Ryan Dillman

Growing up, I was always more into redemption games, such as skeeball, than arcade games, since I liked the concept of winning an award (tickets/prizes) than earning the high score.  One exception was pinball, which I spent many, many quarters on when I was younger.  I guess pinball technically does have a prize you can win on most machines, which is a free game, but it’s definitely not a redemption game.

Anyway, I’ve never outgrown my childhood love of pinball, so I still seek out machines when I’m on vacation or visiting anywhere (like a mall) that might have an arcade.  If my choices at the mall are browsing Old Navy for an hour with my wife or spending that hour in the arcade, you can probably guess where I’ll be.

I took my hobby a bit further a couple years ago, when I purchased my first two pinball machines from a fellow collector in Marion, a 2002 Stern Playboy and an Indianapolis 500.  Then I found someone selling a 1978 Star Trek machine near my brother’s house in Cleveland, Ohio, so I had him pick that up for me and drive it to Indy on his next visit home.  I traded the Star Trek and some cash for a South Park machine, which I eventually sold.  I also sold my Indianapolis 500 and currently have my Playboy machine up for sale as well.

While owning your own pinball machine(s) is fun, playing the same machines over and over again does get old, hence my sales.  You can find local collectors to trade machines with, but transporting 300-pound arcade machines on a regular basis is more trouble than it’s worth, in my opinion.  Maybe if I could afford 30 machines in my basement, I wouldn’t get bored of them, but at $2-3,000 per machine, that’s probably never going to happen.

Getting back to the point of my post, if you’re like me and get nostalgic when you think about playing pinball as a kid and are looking for places in Indiana (or anywhere in the country really) that have pinball machines on location, then check out the Pinball Locator from Pinball Rebel.  This website has been around a few years and allows anyone to add new machines to the list, so if you know of some machines at a local bar, arcade, or other venue that aren’t listed, be sure to add them yourself.

If you’re interested in learning more about the pinball hobby, check out one of my other sites, Pinball Blog.