Welcome to the hobby/addiction. I laughed when I read that your Jet Spin pin has bred already.
Doesn't take long! Your house will be overrun with pins soon. lol

Welcome to the affliction!

Looks like things are off to a great start.

Jet Spin, on of the best gottlieb EM's. Great hobby with great people, welcome

Welcome! It looks like you’ve already taken the plunge!

Welcome! Beware of pinball math! Pinball math is the self justification of the numbers associated with thinking about: the size of the space for the next piece, the cost of gas money to go get it, the price, the number of days extra to work to afford it, the time spent playing it compared to all other time spent doing anything else, the presumed inflation value when you sell it in order to afford the next two, the size of the space for the next two, the cost of getting them shipped, the days off needed to properly set them up, the time and cost of the repairs of the machines you already have plus the ones you just got, the travel distance to the nearest site or event to check out other machines you might be interested in but can’t afford, the amount of time and energy it will take to afford them, the detailed measurements of the small amount of remaining space left to put them, the credit card fees to purchase at least one of them as you are now dealing with your first NIB, the cost of the add on to the house in order to fit more, the time you wish your wife would play more so she could understand your delusional math justifications, and so on… (all this and I didn’t even mention the OCD numbers associated with actually playing them - the rules, scores, etc)… Have fun!!!

Welcome! This hobby is a blast with many tangents to explore. Do some research, go
to shows and meet as many people locally as you can to see what else is out there.
Steve

Man, don't play "Gold Strike" if you do that well on "Jet Spin"! Your game will never end!

Two great games, welcome to the addiction!

Welcome to a great addiction!

Welcome to the wonderful world of pinball !

LTG : )

Don't forget the time spent on Pinside typing up responses to peoples posts that take a bit of time which could be applied to more thought about buying the next pin but that are absolutely hilarious and totally worth the effort and are appreciated by other pinsiders.

I don’t know, man. It sounds like you’ve been at this for years already

Welcome though! Enjoy your stay! The EM folks are some of the friendliest and helpful around.

Longest shot in all of pinball from the bottom left flipper. Hitting it with the top left flipper is so satisfying.

Clean and polish with Novus 2. High content carnauba wax is best. I like One Grand Blitz and it does a good job on the car too. Get your parts including rings from The Pinball Resource. They don’t have online ordering capability but is worth getting aligned to their methods. Search posts on here about them.

Keep pledge FAR away from your games. A light clean with novus 2 and carnauba wax like MikeO suggested. Make sure it is a very high content carnauba wax. Modern waxes claim carnauba in the title but many contain oils that aren't great for playfields, especially porous non-clear coated em’s. Welcome to the hobby, seek advice on the em owners thread those guys are really knowledgeable and helpful.

Close, but no cigar. The shot from the lower right flipper on Genie to the upper left drop on the mini playfield is longer, no?

Awesome.
I very much enjoy reading these sort of posts.
Welcome to pinside.

Novus 1 for the cleaning and then Blitz wax all the way.

https://www.amazon.com/One-Grand-Blitz-Carnauba-Wax/dp/B0009KMH20

Oh, and just a little advice. I wouldn't put them so close together.....they multiply.

https://www.pinballlife.com/blitz-carnauba-paste-wax-12-ounce-jar.html

https://www.titanpinball.com/

https://www.pinballlife.com/novus-1-plastic-clean-and-shine-8oz-bottle.html
or if you have ball trails or tiny scratches to remove, Novus 2.
https://www.pinballlife.com/novus-2-fine-scratch-remover-2oz-bottle.html

And you didn't ask yet but Comet Pinball is the best place to order LEDs.
https://www.cometpinball.com/

I didn't consider widebody games in my statement. I stand corrected.

But it is damn long.

Greetings from Germany and welcome to Pinside. I used to own Jet Spin and Gold Strike’s replay brother, El Dorado. Both great games. The problem is now you have two they will start breeding.

That will change when you are no longer a Pinside apprentice. robin could tell you exactly what triggers that, I didn't see it in the help files.
Getting verified would probably also do it. https://pinside.com/pinball/my-pinside/verification

IFPA calender shows events at Next Level in Hillsboro OR pretty often.
https://www.ifpapinball.com/tournaments/view.php?t=43786#
You can make some good contacts at events even if competition play isn't your thing.

Yes ...but what birds have you taken down lately?

3? wow, that didn't take long, lol

It took me 6 months to buy no 2 and 3, take it easy fella, or you will soon be throwing out furniture for more pin room.

BTW....anyone want a broken leather recliner?

My brother-in-law manages some hunting ranches and we went out for some deer one thanksgiving morning. Turkeys were everywhere. I could've tripped over 20 of them, lol. I kept wanting to bag a couple, but then I remembered how much trouble it was to pluck them and that ended my thoughts real quick. Wild turkeys are also far smaller than those butterball ones you see on TV, so that came into the equation too.

I did have to stop taking down deer though, because I got so many I almost didn't even have time to quarter and pack them! Not a bad problem to have.

If you come across a GTB Spiderman, Haunted House, Sinbad, Black Hole or Mars:GOW locally,
play them and see if they are pins you enjoy. I'm also into EMs but also have quite a few
early SS pins and consider them to be very good. The usual route new pinheads take is buy
everything in sight, restore and play them, then sell off the ones that they don't like.
Its how many of us have explored the hobby and takes time but sounds like you are well
on your way.

Welcome to the addiction!! Spirit of '76 is a great game, the "designer" Wayne Neyens turned 103 in July! He's a super nice guy and loves pinball! I restored ours soon after we got it and took it to Pinball Expo in Chicago in 2009, Wayne signed it for me and also made a special circuit that we installed on it to play a joke on a friend from Australia!!
LOL!! up to 3...Great start we had a similar start ('01) back when we started in this crazy hobby!! We started with Space Shuttle which was a game we had played while dating ('84), then we picked up a Black Knight, then a Sorcerer. Then we picked up a 2nd Space Shuttle because we also had the restoration bug and we didn't want to be down 1 pin while we restored it! I've restored 100's now and we're up to 65 pins and we've remodeled and added on to be able to have more up in our house.
We have lots of Williams early solid state (SS) games and love them. At 1 point we had all the system 7 pins, all the system 9 pins and all the system 6 pins as well as like 8 system 11's...we have since paired it down by a few but still have most of the system 7s and they're super fun games! We also have several newer Sterns and some EM's. We find variety is the spice of pinball!!
We have a local pinball group Cincy Pinball and we started a Cincy Pinball League in 2013, we have 32 people playing with folks waiting to play if someone doesn't return for the next season. We also have a yearly Summer tourney here at our house (we had our 6th annual 1 back in June) so we're deep into it!! LOL!!
Welcome!! and start planning where the next ones will go now so when they "appear" you won't have to rush to fit them in when you bring them home!
Enjoy and Good Flippin'!!
Phoebe

Second photo. Is that Jase on the far left?

Can someone expand on this? Is there a reason to avoid any EMs that aren’t Gottlieb? I plan to get a couple EMs eventually.

Don't be reluctant to buy games which are not Gottlieb, unless maybe earlier Chicago Coin.
They all have their good and bad points, but generally speaking, Gottlieb games have a reputation of being the most well built and best playing games. Not that Williams and Bally didn't have good games as well; they did.

The answer is there is no reason to avoid other manufacturer’s’ games especially Bally and Williams. Personally I enjoy the subtle and not so subtle differences like chimes, score reels, artwork etc and the big 3 all produced quality machines.

One thing I like to do before deciding to buy a machine that I’ve never played but like the looks of, is watch as many YouTube videos of it as there are. You can get a feel of how fun it might be even if there’s nothing like playing it in person.

Let us know when you add some EMs.