By Greg Peck ( [email protected] )
Missouri Pinball
MoPinball Home Page

The following information and links will help you do just that. Open up Notepad or a word processor to paste your findings, you can edit the info when you're done and print it out so that you can take it with you. It's also a good idea to create a directory as a place to store pictures.

The links will open in a new window so that this page will stay up.

You need to find out when it was manufactured, how many where made, who made it, main features and maybe who designed it and who did the art work.

To do that you need to search the Internet Pinball Database

Click on the link above, type in the name of the machine and hit the search button. Wipe over the information you need and paste it into Notepad. If you see a picture that you like, right click on it and save it to you hard drive.

Machine specific pages

The best source on the net is Pinball Links - Games. You can find pictures, opinions, tech tips, flyers, rules, sounds, just about anything from people that have owned one.

Flyers, Rulesheets and Instruction cards

Flyers can be found at Game Archive -Promo Flyer Archive and
An Ugly Flyer Reference Site
Flyers are the original promotional material sent out by the company when the machine was new. They point out what the company thought were the pins best features.

Pinball Rulesheets are here.
Rulesheets are written by players of the pinball machines. They discribe the pin features (playfield), how to score points and what the goals are. They give you an idea of how challenging the game is.

Instruction Cards
Instruction Cards found on the machines are the early version of rulesheets. When the games were simpler to play, they gave you all the information you needed to play the game.

To find out what it's worth (or at least a price range)

Mr. Pinball - Auction Results,
Auctions are the low end wholesale prices (most auctions have a 10% fee tacked onto the bid amount.

Mr. Pinball - Classified Adds
The Classified Adds are your best source for real prices as long as you have several adds to compare.

Ebay listings - pinball
Ebay is the HIGH end, people know they can find just about any pinball machine on Ebay ( may not be aware of other sources ) and pay for the convenience. Unless you really know what you're doing, I would never recommend buying a machine that you have not seen in person.

rec.games.pinball (the newsgroup)
It can take a lot of time but the best source for player opinions is a search of Google Groups - rec.games.pinball. You will find a lot of false leads because of people signing with all the pins in their collection. Forge your way through all of that and you can find information you would never find anywhere else.

For machines made by the original Stern Co. .

For machines made by Atari .

For machines made by Capcom .

Here is some more info for Capcomfrom Mushroom Amusements.

For machines made by Gameplan .

The "new" Stern pinball company

The Williams pinball company

Williams 1977-1984 Technical Info from Game Archive

Here is some info for Gottlieb 1947-1967.

If you can't remember the name try Borden's thumbnail Gallery.

Pictures can be found at Mr. Pinball - Photo Gallery .

Search the past issues of Silverball News and Views.

Locate magazine reviews in Pinball Player Review Index.

Pinball Nostalgia has a lot of stuff.

More flyers can be found at Richard's Flyers.

Some 60's and 70's pins can be found in Al's Gameroom.

You can contact owners from Mr. Pinball - Collectors Register