The hobby has kinda split and the one side is really bad for the other. I love tinkering with a pin just as much as love playing with them. To be honest I probably spend more hours working on them then I do playing them. The other side is just buy play sell. They are consuming so many pins though. They don't seem to care about condition. To them a pin is 7k+, mint or beat don't matter. It's always been hard to find project but now it's super tough because you have to pay top dollar for pins that need lots of love and money. We used to have that separation HEP and beautiful machines pulled the big dollars and there were pins that were priced based on the work they needed.

What happened to Gryszzzz? He was funny as shit. Like Centerflank we need some humor in our threads.

Flank good to see you back! Seems like ever since you got that promotion to CEO of Encom that you didn't really have time for all of us little guys anymore.

Seriously though Corey it is good to see you my friend, I hope life has been kind to you over these last few years.

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Its been a roller coaster but light at the end of the tunnel now

That is very good to hear!

you sold my Luci didn't you!!!!

Um well I uh..
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Dead 2 Me!!!!!!

Well shit now I’m double dead then because you told me I was dead to you 5 years ago when I sold my Tron

i sold my TRON too ah well..... its at least at a friends i can go play

I miss all those old names we haven't seen around too. Lots of punk kids trying to be alphas now that take themselves too seriously.

I wonder if Robin would be averse to creating a subforum just for the old timers on the site. You'd have to be on Pinside 5 years or something to get access. Eh, it'd probably wind up being a snooze.

Ha! well i have about 2 pinball items left, all my games gone

we could just create our own thread, The good Ole boyz

You went and said "good" that'll eliminate over half the crowd!

Pinside is not even recognizable anymore, many of the best have seen the site go from a true community of pinball lovers to a cesspool of asinine members who could care less about pinball or helping each other, it's all about show and dough, pinball is monetary venture for them period.

You can still play though. No ownership required to be a fan of pinball.

Tis true, I've this one guy i play his games, has a Ric/Morty and my new fav Iron Maiden and he usually has really good beer to drink.

Only bad thing is he oddly screams Lionman in my ear every 3 minutes

Check out the Where's Gryszzz thread.

10 years appears to be a popular pinsider anniversary popping recently. The late 2000's early 2010's were a fun time for ones first pinball shows.

Maiden is my favorite too, took alot of time and threads on pinside but they finaly made it, and it's awesome all around

I wonder if a bit of this is just a factor of the almost over-saturation of the pinball market right now. I'm about as far a way from a "constantly buy/rotate NIB games guy", but in a world where you have more companies than ever pumping out more games than ever, I can see where people have a hard time committing to buying and owning the same game for long periods of time. I would assume alot of people that do this have the same passion that others do, they just want to experiencing owning more games than some of us. I mean given unlimited resources, there are a ton of new and newer games I'd like to own, but its just not financially possible for me, so I can totally see why someone would want to buy a new game or two, play them, and swap them out when something else new comes along. Not really how I tend to operate, but I can see why people do.

What's stopping you from making more new stuff?

True, but there is still a surprising amount of people that are still here from 10 plus years ago.

This is well put.

When I first started in this hobby it was more about the games and playing them. Now it seems like people are obsessed with games being perfectly mint. The tiniest little scratch or mark sets off alarm bells.

I really miss the notion of pulling an 80s or 90s game out of some dude's garage, shopping it, and playing the hell out of it. One of my favorites in my collection is BSD that has been through the wars... and I love every bit of its battle wounds. It's an evil game with a story to tell!

I'll have to tell you the tale of how I came to own my Mousin Around if you like funny cheap game pick up stories. Is there a thread for this already?

These two thoughts are necessarily conflicting.

Yes, it is absolutely about the games and playing them. But nothing wrong with wanting games to look good.

Part of the fun I had building my collection was finding great condition versions of games I really wanted or trading up, sometimes multiple times, to get there. I have a few games that are wonderful originals but many not purchased NIB have been restored in some way from an early HEP machine or a playfield swap or just some NOS parts. I’ve been through many “player’s” games and fixer uppers but none of them are left in my collection.

Will say this (as it pertains to Pinside): I used to dig through review comments and use them in my buying calculus. Now, you go in there and reviews are loaded with comments by Pinsiders with 1 or <1 year on the site. Most are unhelpful or painfully green.

Biased? Probably.

Miss the days where comments seemed to be backed by long haul experience? Definitely.

Hard for me to believe I have been here 8 yrs now. But I have stumbled onto a thread with a lot of real old timers here. And ya'll sure are missing the good old days. You can go for the "invite only" thread, make a walled garden, and wait for the inevitable decline as you slowly die off one by one.

Old timers die. Times change. And Pinside moves on. So, some testy young buck comes on and offends you with his youthful exuberance, or ignorance. Put him on ignore. And then you yourself stick around and make some of the good posts and threads you miss.

I understand the disappointment with prices for old pins moving into the stratosphere. But I also know I would are not be spending time and money restoring my pins if there was not at least the chance I could sell them and attempt to get my (most of ) money back.

I also know that I got my pins right at the tail end before prices took off for the moon. I would not be able to buy all of them today; Prices have moved that much.

The hobby is growing with new people. With young people. With young people willing to spend some money. That's a good thing. If there was no money coming in, it would be Stern only making new pins.

Instead, look at what Jersey Jack has accomplished in the industry with WOZ. This does not happen in a hobby where people are sliding by on a shoestring.

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And who is going to be motivated to buy a $1000.00 repro CPR play field and plastics set if all they can get for their restored pin is $1000.00? Or worse, $800.00.

And there is the one poster who mentioned something about these new pins breaking down and not getting fixed. I went through this crap in the car world. "Whaaa, that guy, he don't know what a spark plug is. Idiot. ( but he loves the same Detroit Iron you do and he is a damn good driver. )" So, unless there is some rule somewhere that says you have to be able to work on a NIB pin before you can own one, why even bring it up?

And I know that if God meant for men to fly he would have given them wings, but 1903 and Kitty Hawk was over 100 years ago and we sure do a lot of flying nowadays (although I miss the days when I could board a 727 and have the entire one side of the aisle all to myself and a bored stewardess at my back and call ).

You are in a hobby that is growing. With new people. With easy access to a lot of parts to keep these beasts going. Pinside is a reflection of that. So, for all you real old timers, embrace the change and grace some of us newer pinsiders with your presence.

Not everybody new here is an Okatu.

When I see so many of you mentioning collectors and their new games, as opposed to the older days, I am falling into the "new Sterns" club more so now than ever before. Its not better or worse, it just is what it is. I have been collecting/playing since 1999. Games coming off of route were plentiful for many years, and at dirt cheap prices. Those games really don't exist anymore. I have played the living daylights out of all the "classics", and don't have room to keep them all. When I start looking at prices for a lot of these games, the economics just don't make sense. Games like BSD, Fishtales, The Getaway, The Shadow, Congo, etc. I was passing on at $800 regularly. Now that they are creeping into Stern Pro pricing. The bang for the buck when compared to newer Sterns, just isn't there for me.

Speaking for myself, it isn't worse now, just different...... and yes, clearly far more expensive.

It's nice to read a thread with no flexing and arguing for a change.

I miss the wealth of technical knowledge that used to come from RGP and Pinside. It seemed like even the most difficult to diagnose issues could be resolved with help from some highly experienced posters. There was also a lot of historic information being shared. Many of these members seem to have moved on from Pinside. There's still some of that left, but the newer generation of collectors are more likely to have only owned newer games where they have hardly had to lift the playfield, or they call a guy to come fix their game for them.

I also miss the 'Hitler Reacts' videos.

Hitler's videos were very funny

As mentioned before, I miss the oldtime members who eventually left the site for various reasons. When I first joined the hobby, I knew enough to respect & learn from others who had been in the hobby far longer than me. I enjoyed the comradery that was clearly apparent in threads. I came here for discussions of games & the wealth of repair knowledge available. I still feel that the knowledge contained here is still Pinside's greatest strength.

I couldn't care less about endless fanboy arguments, value debates, narcissistic podcasters, collector dick waving, obsessing about LEs & owning every new title, or those new members who have collections consisting entirely of games made after 2010. I don't understand any of that stuff. They're being obtuse & missing out on so much that the hobby has to offer.

To be honest I didn't know a damn thing when I started buying games either. I started small with older titles & tried to work my way up, learning & fixing along the way. The lightbulb really didn't go off until a couple years later, when I finally connected with local pinheads. Then started playing their collections, discussing rules & strategies, learning about the great qualities of EMs, the wonders of 1980-81 early solid states, overlooked Gottliebs, the innovations of system 11s, alphanumerics, and the classic DMD era. Then started restoring games, which became almost more enjoyable than playing them. Then I even impressed myself & built a Quicksilver from scratch, then was happy to share that knowledge with the community. Now I'm working on a mod side business. Hopefully someday I'll build a custom game. And on it goes.

None of that would have been possible without this site.

I feel like I've come full circle as a pinhead where there is still an endless amount of pinball to learn & enjoy. For me the chase isn't about owning & arguing about every new title, but finding the right balance to my evolving gameroom that showcases everything the hobby has to offer. But most importantly, I've made some really great friends, which is really what this hobby is all about. Leagues & pinball shows can't come back soon enough. Cheers!

Any social organization is like a moving river. And unless a pinsider has friends here who can speak up for him and his whereabouts, he could be 6 feet under and no one here will ever know. Ah...he just moved on.

And the old EM guys are taking their knowledge with them. That is sad.

And now....the new generation: I was amazed at the number of younger people at the Denver Pinball Showdown. The show was full enough that all of the pins got some play time, but, IMO, the younger guys and girls gravitate to the newest stuff. The new stuff plays faster--and has more bells and whistles. And most of the new stuff has Ball Savers. none of this old school shoot-drain stuff.

And of the younger people, there were a lot of ladies playing.

My cousin's son owns 18 Wedgeheads. He has all of the top wedgies in his collection and, yes, I feel privileged to be able to play these old pins I grew up with.

But I also have some friends with many of the latest models of Spooky, JJP, American Pinball, and Stern. And if I were to choose between an EM, and many of the early solid state pins, or the newer pinball offerings, I would be going with the new stuff, budget permitting.

Here is something else about Pinside. It is so big that my cousin can be on here everyday, as I am, and we will never meet because he hangs with the EM crowd. There is a little of something for everybody here.

It is all of what you make of it.

I miss the regular posts in the CITPP thread. It's basically dead today

Is there any way to see all the pictures I've ever posted in one large file instead of going through each post?

John

Ding Ding. Gotta work your way up.

JJP entering the mix was a major turning point downwards, for a few reasons. Not their fault but it ended up weaponizing people into human shills and ruined a good chunk of this place.

I wasn't here 10 years ago, so I can't add anything of real value to this conversation other than to say - Pinside can be a bit of a shitshow sometimes, but it beats the pants off of Facebook.

I miss Steve Kulpa's faces of RGP pictures and first picture the Royal Order of the Pinball Goose

LTG : )

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The adventures of Black_Rose and the lawyer,, brother !!

This is the part of pinside i miss the most.. I haven't laughed this hard reading a thread for a long time!

I miss a time when toppers were a novelty you saw on Adams Family, Whitewater and Fish Tales not a $3000 investment that are now more important than the game itself.

I miss a time when a game was rated for how good it was, rather than it's the best theme and best artwork (looking at you Deadpool).

And noone.

Where? I don’t see em.

I remember when I thought $250 or whatever for a clear plastic dome for FT topper was high etc

That is high...

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New supply drove down prices