Welcome to Aussie Pinball, great to have you here.
If you get the chance can you please tell us more about the days growing up in SA, were there many games around? What about the before the crackdown, say in the 1970s?
I think prior to the ban the pinball market was very healthy, most milk bars would have had 2 or 3 pins and bigger shops up to 8. Good variety as well. Lot of Gottlieb domination in the EM days with Williams and Bally taking over when SS came into play. Then videos made an appearance and sometime in about 81/82 the government declared pinnies a form of gambling (probably because they look like bingo machines). Videos were OK though so the coin-op industry did grow. Many operators sold machines over the boarder or into private homes which was legal, you could own them but not operate them. I bought my first pin a Williams Stardust from a shopkeeper who had 2 of his own rahter than from an operator and he was scared he was going to get nicked if the machines were found on his property. I bought it for 70 rand, which at the time would have been the equivalent of $50Aus! My mate bought the other one. I was twelve at the time and I kid you not we had to carry them home. All my mates came along, 2 to a leg and off we went, I wish I had photos. Then in the early 90s some big money crowd with no coin op knowledge opened up some big family entertainment centres and imported several containers loads of pins (Addams, Getaways, Starwars etc) which the cops raided after a while and confiscated. They took the whole thing to court and sanity prevailed for a change and they were declared legal. Of course many operators who had had a handful of pins got them out of storage and started operating them. So you had this amazing mix of EMs, early SS and a 10 year gap to the DMD era. Then guys started importing container loads of old pins from places like Germany which had a huge second hand market. Problem was pins need more love and care than videos and many operators just operated junk. Eventually it all fizzled out much like the coin op market here with just a small group of mainly independent operators left. I moved 5 years ago and did operate pins in some pubs and pizza parlours as a hobby before I left. It really is fantastic to see how alive the hobby is here and seeming to grow with container loads of all types of pins finding their way over here.
