while the pinball community is certainly esoteric, nothing you note makes it so... it is "esoteric" in that it's a rare interest practiced by few...

some of the things you point out are true of other hobbies as well... a/v for example...

however, "pinball as the mother of invention, spilling over into other industries" is, ummm, a reach...

^^^

yup... i've only been a member here for a short period of time, but before joining, i read zillions of posts, both here and at rgp... i saw that there was enough helpful people who had been part of the pin hobby for a long time...

and that's ignoring the very useful and free guides provided by clay, pinwiki, and so on...

^^^

while true, not unique to this hobby... people have been fabricating unobtainium parts in many other hobbies for many years (automobiles come immediately to mind, amoungst others)...

not trying to shoot down your enthusiasm... just bringing you back to reality a bit... this is a hobby that considers a lcd screen to be a huge innovation...

yes, lloyd is very useful... don't kid yourself into thinking he is unique though... "gurus" exist in every community...

all the other stuff you mentioned has corollaries in other hobbies as well... i mentioned a/v earlier... you'd be astonished (or maybe you wouldn't) at all the useful stuff that has been produced...

i like the pin hobby, don't get me wrong... but it's not unique... another way that it isn't unique is that the hobbyists themselves THINK "their" community is unique...

lloyd, give yourself more credit.... you are a pretty large fraction of this forum... not only do you have a solution for even the most obscure of problems*, you are honest and give "us" a proper perspective on what it is like to try to make a living getting people to put money into machines...

* and having been a "mini-guru" on another forum that focuses on a different hobby, i KNOW how trying it can be to explain something over and over to someone who just isn't getting it...