Quoted from bigd1979:
If your buying high priced toys like we all are then your not poor by any means. 1 billion people all over the world are starving and were buying 5-10k nib pins....trust me we all cld be much worse off.
Also many of the pooling games are by no means littlery falling apart. I bought a wonka le used with pooling and trust me ,normally i wldnt do this however .. i know its a keeper and i did as many protective measures as i cld with my skill set. I've played the shit out of it(most fun I've had in the hobby yet) and its doing ok ...its not perfect but it will b fine for a long time. Im still gonna contact jjp to see if something can be done(un populated free playfield or discounted) If not ill buy a new playfield down the road and swap it out if need be ,but i don't believe this issue will ever effect the playability in any way. Trust me it bothers me knowing its there but everything will be ok and were having lots of fun in the mean time. I'm not gonna let these issues ruin my enjoyment bc we only come around once and its a short time at that.
For now take whatever preventive measures you can to make sure your issues dont get any worse . That way if your not taken care of it won't be the end of the world . Things can always be worse bud. We are lucky to even have these amazing mechanical toys in our residence.
These issues have not ruined my fun at all but it leaves a real bad taste in my mouth to spend 7500 on a new Stern Premium and learn that I have pooling around the posts and chips in my playfield that has actually pulled the artwork off of the game.....that sucks bad.
I'm also aware that I am not poor and that I am very fortunate to have what I have, so saying that I'm a poor schlep was obviously an exaggeration. I am however an average guy who busts his ass in a factory and it takes me a hell of a long time to save up enough money to buy a new game. Truthfully I probably shouldn't even be buying pinball machines but I love pinball and it's my hobby.
Long story short, as hard as I have to work and as long as it takes me to save up for a new game, it probably bothers me a little more than someone that has a much bigger income than myself. That's why I take such great pride in my collection and why I take care of them the way that I do and why I want them to be in pristine condition. Call me weird but I don't want my $7500 dollar NIB pinball machine to have a defective playfield with chips in it.