GA Pinball Memories
Want to share your pinball memories here? Email johnschlarb@gmail.com with a title, description and picture or video. Links to shared albums are welcome and appreciated!
Atlanta Pinball League
Shannon DeWitt has shared these pics from the kickoff meet for our second year of APL, 2013. APL has been around for 10 years, not counting the year we took off for COVID (2020).
If you were in APL in 2013, you got an awesome shirt with the image to the left. GAME OVER, man, GAME OVER!
Anyone who collected pins in the early 2000's knew about ballsofsteel.net. If your game had good plastics and you had a scanner, you were honor-bound to scan and upload them for others in the pinball community. And if you had a missing or broken plastic, that site was your only recourse, as nobody was making or selling repro plastics at the time.
Around 2010, the site stopped hosting scans, leaving this message:
"Scans are no longer available on this site, thanks to a poor decision by WMS on who to license to."
Nowadays, we have more options for new plastics - CPR, Pinball Inc, Pinball Resource and other licensees. But I miss the pure joy of helping other collectors by uploading my scans. And sometimes, you just need that one broken plastic, and you don't want to pay $100-150 for a whole set. Rest in peace, Balls of Steel - you are missed.
Click the link in the title to see what BallsOfSteel looked like in 2007 - you can still download a few images from it!
Professional photographer Juan Jusino has taken great photos of every SFGE since 2014. Check them all out here!
APL was the first Georgia pinball league, starting in 2012 just a year before SFGE was launched. To get on the waiting list for the current season, contact Harold VanPatten at vanpattenh@gmail.com or (334) 322-0230
2012 Pin Swap
Before there was SFGE, we had the Atlanta Pin Swap! Tim Christie hosted them in his equipment warehouse every Spring. The first IFPA-sanctioned GA tournament was also held at the Pin Swap. Thanks Tim, for some great memories!