Got into the hobby as a full time musician. Private lessons, 4-5 gigs a week, guitar repairs plus any other scraps I could come up with. I managed to trade a palm pilot with a GPS and some cash for a Target Alpha for my first game. I was able to buy a lot of games, a decent car, and my first home on that income. Unfortunately, skyrocketing health care costs and a couple kids changed the scene. Like someone else said earlier, you find creative ways to get the things you want. I didn't have a spare $500, but I creatively traded toward it and sold it for more than I paid. Project games were readily available at this time. I bought many broken DMD games for under 1k and often times doubled my money after repairs. It was a gamble, and a hustle but I miss it. Now i have a more stable job, but much less time to enjoy them. I miss the hustle of fixing and trading up. I'm an electrical estimator for a union electrical contractor now, but I was able to maintain a fairly high end collection on around 50k a year. It all depends how much you want things and how much you are willing to give up. I've doubled that income, but the pinball collection hasn't changed much. I don't have the time or effort to put into repairing and flipping games so I'm paying more.