Coin Slot

Coin Slot Magazine - #047 - 1978 - December [International Arcade Museum]
243 S. Third St.
By: John Fetterman
Catawfssa, PA 17820
There is something crazy about collecting pinballs.
It requires a
very definite physical commitment to house the things.
make constant forays into your thoughts.
you do it.
They
Your friends are glad
There are memories from driving down the highway
with games loaded in the back - passers-by won't let you alone,
gas station attendants tell you about every game they ever played.
You must not ignore your pinballs; there would be no reason to
have them. Moreover, you're probably dollars ahead owning games
which keep you away from expensive trips to the public arcades.
There have been close to one thousand different models of
American pinballs made since the introduction of the flipper in
1947. This total includes two- and four- player versions of the
same game, replay and add-a-ball versions of games (which, though
a pair be similar in appearance, they are often markedly different
in play), and copses of earlier games. These games are the works
of a surprisingly small group of designers, and in inspecting a pin-
ball collection of reasonable size, one is able to discern many of
the personal trends of those designers. Pinball playfield design is
mere artwork, a
pretty pattern of holes drilled in a piece of
plywood.
It is not the function of this column to slight pre-flipper pinball.
Those who lived in that time can tell of the excitement of each
new development - the lights, or the growth in the size of the
machine, or the new moving parts - but the flipper games made
everything before them obsolete. The appeal of a pre-flipper game.
No matter what clever tricks the older game reveals in playing, the
pinball without flippers says "antique" first and "Pinball machine"
second.
Prices of these games reflect this fact. A collection with
out some pre-flippers lacks roots, but the fruit is the later games.
.com
m
:
u
m
Just what do we consider
use Anything you can afford.
fro colelctable?
m
d
-
e
e
A five-year old game
is no a less
d collectable than one twenty-five
load a little
n just
arc more available. In twenty more years
.
w
years old; o
it's
w
D
w
/w popular
/
many of today's
games won't be around, so choose the
:
p
t
t
games you h collect on the basis of play, and not on rarity. Nobody
is going to get rich overnight from their collection, and a living-
(c) Copyright 1978 by John H. Fetterman and Steven P. Young.
AH rights reserved.
© The International Arcade Museum
33
http://www.arcade-museum.com/