Free Republic

News hit yesterday that Stern Pinball, Inc. has laid many of its line workers and several designers. No official press release from Stern yet, but the internet groups are a buzzing with comments from various sources talking about the devastating news. Does this signal the end of Pinball as we know it? Sadly, with a good chunk of Stern's revenue coming from private collectors and the economy doing a headstand right now, it's probably a safe guess that Stern might be a casualty of these trying times. Word is that Stern has been stockpiling machines for a few months now,...

MELROSE PARK, Ill. — Being inside a pinball machine factory sounds exactly as you think it would. Across a 40,000-square-foot warehouse here, a cheery cacophony of flippers flip, bells ding, bumpers bump and balls click in an endless, echoing loop. The quarter never runs out. But this place, Stern Pinball Inc., is the last of its kind in the world. A range of companies once mass produced pinball machines, especially in the Chicago area, the one-time capital of the business. Now there is only Stern. And even the dinging and flipping here has slowed: Stern, which used to crank out...