The once mighty pinball machine might have been shuffled to the back row of amusement halls, but it is fast taking over the games rooms of today's 30-somethings.
More than 170 of the machines from the 1950s to the 1990s went under the hammer at the Claremont Showground on Sunday, with all but a few being snapped up in under three hours by a crowd of 300 wannabe pinball-wizards.
A 1978 Bally Rolling Stones machine topped the sale at $5280.
Auction organiser David Miller said the pinball machine market had more than doubled in the past four years, and his company was taking orders from all over the world.
"When I first came into the business it was the Baby Boomers all buying jukeboxes like the ones they used to hear at the milk bar, but now it is the 30 to 40-year-olds who can't get enough of the pinball machines they used to play at Raffles and in the arcades," Mr Miller said.
"When you can remember scrounging around for 20¢ to get a game, having a machine in your games room makes you feel like you have made it."
Mr Miller's global search for machines has led him to many strange places, including an old warehouse in Harare, Zimbabwe.
SOURCE: The West Australian.
