Pinball Museum
By Kyle Swanson

It's safe to say that with all the new card rooms, Vegas is definitely the poker capitol of the world. When you're all pokered out on your next visit (it does happen, sooner or later), you might want to stop by a little room that is one of the city's greatest hidden treasures, the undisputed capitol of the world of another game: the Las Vegas Pinball Hall of Fame Pinball Museum.

For those of us who grew up in the 1970s and had a gaming itch, pinball was our outlet. Tim Arnold was one of us, and now he's taken the cream of his 1,200 pinball machines (world's biggest collection) and put them into the non-profit Museum, his long-time dream and a place that will blow your mind even if you weren't a pinhead back in the day. Walk in and a kaleidoscopic experience greets you: so many sounds and colors, so many memories emanating from the machines, the thousands of games played on each one over the decades seeming to hover like benevolent spirits inviting you to join in the fun.

The museum is appropriately located in old school downtown Vegas, at the NW corner of Tropicana and Pecos. Old school is what this place is all about; from 1947 to 1979 there were 384 different "electro-mechanical" pinballs made, and Tim has at least one of each. He also has all but 6 of the newer-model digital machines, but let's face it: the real joy for those of us who grew up on these things is the wonderfully cheesy art, the glorious ringing of bells, the wooden clicking of the score reels turning over, and that nirvana sound, the "whack!" of a free game. There are almost 200 pins in here, and many of them are the classic electros.

I first learned of Tim through an article about his Pinball Fun Nights in a Vegas newspaper a few years back. I had just finished a nasty little 30-hour session at the Bellagio 30/60, a bad night and day and night of spectacularly ugly rivers that snapped a great winning streak. I was lying in my hotel room, burned out but too wired from the cards to sleep (you know the feeling), and read in the paper that the semi-annual Fun Night at his house was two days before. I was in shock that such a thing existed. I thought no one even cared about old pinballs anymore, let alone had over a thousand. So I looked Tim up, phoned him, and asked when the next Fun Night would be, bummed I had missed this one but used to losing on this particular weekend.

Tim asked where I was, and how long I was in town. I said I was leaving the next night, and without hesitation he said, "Well hey, why not pop over now for a while?" It was past 9 on a Sunday night, and here this guy is inviting a stranger on the phone to play pinball at this house! My kinda guy, I thought. I said yes in amazement and delight, jumped up and drove out to his house. Greeted first by Tim's nutty sweet dog and then by his lovely wife, Charlotte, I was shown around the house, full of pinball parts everywhere. Then Tim said, "let's go take a look at the collection."

We walked out back to a massive steel building, 40 feet high and lord knows how long and wide (about 10,000 square feet, it turns out). I'm standing in the dark doorway, and Tim turns on the power. What happened next was a moment I'd never imagined in my fondest and nuttiest pinball dreams.

The darkness is replaced by a sudden rush of light and noise, and I am standing in a huuuuuge space full of HUNDREDS of old pinballl machines, glowing every neon color under and over the rainbow, ringing like mad and just begging me to come play them. I start walking down the aisles, and I can't begin to believe that almost every pinball I ever loved is in here. Machines I had totally forgotten bringing back joyous memories of a childhood filled with pinball obsession, spending every spare quarter on Captain Fantastic and The Spirit of '76 and Old Chicago and Atlantis and so many others…and here they are, in absolutely mint condition!

I turned to Tim, my mouth hanging open, and all I could say was, "Oh, man!" He smiled and said, "I'll be back in an hour or two. Have fun!" I couldn't believe the joy and surprise and deep nostalgia of walking around that massive warehouse full of so many pins I thought I'd never see again, and knowing that I had free run of the place for a few hours (the same feeling awaits you at the Museum!).

The first thing I did was find an old favorite, Jacks Open, one of many, many old school pinballs with a poker theme. Pins were originally gambling machines in the 30s, kind of like slots but with skill, and evolved into their present state after the gambling aspect was whittled out in the early 50s. Still, lots of guys I knew as a kid bet on games against friends, and pins have that gaming/gambling connection that we as poker players can't help but love. Who knows? Maybe they were responsible for some of my card-craziness.

I ended up donating a hundred bucks that night to Tim's dream of a Pinball Museum. It seemed the least I could do to help a guy who was working on a dream of mine that I never knew existed!

And now here we are, a few years later, and Tim Arnold's long-time dream is a reality. The Pinball Museum is not only the most pinballs available in one place to play in the world (there are annual shows across the country; they're lucky to get half this many pins), but the games are all in amazingly pristine shape. Tim has been around the machines for 40 years and is a master of restoring them; some of these machines look almost new, and they're over half a century old. Tim is all about keeping pinball alive, and he has single-handedly created this mecca for those of us who grew up playing the silver ball, and it's all for charity.

You don't see that kind of generosity in Sin City very often, and Tim is proud to do it.

He grew up in Michigan, and bought a gumball machine when he was 13. "I thought it was a good way to make cash," he says. "Then I started putting candy machines in stores, and every month I'd go collect pennies! I always loved pinball too, so then I bought a pin called Mayfair for 165 bucks in 1970, when I was 14. I put it in my garage, the kids in the area would come and put in dimes, and when it paid for itself we got another machine for a hundred bucks. We then put it in one of the original Domino's Pizzas, in Ann Arbor, and the owner was amused by us, these high school kids hustling pinball machines."

Tim smiles at the memory. "We ended up putting in a dozen machines. In 1976 I started the Pinball Pete's arcade chain, which eventually grew to seven outlets. My brother and I did so well in the early 80s on the video game craze that we were shovelling quarters into 5-gallon buckets and carrying them into the bank." The video craze meant less pinballs, though, and Tim lost interest and sold his share of the biz to his brother, after making a few million bucks, a quarter at a time. But he still had all these pinball machines…

"The pinball distributors had only offered 50 bucks in trade when you wanted to trade one in, so we said screw that and got a warehouse and started stacking them up. Finally we had like 500 machines and the floor started to sag! I did some research and learned that I already had 40% of the electro-mechanical titles ever made. I decided to complete the collection, but needed somewhere warm and dry to store them."

And thus began the Vegas leg of the saga. "I liked Vegas 15 years ago. It was still run by the old showmen; Binion's still had the million in bills out front. Vegas needs that stuff, the oddball things that sit in the corner, like the Elvis and Liberace museums. Vegas needs unique things you can't find anywhere else." The Pinball Museum fits the bill nicely. It has goofy blue carpets and a change machine scavenged from the Golden Nugget dumpster, and when you step inside, you know you're not on the strip anymore, Dorothy.

This is the kind of Vegas I like most: quirky, colorful, and not afraid to show some character. That Vegas is fading fast, but places like the Pinball Museum are keeping it going. If you have ever even once in your life played a pinball and loved it, you owe it to yourself to check out this ultimate home of pinball history. There is nothing but good clean fun in here, and not a sad face to be seen. No slots, but lots of flashing lights and ringing bells and many truly happy faces. The old machines are only a quarter, just like back in the day.

And those quarters all go to a very worthy cause: the Salvation Army. Tim decided years back that they were the most honest charity around, and has since donated hundreds of thousands of dollars. "They were the first and best of the folks who helped out in New Orleans immediately after Katrina," he points out. "They get the money to people who really need it."

Yes, the Pinball Museum is non-profit (certainly not a Vegas tradition!), just another one of the many reasons to check it out after your next long night in the poker capitol of the world. There's a lot of magic juju in those old machines; go get some for yourself.

You'll have a ton of fun, help out a great charity, and who knows? All those good old vibes just might turn your luck around!

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