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Happiest v Saddest Pinball Days

DRD

DRD

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Oct 26, 2014
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A friend said to me that the happiest two days with a boat are the day you buy it and the day you sell it.

Made me think about happy v sad pinball days.

Happiest for me - Late 90s when I bought my first game, TAF. I had just bought a 3 bed house in Leeds and so naturally added a refurbished 7x4 turned leg Superleague and a Pinball Machine. TAF was bought refurbished and installed by the courier. The game that really cemented my love of pinball when I was at Uni. The game changer - streets ahead of anything out then: Hurricane, T2, Phantom of the Opera, Fish Tales, Swords of Fury, BoP, Checkpoint, LW3, the Gottliebs..... Having first really cut my teeth on Earthshaker, this was the first machine in a busy environment that I achieved and maintained the high score on. I still own this game and it has been phenomenally reliable. One fuse. One linkage. Rubbers. Balls. Bulb or two. In 20 plus years of ownership. I think I paid about £1.1k for it. Probably £5k now. Just brilliant in every single aspect.

Saddest for me - Day my NIB DI LE arrived. After unboxing it with @mark9, seeing the quality of the thing, the misaligned everything, the complete lack of quality; I realised I had made a huge mistake. Nearly pulled the trigger on selling it the week I got it. Thought I would fix it up, give it a chance. I put hours and hours and hours into setting the damned thing up. But nothing was going to overcome the shattering day one disappointment. Lost money when selling it, naturally.
 
Happiest day. Like you David, the feeling and excitement of your first machine can never be relived. I bought a beaten up badly worn BOP off eBay in 2010. I loved it to pieces. The next couple of years of learning and discovering new machines.
Funny. I could look at an EM next to a DMD machine and although I knew one was more modern than the other, It could have been months apart as opposed to decades. It just looked like a pinball machine to me and I spent many months/years learning about them. I envy noobs who have that journey ahead of them.

my saddest day was the realisation after moving heaven and earth to buy a TAF, painstakingly restoring it over many months, that it was in essence the same rules and gameplay experience as my £1200 Funhouse.
I promptly sold it with no regrets. It enabled me to buy iron maiden and then WOZ, so every cloud and all that.....

Now I enjoy seeking older simpler games and enjoying those. Current favourite is Pinbot. Genius game
 
I have had boats, boat stands for ‘bring out another thousand’😖

Everyday is a happy pinball day for me especially playing Dialed In! The build quality is way above any pin I have had.
Sad day is when the keg runs out☹️
 
Happy day - picked up my new RFM and got it home
Sad day, realised that it wouldn't go up the stairs

Was the same day :rofl:

Sold a week later and that was the end of my game owning dream for this house :(
(Well almost - I've got a full size VPin + 2 Mame Arcade cabs, but they were cut outside and then assembled upstairs and I doubt they'd come back down now they're assembled!)

Another happy pinball day would have to be my first event - LPC 2013 at the Pipeline, a whole world I didn't know existed opened up - 100% a happy day that!
 
Tony said:
Could you not have taken the head off? Big faff but possible?
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Yep, the head was off and was no issue (to be fair getting the head off the Pin2Ks is pretty simple - 4 bolts and 3 plugs)
However the narrow stairs with a twist in them wouldn't take the body, it *almost* went up, but not almost enough
I was getting a little wary of the weight of a Pin2k upstairs at that point too TBH.

The people that built this place 300 years ago just didn't get the memo about future building requirements!
 
Happyest day was in 2009 when I bought my first pin sttng it costed 500£ roughly 😁but I bought it in Hungary not in the uk.
I sold it 2012.☹️
I bought the sttng back in 2019.😁
After 2019 all my day are happy day.
 
Saddest: An arcade in Southport got 4 modern Sterns in about 2005. About 3 years later I arrived to find them all gone. Very depressing at the time.

However then came Wickstead Park in about 2009, the sudden realisation that I wasn't the only person still playing pinball. Never knew folks had them at home!
 
I think the happiest(and probably drunkest) for me was at UKPinfest, Daventry seeing 60 to 100 people chatting, laughing and drinking outside after the Saturday evening session had finished and thinking, I did this. Bringing the community together. It's why I do it. Makes it all worth while.

Saddest.......I've lost my playing mojo this year. Had more time that ever to play since the first lockdown and I'm just not. Maybe it's because I'm missing the social aspect of it. Missing having mates around.
 
Happiest - the arrival of the budget pins that turn out to be much more fun than their price tags suggest. Cue Ball Wizard, BSD.
Unhappiest - the arrival of the expensive grail pins that you end up forcing yourself to play because they cost a lot of money. TAF, TOM.
 
The first two Villa shows I would say are my favourite times in Pinball history.

The unhappiest time was near the end of my 'stay' in Wales with Heighway pinball. Made me sell my machines, get rid of all of my pinball repair company bits then got out of it all for a good while. If it wasnt for @Tilt_Birmingham and @philpalmer I wouldnt of got back into it. SO them two are to blame.
 
Big Phil said:
I think the happiest(and probably drunkest) for me was at UKPinfest, Daventry seeing 60 to 100 people chatting, laughing and drinking outside after the Saturday evening session had finished and thinking, I did this. Bringing the community together. It's why I do it. Makes it all worth while.

Saddest.......I've lost my playing mojo this year. Had more time that ever to play since the first lockdown and I'm just not. Maybe it's because I'm missing the social aspect of it. Missing having mates around.
Click to expand...

Ditto 're playing.
Probably 30 games this year
 
Two separate saddest.
Nigel Hills funeral and then Dave Rolfes
@mufcmufc with me on that.

Happiest would be an early NLP show seeing loads of non pinheads loving it, thinking I had a part in it.
Or handing NLP cheque to Mustard Tree, their rep, Jack was sooo grateful and over the moon
 
Happiest... First pin, Xenon... or was it sex up against SST, when the kids use to go to bed earlier.

Sad days.... miss drunken Pinfest.
 
ianw said:
Happiest... First pin, Xenon... or was it sex up against SST, when the kids use to go to bed earlier.

Sad days.... miss drunken Pinfest.
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Yup miss it too.
That was the last pin show, 15 bloody months ago. Feck off covid
 
Too many good days to just single one out, in no particular order

Winning the Midlands League in my first full year (Maybe with an asterisk because @mufcmufc didn't compete that year).
Attending Daventry for the first time - from that moment I was hooked
Getting my first machine - A13
Playing in my first (and only) big comp in the US, and more than holding my own, despite not being willing/able to throw unlimited money at rebuys.
Running the first (?) unlimited rebuy comp in the UK in Manchester at Play Expo/NLP, and the positive feedback received.
Breaking the GWR by playing for 30hrs on WPT, with my late dad by my side the whole time.
Helping set up and build a successful league at @Tilt_Birmingham , then winning the first 3 seasons :)
Winning my first international comp in Le Treport.
Watching the concentration and joy of my niece and nephew play my machines when they come and visit from America, and since then seeing my other sisters children enjoy them just as much.
Running the richest comp in the UK at Pinfest, and the positive feedback received, despite early misgivings from many.
Getting my first NIB - IMdn
Pretty much every Thursday Night Tea Drinking session with @Telboy , @Sven Normansson & @Dave2084 , amongst others. Especially when one of us had a new toy delivered.

Bad days
The realisation that the UK league, and all other comps had to be cancelled for the foreseeable.
Realising just how much I've missed the competition and the social aspect of all of those comps and meetings, even if I'm not the most gregarious of people when I'm attending.
 
We shunted 30 machines around today to make room for carpet laying. its a dispondant sight looking at rows of unplayed games . the social aspect is something you miss when its not there. its hard work taking machines to shows but watching games being enjoyed is whats its all about. they may be works of art / mechanical marvels but above all they are meant to be PLAYED
 
Excitable Boy said:
My friend who has a boat says the definition of a boat is "a shaped hole in water that you throw money into".

They're fun but pinball seems more affordable.
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As someone once said: "If it flies, it floats, or it f!cks -- it's going to be expensive."

Pinball isn't such an expensive hobby tbh. Yes the upfront capex is high, but the machines don't require much spend to keep them running, and their value doesn't depreciate (on the contrary). So it's more like locking up cash than burning it.
 
ianw said:
Happiest... First pin, Xenon... or was it sex up against SST, when the kids use to go to bed earlier.

Sad days.... miss drunken Pinfest.
Click to expand...
I remember playing on a pinball machine in the Tottenham Ritzy Nightclub in the early 90's.
A really cute girl came up and asked if I had ever had sex on pinball machine. When I said "no" she said "would you like to".
Regret not just letting the ball drain and taking up her up on the offer 😄
 
Saddest: the day i found out that there were no more pinballs locally for me to play. I thought pinball was dead.

Happiest: the day i found out that i had been wrong, pinball wasn't dead after all. That day, I bought a R&B on ebay for £300 or something, rented a van and drove to London to go and pick it up. It was still on his legs and with the backbox up when it travelled back with me (how little did i know).
 
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