on my camping they had a millionaire pinball machine and that was the first one i always played. When they removed it i always said that when i had an apartement with a spare room i would buy that machine and some arcade's. And so i did. I know have a Neo Geo cabinet, Sega Mega Play and an TAF pinball machine. I i am looking for 2 more pinball machines to complete the room. The machines will be: TZ and LOTR.

my first machine really was Millionaire, but i disappointed me and was not as good as in my youthfull memories.

So i sold it

LOL!!
This may be considered lazy on my part (but it is too long to type again!!)...but the story of what got me started buying pins is on my main page under Pinball Saga! I think if you click on my avatar it will come up to read...

Phoebe

As with most people my age mid 30's, I played pinball during the early 90's when arcades were everywhere. Then flash forward to jan 2009, went to wdw with the family. My wife and son wouls nap during the middle of the day while I went to the arcade and rediscovered pinball playings the latest stern games

I wondered what do the arcades do with the older pinball games? Then I found pinside while searching to buy a game. Now I'm deep into the addiction

I blame the mouse. Without the arcades at wdw I wouldn't have started collecting

Did it work?

Same here but i still haven't finish it on my profile. I like reading everyone else's stories though.

I played pinball when I was a kid and had nothing better to do. The 8 games I played the most in my area were:

Consic Gunfight
Pinbot
High Speed
Rollergames
Terminator 2
DE Batman
Addams Family
Indiana Jones

...and in that order as they came out.

I still remember the week that T2 came out and my local arcade. There was a line of people to play it 10 deep which I waited in many times. The game sat in between SFII and MK2, NOT a coincidence.

When I discovered IJ a year or two later, I really thought it was the best amusement game you could play at the time for 50 cents.

I remember Addams not treating me well at all and at the time, I actually didn't play it because I thought it was too difficult.

So fast forward to about 8 years ago... I was really looking for a cheap pin at first which I found; a Jokerz! for $300, then a Comet project for $150, then I traded for a High Speed and once I found a Swords of Fury it was over. I have bought/sold around 50 arcades/pins over the last 10 years and quite honestly have just about all my grails/wants. My current want list these days is really very short:

A classic SS Stern pin
A Mad Planets arcade

The rest of the games on my want list are more wishful thinking games I like but honestly, would not lay the cash down unless it was a killer deal.

My story started with a 25 dollar HG pinball machine, every machine after that in my current collection has been bought in the past 16 months. I dont even have ALL of the EMs I had. Its more than a cliff. Id call it a space jump.

Hmm, it was about 5 years ago, I dont know why, but I really wanted to play some pinball, I was actually more into video arcades when I was younger, but had an urge, and then realized that all the arcades had dissapeared and there was really very little for pins around my city. So I figured I'd just by one, and brought home a TZ! That was the start..

Like most, I didn't get into pins until I was older and played a Getaway that was at a local bowling alley and allowed smoking which was great for a 18+ year old. Played there for about 5 years regularly until I got more involved with girls, etc. Years later March of 2011 I was bored and was thinking about the old days and pins. Started research: Came home with a Getaway May of 2011. Now up to 4 and slowly growing now that I got my basement done.

I did get some vids afterwards, but pins are my main passion. I do see how and why vids are the pinball gateway drug.

started 6-7 years ago with some extra cash and some spare time. pins have been keeping me out of trouble since then, so i've been adding to the list. gonna stick with it until i'm tired of it. an idle mind is the devils playground.

I had to stop buying old Pontiacs to restore so I could spend more time with the wife and kids. I saw "Special when Lit" last year. Tryed VP, the bug took route, CL, then Bally Space Invaders was brought home. Now I have four early SS machines. They all needed repair to some extent. But to me, it has been a good fit to my specific talents. A little electrical troubleshooting, art restoration, some chrome, and light effects. Plus the joy of restoring a piece of history. Very much like cars, and now they can all fit in my house. And the family unit actually takes quite a bit of interest in it. Now the MAME cabinet is looking abandoned. Built a smaller VP/MAME to preserve the video games and try VP titles. I still have the 77' T/A though. I bet I could get a nice DMD for it.....

Exact same thing for me. Played since I was 6... 40 years ago. Almost stopped when arcades closed and bars lost their pins. Took me nearly a decade to realize one could actually own a pin... or now 5... happened in no time.

A buddy of mine had a Data East Star Wars machine so I went over to play it one day .... the rest is history. I was hooked just like I was a teenager back at a skating rink in Nashville Tennessee. I started searching for my first machine and that's when I came across a Stern Monopoly pinball machine and fell in love. We still have that machine and probably always will.

The night was clear and the moon was yellow, and the leaves came tumbling down.

Operator in my business was getting harder to work with and the rest is history.

LTG : )

That sounds exactly like me lol, the most unusual part is that my wife never freaked out lol

Finding out that there were games available for less than 3k which is what I thought they all were at least sold for.

I grew up with a GTB Bank-A-Ball from when I was little. Spent vast amounts of time in bars and arcades in the 70's and 80's where I developed a love for old penny arcade games. Did the whole videogame thing from the late 70's until around 83 and went back to pinball 100%. A few years ago I started collecting old machines to do restoration work on them and learn EM repair and spiraled out of control. Thank god I'm still an EM guy through and through because I can always find a project for a decent price, gun games, mutoscopes, EM games and pins, etc. Now I'm actually regressing to even older machines, love testers, fortune tellers, WWII era arcade machines are where my heart lies these days, but pinball is always there. It's a great hobby as long as your actually satisfied with what you have and ignore the small amount of greed and arrogance in the hobby and try to avoid being a hoarder. I see so many guys that are stockpiling pins in their basements, 100 games stacked on each other than are never going to be enjoyed, but that's part of the greed I guess.

Well, I could write a novel on this subject. But since I don't want to lose anyone, I will try and keep this as short as possible.
Back in the late 70's my dad purchased a Nip-It pinball as a Christmas present. My brother and I played it to death and even learned to fix it on our own. Fast forward to the mid 90's, I am in Orlando for my wife's business conference. I am bored to death and head to the Arcade where they have only 1 pinball. Addams Family. I became obsessed with how great a game it was and knew that some day I would own one. I finally found one shopped out and ready to go for $1700 from some company in Michigan. Can't remember their name anymore.
That was the only pin I ever purchased shopped out ever again. I went direct to all my local route vendors and pretty much over the next few years bought out every single pin they had, fixed them up, kept some for awhile, and sold most of them. I lost count by now but it is well over 100 pinballs that have passed through my house.
I have also gotten into Virtual Pinball and built my own cabinet with over 130 tables on it.
I used to go to the big Pinball Fantasies show at the Riviera in Vegas every year.
Now I attend the Dallas and Houston shows only, but often go home with some trophies along with my son.
Love this hobby.

I just felt like getting one to add to the arcade game collection, and then it took over the collection.

February 1988. My friend and I were at the local Putt-Putt. I was playing video games. He decided to play pinball. They had just gotten in an F-14 Tomcat. As I was playing After Burner, I could hear the F-14 Tomcat all the way across the arcade, so when I was done I decided to investigate.

After my first game I was totally hooked. It was about 6pm when we got to the arcade. We ended up plunking practically every token we had into that machine. By 10PM, we were still playing, and my mom was waiting outside to pick us up. We were still playing and didn't even pay attention to the time. My mom came in and was furious she sat there for half an hour waiting.

We went back the next weekend and by the end of the night, we literally owned the high score table. I moved away about 2 years later, but never forgot how much fun those two weekends were. About 3 years after that, I became hooked on TZ, and it always made me think of those nights at Putt-Putt. In 1996, I got a call from my friends mom saying he was killed in a car crash.

Again, I was taken back to the fun we had at Putt-Putt, and decided then and there, I needed a pinball machine. Fast forward to 2010 - a friend of mine had a Taxi he wanted to sell, so I immediately jumped on it. In June 2012, I got a Rollergames. In September, I got my grail - a TZ. I still want an F-14 Tomcat because I STILL think about my friend, and can relive all the fun we had.

What started you on buying Pinball machines?

* The fun I had playing pinball w/ friends in West Lafayette, IN as a teenager from mid 70's to summer 1980.
* In 2004 I stumbled across the fact that you could bid on/buy pinball machines and parts online via ebay. Uh-oh, trouble, slippery slope, woops, ....bought 5 Gottlieb pins from '04 - '06.

Chilled out for a few years, then in 2011 got back into it and picked up 2 ss Bally project pins.
Getting on Pinside in 2011 has only made things worse (ur, um ...better?), ....hanging out with other Pinball Crackheads (aka: enablers), learning more about pinball, etc. Great hobby!

Happy flippin!
MLV