Maybe there are others like me, who bought their first pin thinking it would be great to own one pinball machine (singular, with no intention of ever buying any others). People I knew just didn't have pinball games in their homes. I only knew of one family in our area that owned a pinball machine back then. And if you are only intending to buy just the one game, then you carefully decide which game you like the best and start searching for it. It was 1994 and I didn't realize that I had been unknowingly playing protos and pilot games at one of the test locations in a Chicago suburb before those games even went into production. I had no idea what a pinball machine cost, but decided I wanted to own either CFTBL or IJ. It was a shock to learn that they were just produced in 1993 and cost thousands of dollars to purchase because they were still so new. I bought Creature in 1994 for $1895.00 and enjoyed it for about two years as my only machine before thinking that IJ would look good next to it. I had the distributor I purchased CFTBL from look for IJ for me, and when he found a nice one he also found a TZ with no cab fade and a mint playfield and shooter lane. I took them both the same day and paid $1400 for Indy and $1200 for Twilight.

I now have 13 pins in my game room. Every one of the 13 is a game I specifically wanted and hunted down myself (like my ToM proto) or had the word out through distributors that I wanted it. I have three other pins that didn't make it into my pinball room. Those three were all purchased by chance opportunity in 1997 ('94 Baywatch, '96 Barb Wire less than a year old, and '97 X-files on a NIB close-out). I don't play those three much at all, but I keep them because I like pinball and the prices they would bring don't tempt me to sell any of them.