This is the first Pinball game I ever owned, and of course, I still have it.  It's one of the better Chicago Coin games made before they went out of business.  I paid $150 to a neighbor for the game that knew I was "in to electronics" (I'm an Electrical Engineer) and thought maybe I'd be interested in buying it and fixing it up.  Chris and I played this game quite a bit until we got tired of only having only one game to play.  Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on whether you ask Chris or me, this led to me buying other games which led to me becoming a major collector.

This is how it usually works when you buy a Pinball game.  First, you buy one game, then you realize that a single game can get old rather quickly, so you buy another one, then you realize that if two is good three is even better, and so it goes.  Eventually you either get out of the hobby or you run out of room and find yourself juggling games for the available space to set them up.  I started with this single game, but I currently have over 70 games and seem to hover between 60 and 70 games at any one time.  I've even gotten to the stage where I send my games off to other friends' homes where they can play a game and I get to keep it but use them as an "offsite storage facility."  You know you have it bad when you find yourself doing this.

I've owned more than 300 games since originally buying the Sound Stage around 1992, and I've probably repaired or restored at least 250 of the games over the years.  It's now August of 2012 when I'm updating this page so the number of games I've owned goes up every month or so due to trades or just buying another game that a fellow pinhead wants to sell that I like.  Lately it's been more around EM games than anything else. It's the restoration process that I actually enjoy the most.  I still play the games, but I really do enjoy the restoration process more than anything else.

Eventually I'll get around to getting some digital photos when I set this old game up once again.  In the meantime, I have other games to restore so I better get to it.

(click picture to enlarge)