I think a collector is someone who has purchased multiple machines over a continuing period with the aim to buy more pins as time goes on to grow the collection.
A collector would also have at least a very good to excellent understanding of the pinball industry, its past and its present, as well as future and upcoming events perhaps.
Then u have to ask what is a serious collector. That's another entirely different story but might be categorised by someone who has spent more on pinballs than say the cost of a brand new family motor vehicle etc. (theres no right or wrong answer to these assumptions but just a general guess as to what most serious collectors might agree or sympathise with).
A collector or serious collector would have a collection of spare parts, manuals, posters,flyers and an aim to continue building/buying/restoring in this pinball hobby. Maybe someone might think that three or more machines might make the start of a collection.
Maybe a serious collector could be deemed to have more than a dozen pinnys.
Even half a dozen brand new Sterns at 7 grand each represent an almost fifty thousand dollar spend. I would call that serious.
A collector could also be categorised as someone who has pinballs as their main hobby and main thing in life they spend their spare/expendable cash on.
So many different ways to look at it. I wonder what others think a serious collector is, if even a basic collector is a hard one to nail down.......
good topic.
(also, I reckon there are probably less than 250 people in Australia I would deem to be a pinball collector, and les than 50 to 75 serious collectors).
If the "My Collection" section of Aussie Pinball was cleaned up/made with May 2014 figures, gathered by present day emails to current members to get real figures, that would help a lot, same with the other pinball forum, but the collection stats and lists are over 5 yrs old n very not up to date....food for thought.....
