Quoted from s2k4ary:Bought my third pin, and had them in the garage. Shopped them out, and had my brother over to play. It was night time and for the ffirst time had the garage door open while playing. Light show as you can imagine, had a few passing cars slow Down, and one even stopped to look at what was going on. 2 weeks later I had a break in, and over $10k stolen from us. Thank god none off us were home. Sharing your hobby with others is great, but you may be setting your self up for some crazy shit.
Yikes.
Thankfully, I live in a very good neighborhood.
My entire garage is a arcade, and everyone around here knows it. I hosts parties 1-2 times a month, and most of the time play with the garage up. So everyone around here knows where I am and whats inside here. I invite strangers in/over all the time. I have had at least 6 people who were walking by or jogging come up to see what the deal was when they saw that there were machines in the garage...
I even made a facebook page for my garage. It has a couple of hundred likes. https://www.facebook.com/jaredsarcade . Through the page, I allow total strangers to arrange to come by and play for no reason. Has not backfired yet...
Then again, I am self employed, and stay here at home... and this is Texas... and we pretty much all have guns. I have a couple of weapons in the house (and some dogs) and anyone breaking into this place when I was home would be in trouble. If they did break in while I was gone... I doubt they would take a pinball machine. Even if they did... it can be replaced. Insurance...
Stealing a pinball machine has got to be up there on the theft list with stealing refrigerators. Thief's want small, fast, quick, and pawn-able items.
One time I left my garage open on accident when I left the house. My neighbor called my wife about 3 hours later like "Hey man, how do I turn these pinball machines on?" LOL. He played and then shut the garage for us.
Im honestly not afraid at all in my neighborhood.
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Half the people in this shot are strangers. See my garage door is open? I do this often.
I hope that on Halloween I have the biggest impact of all.