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Do you still play a mean pinball? This show’s for you
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Walking into the Eastwood Expo Center on Thursday was like walking into a time warp.
When was the last time you walked into any room anywhere and saw — a pinball machine?
Think about it.
They’ve gone the way of the telephone booth, and now they’re in private collections for the most part.
But at the expo center, from 3 p.m. to midnight today and 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday, you can see plenty of pinball machines. Collectors are bringing them out and putting them on display, and dealers are bringing out more for sale. If you’re feeling nostalgic for that time when you could walk into your favorite neighborhood bar for a beer and see that familiar slanted table with the flippers and the balls and the bells and lights in the corner, then head to the Ohio Pinball Show.
If you have kids, bring them along. It’s probably the only place they’ll get to see a pinball machine — kids these days don’t know what one is, pointed out Mike Pacak, one of the show’s organizers.
Despite their disappearance from mainstream America, plenty of collectors and hobbyists love the machines, so there are still plenty of machines around.
Pacak, who’s from North Lima, certainly qualifies as someone whose dedicated a big part of his life to pinball machines.
“I worked for DeBartolo’s for 21 years,” he said, where he managed 76 arcades in their malls.
In 1995, they sold the arcades and he went out on his own with a website and a show in Chicago for 30 years.
“Because of being involved in the gamerooms, I knew a lot of people,” he explained. “It’s a small industry.”
Most people don’t realize, he said, that coin-operated pinball as we know it was born in Youngstown.
A company called Automatic Industries came up with a game called Wiffle, which was a table-top game very similar to a full-sized pinball machine.
“But the Chicago Mafia took it over and started making a lot of them,” he said. Automatic Industries couldn’t keep up.
Pinball machines evolved and were all made in Chicago for many years after that, he explained.
Only two manufacturers continue making them today, mainly just for home collectors. Stern, in Chicago, makes a machine called Wrestlemania, and Jersey Jack in New Jersey makes a machine called Hobbits. They are both at the show.
Other machines proudly bear names emblazoned on them from decades past: “Lost in Space.” “Star Trek.” “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.” “Transformers.” “Twister.”
“The Addams Family” is for sale for $5,200.
If you don’t want to pay that much, or you prefer a fixer-upper, there are plenty of older models.
Jeff Morgan, who lives near Scranton, Pa., brought a truckload of old, wooden-rail machines from the late 1940s and early 1950s that don’t work.
But that didn’t stop a crowd from gathering before he even got his inventory unloaded.
Morgan is also one of several vendors selling pinball-related “junk” and parts. He said he’ll sell his old machines for $100 to $1,000.
Dan Beeson and Glenn Poole of Guelph, Ontario, belong to a pinball club there.
“We came to see if we could get some deals on machines, play some games and have some fun,” Beeson said as they browsed through the old machines.
Tony Cipriani, who lives in Rocky River near Cleveland, said he was looking for “a project.”
Cipriani has eight machines, some in his basement with his home theater and some in a spare bedroom upstairs.
It’s a dilemma. He wants more machines, but — “I’ll have to take down my whole home theater if I want to expand anymore.”