Restoration is what pulled me into this hobby. In 2 years I’ve done:
‘78 Mata Hari,
‘47 Bally Rocket
‘67 Shangri-La
Partial resto on ‘86 Gold Wings
Partial resto on ‘47 Rio
In the middle of ‘80 Firepower

Who knows what the fate of these particular machines will be and also the other 1000s of games that others have documented restoring on this site.

I was wondering the other day, years and years from now after the restored games get played and past on or sold and get another 40-70 years of wear and tear, will people still have the passion to restore the game again?

Or are the restos we are doing now or have completed in the last 20 years be it for those examples?

Just interested in if others think about that, or have seen a 3rd Generation “2nd time around restoration” machine yet?

I agree with this, being 36 its hard to talk about this stuff with friends my age or younger, usually its just the initial shock of seeing something old have a shiny look, but after that theres genuinely no interest. Outside of Pinside I find the hobby kind of lonely. Maybe 2 friends actually have an interest in restoring anything, pinball related or not.

My wife thinks its cool but we arent having kids so I know Im not "passing them on" so it just had me thinking what will come of these machines as the decades build, how long with they last, and will they eventually just end up in a futuristic simulation dumpster of the Matrix future?

I do have hope though that 70 years from now, some dude will get one of these and appreciate it and maintain or restore it again.
Probably not Gold Wings though... pretty slim chances there.

But just the thought of someone hypothetically saying "Yeah man I got a 142 year old Bally Rocket Flipperless, thing is MINTY!" is just cool to me.