Most "serious" people in a hobby don't spend a lot of time of forums from my experience with several hobbies I am involved with. Talking about a hobby is just that and serious people tend to do less talking & more doing. There are always exceptions but my guess would be less than 5% of the people in the hobby visit any forum and less than 3% are likely to be active on a forum.

I sell used pinball parts on eBay and when I communicate with customers looking for something specific I don't have I tell them to post or watch Pinside and I would say less than 5% know about Pinside when I refer them to the site.

It is kind of a shame more in the hobby don't visit websites & forums because there is a lot of good information exchanged. But most people I know in the hobby just don't like dealing with the drama. I post & lurk here when I am taking a break from the real world but rarely stop by unless I am bored. These days it seems like Facebook (closed groups) are a much better place to hook up with the more serious people. I know a lot of people who were active on Pinside & RGP that have moved over to Facebook lately.

Couldn't have said it better myself! As with any hobby there are always a few people active on the forums and those people tend to think more people are paying attention then there actually are. People who are serious in the hobby are typically much too busy to waste time on forums. And it is even more rare to see people in the business on forums unless they are offering something for sale.

As far as number of people with "new machines" that are active on the forums or Pinside members - that is because most of those people are not busy restoring old machines. Most of those guys are people with deep pockets who have plenty of spare time & money. So I can understand how or why there are more of those type people here.

Realistically I would bet under 3% of people who own pinball machines even know about Pinside. And that number might climb to 5 to 10% if we are just talking about people who are active in the hobby