The Pinball Bug

If you talk to any serious pinball collector (particularly those that have several games), they all seem to have one thing in common. At some point, they get bitten by the pinball bug. They buy their first machine and have an absolute blast restoring, fixing, or playing it. They squeeze this first game into a room somewhere in the house, regardless of whether or not they actually have the space for it. The machine keeps them occupied for weeks. They spend all of their free time on it. And before you know it... boom! The person you used to know is gone; replaced by a mad, pinball-addicted collector who trolls eBay and Gumtree constantly in search of pinball machines for sale.

They spend all of their time reading, researching and looking into anything related to pinball. Before long, they buy their second and third pinball machines, usually in quick succession. While they had to squeeze their first game into the house, they are soon having to find room for many more. And that's the point at which the bug really takes hold. They buy another five, six, or seven machines. These machines are inevitably projects that need some restoration and repair work. They store the machines in all sorts of weird places until they have the space (and time) to work on them. Their partners get increasingly worried about the amount of time they are spending obsessing over pinball. Normal people look at them and think that they need psychiatric help, whereas other pinheads look at them and understand that all they're trying to do is deal with the natural urge to play more pinball!

This is something you read about constantly on pinball forums and hear about at pinball gatherings; normal people willingly falling into the black hole of pinball ownership. This blog is mostly about how I fell into that black hole. If anything, I'm hoping the posts on this blog will be cathartic and help explain how I have come to be the crazy, pinball-obsessed person I am. But I also hope that the blog will provide other pinheads with a sense that they're not as weird or as unusual as they might think. So feel free to read about a few of the adventures that pinball has taken me on, and the things I've learned along the way. I enjoy writing about my experiences, and hope that they are at least a little bit as enjoyable to read about as they were to create.

Alex