An odd thing about pinball ownership is that one rarely owns all the pins they rate the best. Ask a pinball owner to list their top 10 pins and then list the pins in their collection. Compare the two lists and ask yourself, why do they own x, y and z when they say a, b and c are their faves. The stronger the correlation between the two lists, the more that person follows their own advice.
There are many reasons why these lists don’t map to each other. If one has 5, 10 or 20 pins, should they mostly follow that person’s top 10? One of the chief reasons for the disparity is that the goal of owning one’s favorite pins never occurred to them. There is a lack of ethos for Owning Your Top 10.
There are other reasons like available funds, access to local markets, the price was right, nostalgia, impatience, attraction to shiny objects, thrill of spending money, the cool factor, sheep mentality or even self loathing.
Then there is churn, or how often pins are being bought/sold. A young collector has little experience and a curiosity to play and learn. They might find a pin to be their grail, yet sell it six months later, only to purchase a Popeye. They tend to have a higher rate of churn than the naturally occurring rate. In the long term (after five years in the hobby), the pillars of one’s collection should start to resemble that person’s top 10 list. Why you ask? Well, that is the question I want to hear Zach and Dennis discuss.