We own a small public 9-hole golf course in mid-Maine. Our clientele is men and women, ranging in age from 5 to 85, typical golfers. We have a nice pro shop with a good variety of golf equipment, along with some basic food and beverage service, which includes beer and wine. Both of us love playing pinball, and we have a Trek 25th Anniversary machine that was just refurbished. We also have a No Good Gofers machine that is currently being shopped, which we picked up locally for $1,800. The table is in awesome shape, and just needs lights, rubbers and the video display worked on. So we'll have roughly $2,500 tied up in it by the time it's all said and done.

We have room for four or five pinball machines, so we are thinking about putting both of our current machines in the pro shop, and then adding two or three more, along with a Golden Tee arcade game, giving us five or six machines in all. We have a designated area that will be just for the machines, and can set it up so that it won't interfere with the retail sales in the pro shop. Keeping the games serviced won't be an issue. We're not looking to support the golf course from the machines. However, if we pull in some extra revenue, that's never a bad thing. We're mainly looking to have a place to set up our machines, give our customers something else to do and promote pinball a little bit.

So I've got a couple of questions:

1. We're going to have three games that have golf themes. Should we get two or three more tables with golf themes, maybe Tee'd Off and something else? Or should we throw in something with a different theme, like a Simpson's machine or something along those lines?

2. How important do you think it is to rotate games in and out? We're open about 9 months of the year, and folks will mainly be coming here to do golf-related things, although we're hoping that we might get some folks coming out for lunch and pinball. My current line of thinking is to only rotate machines when we either get tired of playing them, or if someone comes in an offers us a price that we just can't refuse, at which point we'd replace it with another machine.

3. How difficult is it to form a pinball league? And with having only four or five pinball tables, is that enough to form a small league?

Our pinball experience is just enjoying playing the games. I've owned several over the years, have never played in any leagues or anything like that. They are fun to play, and when we have friends over, the games are always going. This will be our first time having them available for public play.

Any comments, suggestions or advice is welcome. Thank you in advance!

You were correct on the permit. $15 for the year, no limit on the number of games. Thank you for the heads-up on this. I would not have thought I needed one.