Given the rapid expansion of my collection I'm batting 50% right now. However, pretty proud of myself. Our pinball league got booted out of the bar it was in as the bar was shut down and is turning into a tech incubator of all things. So I tried to come to the rescue as best I could. First week we had 4 mostly working games. Have made it my goal to have one more fully functional game per week. We are now up to 18 actually fully playable for league. By the end of next quarter I hope the full 35 are all up. Should add our league members have been great about helping with some repair and shopping out games to get them up.

All located in a big shed, well, actually two 20 x 20 foot sheds joined together PLUS 15 arcade machines of varying sizes (including a Sega Daytona Twin and Sega Manx TT twin) I've got a good strike rate at the moment, only BOP awaiting a restore and 2 arcade machines not working (Daytona Twin getting a board repaired and Super Off Road getting the monitor chassis board repaired) Another pin on the way also in the next few weeks....... starting to get a bit cramped for space, perhaps the pool table should go?

I have 4 games in my 600 square foot apartment. One is next to my bed in my bedroom.

Just got finished restoring Pinbot! I go nuts on restorations.
Guilty confession - I refuse to take the glass off for silly little stuff. One of the spotlight LED's became unseated in BSD a few months ago and remains that way today.

Also, JD resets fairly often now and I'm just being lazy about pulling the driver board.

Interesting question.

I don't like to talk numbers of games anymore for various public reasons, but rather percentages at this point in my collecting days.
Some will understand more fully, when they read the old collector meme joke below.

Rough estimates:
55% titles are installed in my home (fully operational), and probably more than a person should
30% titles are locked up in my warehouse (functional and serviced, but in "pinball stasis")
15% titles are project games in my warehouse (non-operational)
5% titles are located elsewhere awaiting pickup or stored with other collectors (operational and non-operational)

Storage is climate controlled.
I try not to have too many projects at any given time, around 10-15% of my ownership as a limit.
I figured this out this percentage about 15-20 years ago for the reasons listed below.

I can state is once you push past a certain threshold of total number of games, it is not possible to maintain everything "100% functional" unless it is your full time job, and this is questionable even if you are an operator with a moderate size tech team.
Work becomes exponential once you go past 50+ games and games are used frequently.
There is ALWAYS work to be done and things to correct, even if small and it does not matter if the games are EM or SS.

Any large volume collector (especially once someone pushes past 100+ complete games, NOT parts) that states all their pinball games are in "perfect operating condition" are completely lying or they only buy NIB machines sitting in a corner which never are played.

Pinball Enough.jpg

Half are either working, or need a day to get going
the other half are projects that will take some time to get working

More then half has issues. Haven't played any pin in over 6 months, too busy with other things.
My daughter plays and lets me know when somethings doesn't work anymore.. then she plays another machine.

All in my house and all 100 percent, except two dead ones i just got this week.

Always 100%, except during the week a new one comes in. I moved Comet and a switch started acting up, and I addressed it immediately, I can't stand to have something not working.

3 not working (waiting for board repairs)

5 folded up, waiting patiently for restoration.

116 working.

rd

I've always been a wee bit jelly of your collection RD, i suppose adoption is out of the question? i can pay my "shipping" across to NZ. I don't eat too much and don't take up too much space and can bring across some decent life skills >>> brewing bourbon, can sorta fix most machines, almost cook well

Or come to Pincade in March and play them all.

rd

Well, we're all just waiting for the next failure, right? I gave up playing TZ last night when the left flipper stopped flipping. That little round coiled-up linkage popped out... Anway, my answer today is one less playable than it would have been yesterday:

Fully satisfied with "playability": 8

Playable (but not perfect): 1 - Got a project Flash earlier this year. It now plays but needs more tuning.

Not playable: 2 - TZ flipper and Monte Carlo EM project I got a month ago is about 60% refurbed... considering clear coating the PF in that one!

-Rob
-visit http://www.kahr.us to get my daughterboard that helps fix WPC pinball resets or for my Pinball 2000 H+V video sync combiner kit

I own 8 total. 6 are set up of which 5 work perfectly. I have 2 projects that are major projects. 60+ hour work weeks for the past 3 years means there's no time to get going on them for now.

15 in collection, Heat Wave just wrapped up a repaint but fully functional, Gran Tour is being repainted and clear coated but/was fully functional, Knockout, Orbit and Klondike are projects in various stages.

I work on pins like I work on Mopars- Get them working mechanically 100% and then proceed with cosmetics.

Kids were in the pin room last night banging away, everything firing on all cylinders.

100% working.

I've got exactly 35 machines currently. Of them, 5 currently aren't working, and one more works but needs a full teardown and cleaning. Of those 35, 4 were working/shopped when I bought them, the rest all needed going through. Of the five non-working, none of them have ever been working, and four of them are among the first games I've owned. Two are woodrails that I haven't figured out how to fix yet, and the rest have major board issues.

9 in my collection

6 run flawlessly
1 playable, but Ball Through assembly has a weak "upkicker" coil (LOTR)

1 restoration in progress (MB)
1 in storage, waiting for restoration (BOP)

But you can customize, optimize and tweaking things all the time...

All of mine are set up in the basement and all but 2 are playable. One is a dead project, and one is really just a populated playfield I'm going to swap into Striker Xtreme once I'm done having fun with it. Lots could use a shop job but game play issues are relatively few and far between.

All set up.
8% Need adjustment/tweaking
8% Need repairs
8% Serious projects
76% Playing fine.

1% down after a drop target broke on Sunday.

Funhouse waiting for a new screen
Whirlwind still puzzle me with its dead screen (even if both screen and video board are new)
Attack from mars needs has a blown fuse somewhere (half the coils are dead)

One more and My OCD will kill me

35 working.

All of mine are set up, and all of them are working with the exception of SWE-1 which is torn down and being shopped. Which I would call routine maintenance. So 100%

All set up and working 100%. I can't even think of a switch that might be flaky. Maybe there's a bulb or two out that I'm not aware of yet.

I have two pins in a 1,000 square foot condo. They are located in my living room kitchen combo or "livitchen" as I call it. My Tron has had a bad switch in the shooter lane for about 6 months now and I just haven't got around to it.

100%, except for two that I'm finishing up restorations on.

I refuse to answer on the grounds that it may incriminate me.

I have no idea.

Only 6 games, 4 at home and 2 on location. 100% working, down to the last GI bulb.

Have had problems with half my games at one time or another.

Currently no sound on one game (Black Hole) but still having fun with it... others all 100% (though I am pretty sure typing that has ensured that one of them won't be but the time I get home tonight).

Fortunately, I work in a library so there is lots of nice wood to knock on.

My current arcade collection is 5 pins, 2 arcades, 1 chexx, and 1 billiards/ping pong. All of the pins and the chexx are working. Both arcades are non-working project; but I just picked them up last week. Hopefully, I can get to them soon. Everything except for the billiards/ping pong table is in a downstairs bedroom. The billiards/ping pong table is in the back half of my family room. It's a big long open space with a seating area, fireplace, and drop down movie screen in one half. There is a small island bar in the middle and then the back half is the billiards / ping pong table.

23 working 100%, 1 working with an occasional reset problem (all in the basement) , 2 in the garage being restored

10 games working, kinda bored not troubleshooting something. Clay's guides are to good!

I have 15 fully working and one not working (Stern Kiss has a bad CPU that needs repair or to be replaced)

Of my collection, about half are keepers. These are games I actively sought after and bought no matter the condition with the intent to restore. I buy NOS or repro parts as they become available and squirrel them away. A few now have everything I need and are in the queue.

Most of what's left I bought as projects to fix and play for some new blood in my collection, but are not keepers. Due to limited space, time and interest I don't usually buy games to flip unless it's too good a deal to pass up.

I have room in my lineup for 10 games. Four more working games in storage (awaiting restoration). The rest are all non-working projects.

If I am at 6-10 games, I can keep them all working "perfect". I usually have 1 project or restoration going it seems like which I don't count.

Right now I have 6 working at 100% as far as I can tell, and 1 with a playfield swap going on. This is in the zone for me.

When I get to about 15, I find that more than half of them have something wrong. So I am impressed with all the big collections with only a few out of action.

100% working in general. My Hobbit has a finicky Orc pop up - I've adjusted the leaf switches and it's probably close to 100%. Everything else on it and the other games works as intended. Not too bad when you only have 4!

Well, some people consider owners with more machines than they can setup hoarders. But I consider myself more of an opportunist. My keepers are highly sought after and people are less likely to part with them now so I get them while I can even if they end up sitting in storage for a few years until I can get to them.

Parts on the other hand....I am a hoarder. So many parts I'll probably never use, but some are hard to find and not reproduced so I want them on hand in case something breaks or I buy a machine with the part missing (which HAS happened.) I really need to curb my buying because my parts are spread out and in my early days of collecting my organization/labeling was poor. I dig stuff out that I forgot I had and then curse myself for buying another one. Someday, when I'm retired and organized, I'll have to have a sale.

Over 30 completely gone thru and up and running. 1 being shopped out, and one more in waiting. I don't fk around.

8 out of 10 working, two project games that are not even close but just starting to get to them.
I had 24 a few short months ago and 22 of the 24 were fully working till I sold them off. Now down to just 10 and that's a good number for me.

Clay would like a word with you.

Forever 75% working

6 all in my living room 3 are playable. 1 works perfect,1 needs a target switch repaired but no one notices but me as it don't affect bonuses or completing goals,1 with a set of lights that went out and the score real sometimes gives your opponent a few points then I have 1 that went down with a power supply issue which shorted a few transistors and I'm slowly repairing it with help from pinside,then another that plays great until it turns off (same fix as the other I'm working on) and finally my newest that I bought mostly working with a few switches out and I'm thinking a bad sound rom.I think I'm getting a failing grade.

Not Enough vs. Too Many

I'm fanatical about stuff working as intended and will whip that glass off in a millisecond to replace an offending bulb or misbehaving roll over switch.

This is not counting arcades, just pins.

Fully working and set up: 9
Set up but not working: 2
Fully working but not set up: 10
Current projects or storage: 5 (I think... )