The pinball hobby is not inexpensive for most but its the only hobby I've
ever had that paid for itself with even a decent profit. The way I accomplished
this was by buying dead pins, fixing them, keeping the ones I liked and selling
the others.
Over 10 years ago ran out of room here (52 pins) so went back to my first hobby
(amateur radio) and having a blast. There are piles of older tube gear around and just
like pins, buying older radios that needs work and fixing them up. So this is shaping up
to be as inexpensive as pinball was.