Warren pinball collector still has passion three decades after starting pinball exposition
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Rob Berk, president of Berk Enterprises on Thomas Road, admits that his hobby of collecting pinball, video and arcade games is an obsession.
“I’m the kind of person, if I’m passionate about something, I take it to the next level,” he said.
He has more than 1,000 games in a Warren warehouse and in his Howland home and has three people working for him who repair and manage the collection.
And he’s excited to get more.
“I’m always looking to buy games. As crazy as I am, I can’t have enough games. Someone calls me up, and they’ve got a warehouse full, I’ll probably buy them all. Always looking for the next game.”
Berk says his interest began in the 1960s, when his family took vacations in Florida.
“My dad, for whatever reason, always made it a point to take the kids to the arcade. I guess he liked pinball, so it was his way of introducing me to it. And it became a ritual.”
Rob also remembers a bookstore in Miami Beach that had two pinball games. “We would play for hours,” he said.
Closer to home, Rob remembers playing in the arcade at the Trumbull County Fair, when it was at the present site of Warren G. Harding High School on Elm Road.
“There was just something about that ball and playing and the lights and the graphics, and the games were fun,” he recalled.
Another favorite arcade was at Nelson Ledges in Parkman.
When the Harding graduate started college at Kent State University in 1972, he discovered “a room full of pinball machines as far as your eye could see, and that really got me going,” he said. “I got hooked to the point that’s all I thought about.”
He decided at Kent State he wanted to collect pinball machines from the 1960s.
Some years later, he learned about fellow collectors from Akron who had a pinball club and got together every month to play. He joined them and told them in 1984, “Wouldn’t it be cool to have a national pinball convention?” There had never been one before. They were interested but didn’t act on it.
His interest in pinball continued as he read books on the machines and learned about the designers and artists who made them.
Steve Arnold of New York, who published a pinball newsletter, agreed to post a question to his readers for Berk: How many people would attend a national pinball convention? “It was a resounding yes,” Berk said.
Chicago, the top pinball city in the United States, was the obvious place to host it.
So Berk and a friend from Canfield, Mike Pacak, who was in charge of the Fun and Games arcades for the DeBartolo malls in the United States, organized the first Pinball Expo in Chicago in 1986.
Pacak made the exhibits, and Berk did the marketing. It was a great success. Thirty years later, Berk and Pacak are still running the exhibition. This year it will be Oct. 12-16.
Though Berk’s love for games started with pinball, his five children have shaped his hobby. Son Jaden, 14, is interested in the older video machines, such as Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, which has increased Rob’s interest in that type of game. Those first hit the scene in the 1980s. Rob now has a sizable collection of video machines.
His interest in video machines also caused him to organize – for the first time this year – a video show called Arcade Video and Game Room Expo, to take place Aug. 25-27 in Chicago. To contact Rob about pinball machines or the shows, email him at brkpinball@gmail.com.
Berk said he’s not the largest collector of pinball machines.
Years ago, Rob and Tim Arnold of Las Vegas were in competition for the largest pinball collection when they both had around 600.
Rob’s collection got smaller when he got married. Arnold’s collection continued to grow and now numbers more than 1,000. Arnold now runs a Las Vegas pinball museum.
Rob also has around 1,000 machines, but that includes video, baseball, bowling and other arcade games.
Having five children extended Rob’s love of games. For many years, he has conducted a pinball tournament on Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, where the family will play the 80-game collection in Rob’s basement. It takes about three hours.
He also enjoys showing the collection to friends.
“Like anything else where you collect, once you get the bug, it’s hard to leave it. You have one, then you want two. Then you have two, and you want four.”
In his case, it has always helped that the family business has had space to store the machines.
“It’s an obsession. It’s the funnest obsession, because they’re fun, and they are enjoyable.”