In are own game rooms, till death. At least mine.

They end up on Craigslist

Save them all, big or small. Wait a minute...thats the breast cancer slogan. However, I bet they wouldnt mind us using it...seeing how important boobs are on Pinside.
Im not sure where all the pins have gone but Im doing my part to bring them back.

stuffed away in pinball hoarders sheds/barns, never to see the light of day until they die...

as for the others:

- being used by a pinhead somewhere, or in garages/basements in onesies and twosies...

or

- long ago dumped in a landfill (where most of them ended up)... there was no "home market" in those days (and there really isn't much of one today, in the grand scheme of things)... after a machine made it's way from the "a" locations through the "c" locations and stopped making money, there was no real reason for an op to save them... for the most part, they were shot anyway... they stripped off any usable parts, and trashed the rest...

let's say (pulling a number out of the air) the average run for an em was between 3 and 4 thousand... of that original run, i'd wager that if a thousand of them were left today, that would be an unusually high number...

The Mr. Pinball price guide estimates that only 5-10% of a given older game are still in existence. Applying this factor to some of the small runs is going to make some titles pretty rare these days, but I speculate that only matters to people like us who are really into it.

The "collector" in me is what makes me even THINK about something like the Williams Blue Chip that popped up close recently as it had production run of 2,150 in 1976. I suppose if the theme was something a BIT more exciting I might have pursued it. Unfortunately I don't have the budget or the space to help much in saving the pin world. I guess that anything/everything that all of us do helps, even if it's on a small scale.

But man, wouldn't it be FUN to have a museum!!!

When I was a teenager I remember a sign at the dump mentioned a special area for appliances, pinball machines etc.
I'd love to have that sign now.

A Lot of them were dumped or burned. I think we see a small fraction of the initial production of pins on the market today. A friend of mine whose family has been in the coin-op business since the beginning says that in the late eighties he couldn't give away early vids and pins. Most were taken to the dump.

me too.... that would be a great pinroom sign...

...stored in someone's barn.

TNT Amusements roof.

Junked for a few parts & then off to the dump. When there were no new replacement parts, or too expensive. Things have changed the last 10 years with more playfields, back glass, plastics, electronics, etc. People if they have the space can believe new parts might come along to upgrade their poor pins.

I probably sent 100 pins to the dump, like Asteroid Annie, 2 Spectrums, etc. Sold Paragon #1001 which I regret today.

On my garage wall.

image.jpg

In the early to mid 80's, there were many pins sent to the garbage pile. Most operators would say, 'Its not worth fixing, they are making new ones every day'. If it was a Spanish made pin it was a goner for sure.

My house.....
Unfortunately.

Estate sales.

Many got thrown in the trash, or were sold to a home user. Often these games would eventually break down and these people would not know what to do with the game. Many ended up as trash again. Some years ago I initiated a pinball donation fund for the Dutch Pinball Association, trying to save some of these games. Nobody believed in it and I had to put my foot down to make it happen. Within the first 3 months we collected over 40 games and had to stop advertising as we ran out of storage space. Even then games kept coming in. In total over 100 by now.

All came from games that were parted out & the rest sent to the dump.

The irony of all this is that most MMs will have survived but lots of 80's games wont.

Ie production numbers have little or no relevance to the final rarity of a table.

The Jersey shore lately.....

the least of our worries...

Funny you would mention Blue Chip as it seems like there have been a few for sale in my area lately. In fact, I just bought one last week. Probably not the most fun game ever but the price was right.

Dave

Pinball machine heaven, of course.

They set them on fire in Michigan!

The original plan was to restore them in the club home of the Dutch Pinball Association. It turned out there was not enough manpower to fix them all, so they kept a selection and auctioned off the rest (mostly EM and early SS games) to members of the association. The majority of what was kept is still part of the DPA collection and set up in their clubhouse.

My experience has been that most end up in the route guys old dilapidated pole barn/warehouse where the roof leaks and they have no intention on selling unless they get that "ebay price" for them. Granted they're comparing their neglected, needing work, routed machine to some guys fully restored model on ebay and think you're lowballing them when you factor in costs like playfield touch-up, rebuilding boards, purchasing new pieces to fix the broken stuff.

One local guy does a fall cleaning around this time of year. His collection is mostly older arcade games. I usually see a busted up pile of waterlogged cabinets sitting outside of his warehouse. He takes the electrical components off to the dump.

Disney Quest.