![]() Silverman's face lights up like a kid's at Christmas at the mention of the new Wizard of Oz game. He said the new game, which sells for $7,500, will use LCD screens, stereo sound, movie clips, live mechanical action, and animation never used in pinball before. "We've sold more than 1,000 Wizard of Oz pinball machines without anyone seeing them or playing them, so if that's not a pinball resurgence I don't know what is," says the company's founder, Jack Guarnieri. Jersey Jack will release the "Wizard of Oz" pinball machine in March. New technology has made pinball machines nearly as obsolete as ice cream fountains and penny candy, but two new companies, including Jersey Jack Pinball, may be on the forefront of a renaissance. "All the time and money I've spent on this game, I guess you could say pinball has made me insane." "Collecting these games is an obsession," said Silverman, who's been known to drive halfway across the country on a moment's notice to buy a game. There's also a Silverman favorite - a Ted Nugent game with a cartoonish likeness of the singer and the real singer's autograph. The collection also includes a host of borderline, blatantly offensive, politically incorrect period pieces including machines with a likeness of Queen Elizabeth II in a bikini, a "Minstrel Man" game with men dancing in blackface, a game devoted to men dressed in drag, and plenty of machines adorned with buxom women. "I have the same machine he's kicking over right here and you can see that it isn't even one of the gambling machines." "La Guardia knew nothing about pinball," Silverman said. But his new digs feature 12,000 square feet of pinball machines and memorabilia.Īmong the memorabilia is a mural of the depression-era mayor of New York City, Fiorello La Guardia, kicking over a pinball machine in an act against gambling. Silverman's new museum is not the only one - smaller museums in Asbury Park, N.J., and Alameda, Calif., also exist. He opened a museum in a Georgetown mall in Dec. As time went on, Silverman decided to go a step further. In 2003, he opened an informal pinball salon, where "pinheads" gathered in his backyard on Saturday afternoons. ![]() "My wife is from California and every time she'd go home to see her folks, I'd build another building in the yard," said Silverman, 63, a Bronx-born landscape architect and former community college art professor. Silverman did, but continued buying more so many, in fact, that he had to construct seven outbuildings in his backyard to house them. Mimi, Silverman's wife, gave him a directive some 10 years ago - get the pinball machines out of the house. His 900-plus piece pinball collection will be on display beginning Jan. Take a walk near Baltimore's Inner Harbor in January and you'll find a collection of bells and whistles gussied up with impressions of some of history's not-so-finest moments.ĭavid Silverman has amassed what is believed to be the biggest collection of pinball machines in the United States. Where can you see La Guardia kicking a pinball machine, the Queen of England in a bikini and Ted Nugent's autograph on a pinball machine?
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