Quoted from zarco:

Got into pinball in 1988. Bought a larger house and looking for interesting items to
fill it up. Laughable in hind sight!
Of course this was before Al Gore invented the internet (sic) so finding pins
was a matter of looking in the local rag. A better way was placing ads in the
classifieds. Very little competition so it was not unusual to get 2 or 3 projects
pins a week. Eventually others jumped in but back then no one knew, or were
not willing to find out how to fix pins. That turned into another great source.
I'd fix pins for local collectors in exchange for two restorable pins.
Early solid state pins were especially easy to acquire. Back then project
pins were in the $200-$300 range. Oh yeah, pinball shows were
also a great source for project pins at reasonable prices. No longer,
at least in my experience.
It was a lot of fun and many pins went through my hands over the years.
Kept the ones we really liked.
Steve