Quoted from vanilla:I guess it all depends on how wealthy one is, and how much disposable income he has, wouldn't you say?
From what you wrote, I see at least 31K from you in disposable income. That amount represents half of many family's annual income. Not everyone has an IT job or lives in the coastal cities. Not that you do, but I'm just sayin'. Many of us have been in the hobby for a very long time, 20 years or more, and have slowly worked our collection up from the beaters we found to having one or a few nice games, all while running our households and our lives. We have relatively humble incomes.
In the last, say, 15 years, there have been some very wealthy guys who have joined the pinball hobby, buying in high, buying the top tier games, price no object, having a known collection, rare games too, making a splash, walking among the rest of us (or above the rest of us, no insult intended). I have heard of one rich pinballer, maybe there are others, who goes from avocation to avocation, buys in high, get familiar with the hobby, and once he figures it all out and does all that he thinks he can do, he gets bored and moves on to some other hobby that he has not conquered yet. I can't decide if his situation is enviable or even has to be.
Is it possible that the pinball hobby eventually increased in value just enough to have approached your activity level, making you notice it, bringing you into it? For instance, do you eschew hobbies that are truly inexpensive, or does the excitement of high value provide the energy you need?
On a somewhat related note, I read an interesting article where people who grew up in wealthy families explained the assumptions they made about life and the rude shock they learned once leaving home. For instance, they thought everybody had a maid, or a vacation home, or a private plane, or ate at restaurants every day, or never worried about price tags, etc. One example that amused me was a woman who had believed that people who did not immediately run out and upgrade their iphone each time were simply too lazy to walk to the apple store. LOL
I haven’t been into pinball as a hobby quite as long as you, but definitely long enough to have seen this humble-flex movie many times before.
Like you said, lots of new blood in the recent past who love to telegraph their wealth (or more often, I suspect, appearance of wealth); they come here, make a splash for a time, lose interest, and then it’s on to the next “expensive” pursuit.
And, to answer your (probably rhetorical) questions regarding motivation, I’d say the answer is definitely “YES”, many of these guys seem to be chasing something deeper than mere hobby satisfaction. I think some folks are just hopelessly enslaved to the “he who dies with the most toys wins” ethos. Unfortunately, this outlook is unlikely to ever result in true contentment or satisfaction, so one gets stuck endlessly running in a hamster wheel always chasing bigger and better; just look at all the Pinsiders who are stuck on the idea that the size of one’s “collection” is a proxy for one’s devotion to the hobby! These are the same kind of folks who are unable to enjoy an inherently cheap activity like birdwatching unless they accumulate an arsenal of $3k binoculars and $5k spotting scopes.
(And, in my opinion their ability to endlessly buy their way out of their short attention-spans is NOT “enviable”! My younger self would have probably disagreed, but hopefully I’m wiser now.)
