 80s arcade games are all over here and everyone plays them out at bars, our collector and tournament community is huge, as it the casual player crowd. All my friends play pinball and a bunch own games. There are lots of young people, lots of women, and these days more and more people of color. I definitely think pinball is catching on with younger generations right now more than it has in the past 20-30 years.