Great topic, Brett
To the uninitiated - I usually get the "WOW, they still make pinballs ?" / "Holy shit, do these work ?"
No one has ever said that they don't like them (except my wife who tolerates them !)
when my garage door is open, and the machines are visible, I sometimes get people walk in off the street and talk to me for AGES (because I don't know how to shut up), and then they end up buying a game or someone they know buys one. Couriers are a specialty - Gavin sends his QLD based transport company to my place, and the driver asks "Is this the address for Nino's Magnificent Pinballs" ! Last time it was "Zambello's Arcade Amusements" - just to annoy me !
Everyone HAS a story. "Oh you do pinballs ? I remember when.."
My absolute favorite comments are for the select few that have visited my storage building and seen wall to wall pinballs - "What the fuu.. .. .. .."
My absolute FAVORITE story was a dude who bought a set of cocktail table legs off eBay from me. He rocked up to my place, saw the 5 - 6 machines all lined up and started to tell me some utter bulltish that his Uncle "was the first person in australia to own pinball machines and put them in shops and make money from them". So this guy was telling me, "He started the entire industry".. "The first machines he had were in the city in the late 1970's and by the mid 1980's he was a huge millionaire". I asked this tosser what his Uncle's name was - and I'd never heard of him.
As this dude was walking out to his car, he aksed me "So how did you get into pinball ?"
So I said, "my Dad used to be an operator".
He said " oh yea, how long ago was this ?"
I paused for a second, and replied ;
"My old man brought his first containers from the USA in the 1950's, While your uncle was still in primary school"
He never bothered to give me any feedback on the cocktail legs
