I’m on a Facebook group for pictures of cats on pinball machines.
And though I knew intellectually how key the “home use” market is to the industry, and even joshed about how a lot of recent classic rock-themed tables were a hilariously on-the-nose play to this “midlife crisis” market, being directly confronted with evidence of how big a share of the operating tables in circulation are being hosted in mancave 4-table banks exhibiting no aesthetic or gameplay sensibility, just Funko-ass hoarding, is a revelation
I knew guys with basement machines, but like because they were pinball guys who would have tournaments on this collection of stuff they had assembled over at least a decade by being presented with occasional opportunities through iffy merchants and in response developing moderately deep curatorial knowledge
And like, my uncle had a pinball machine in his basement yeah, that was where our “barn finds” came from
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