11/9/2023 0 Comments New jersey pinball museumIt’s home to more than 150 fully functional pinball machines, some dating from the 1950s, where fans can go back in time - and, in some cases, relive their childhood. Toskaner concludes, “Because we are a niche and a specialty, and you cannot find something like this almost anywhere – especially here in New Jersey – people will continue to come here and enjoy themselves.ASBURY PARK, New Jersey, (Reuters) - The Silverball Retro Arcade, a low-slung building along the boardwalk in New Jersey beach town Asbury Park, is not your typical museum. We even get a lot of kids who have no clue what a pinball machine is, but when they come in, they have fun playing and learning about them.” “We see a lot of people from die hard pinball players, to collectors, to casual players who remember pinball – but may not have played or seen a pinball machine they used to love for a long time. “We’ve been rapidly growing an audience since we’ve been in existence,” he says. That is why we have to constantly make sure we are taking care of them and keep them running, so people can experience everything we have to offer.”Īccording to Toskaner, the uniqueness of Silverball however, is why it has been so successful and will likely have an audience for years to come. The machines get a lot more use this way. They play as long as they want for a set fee. “And we aren’t like a regular arcade where people are putting in quarters, limiting them to how long they can play. “I would say that 75 percent of our machines are from the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s, so it can be extremely difficult to keep them running,” he says. Toskaner says that with having so many games, one of the biggest challenges is keeping them looking and running like new, considering how old most of the machines are, and the amount of usage they receive. The museum is now approximately 5,000 square feet and has more than 200 machines that not only include pinball, but Skee-Ball, air hockey, bubble hockey and classic upright arcade games like Pac-Man and Galaga, as well. “From there, he decided to expand into a larger facility on the Asbury Park boardwalk.” “When Rob first opened the museum in 2009 at its original location, he had around 30 pinball machines and found that people really liked what he was doing … and it started to become successful,” Toskaner says. Soon, his house was filled with machines, so he decided to turn it into a business. Owner Rob Ilvento – who is also the founder and owner of the Cluck-U Chicken franchise – began purchasing pinball machines for his home due to the fact that his autistic daughter took a liking to them. It is a hands-on shrine of arcade and pinball games from the past 65-plus years. Silverball is not your typical “look and see” museum with artifacts locked up behind glass enclosures. It is a place where people “of all ages can come to not only learn about the history of pinball machines, but also actually play them,” according to Dan Toskaner, general manager of the museum. Wasylyk) Pinball Heaven in Asbury Park Before You Go By Anthony Bucci, Assistant Editor On Apr 4, 2014įirst opened in 2009 in the basement of a retail store in Asbury Park, the Silverball Pinball Museum is much more than what its name implies. The 5,000-square-foot Silverball Pinball Museum in Asbury Park has more than 200 pinball and classic arcade games.
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