About a year and a half ago I bought 3 pinball machines along with a bunch of arcade boxes (and a shuffle bowler) as a lot. Price-wise it was a pretty good deal on the pinballs with everything else thrown in free.
The pros:
* Pinball is very good at keeping the baby awake until bedtime, lol. I would sit him on the glass and he would be enamored by the sights and sounds. Screens don't catch his eyes, so the physicality was great.
* Having pinball in the house is fun, and it makes parties better.
The cons:
* Turns out I'm not good at pinball!
* My machines are older (mid 90's) and they are a TON of work. The arcades too.
* One worked the morning I bought it and never again. Still working on it here and there.
* The others have all sorts of gremlins big and small.
* I have yet to find someone local who can repair them.
But, I've learned a ton about them and electronics in the meanwhile, so I no longer entirely regret jumping into this.
BTW, they sell new-in-box pinballs for almost as much as I paid for my whole 9 machine arcade, and you have to wait many months sometimes to get them. There's limited editions that are 2x-3x that, even.
I considered buying a pinball machine in my 20's. An older, wiser guy I knew told me,
"Do you like working on small gadgets and tinkering with lots of rubber bands and motors and solenoids?"
"Not really, but I love playing pinball."
"Don't buy a pinball machine."
Now that I've got a basement and am reasonably stable, the itch is coming back.
I've had the itch for over two decades at this point, but the prices of the machines I want keep inflating faster than my stomach/budget for spending money on pinball machines :-(
Guess I should have picked one up back in high school. Would have been a lot of money for me at the time, but it'd be worth like 4-5x that now if it I'd kept it in decent shape. Moving it several times would have sucked, though.
The trick is to find a local repair person and vet them. If you buy a new modern pin by a company still around, you won't have many issues with a home use only pin.
If you buy them brand new, you will never put enough plays on them to get them to the point they'll break. They are well made.
But that said you do need a certain level of handiness unless you plan to call the distributor to come out and fix it if it does break, because even new games will break occasionally.
Do you know a good place to shop for new-in-box pinball machines?
A few weeks ago I poked around on eBay and Google. And mostly found cheap digital ones or other cabinets similar to the arcades you can get at Walmart.
Everyone is mentioning Stern in the comments, but Jersey Jack pinball is superior in many ways (and costs more). Don’t ignore them if you’re looking to buy.
A local-ish distributor [1] of American pinball machines lists these: American Pinball, Bitronic, Chicago Gaming, Jersey Jack Pinball, Pinball Brothers, Stern Pinball.
€5,000-€10,000 (plus taxes) seems the going rate, up to €20,000 if you want some sort of "limited edition" (but aren't they all limited now?).
The pros:
* Pinball is very good at keeping the baby awake until bedtime, lol. I would sit him on the glass and he would be enamored by the sights and sounds. Screens don't catch his eyes, so the physicality was great. * Having pinball in the house is fun, and it makes parties better.
The cons:
* Turns out I'm not good at pinball! * My machines are older (mid 90's) and they are a TON of work. The arcades too. * One worked the morning I bought it and never again. Still working on it here and there. * The others have all sorts of gremlins big and small. * I have yet to find someone local who can repair them.
But, I've learned a ton about them and electronics in the meanwhile, so I no longer entirely regret jumping into this.
BTW, they sell new-in-box pinballs for almost as much as I paid for my whole 9 machine arcade, and you have to wait many months sometimes to get them. There's limited editions that are 2x-3x that, even.