It depends on which game you have and who made it. There is no hard and fast rule on finding serial numbers unfortunately. Some were stamped into the wood, some applied with stickers, others handwritten on the cabinet in various places. Since there are too many manufacturers and game modesl to list and track, we have created a section of the site dedicated to helping pinball machine owners find the serial numbers on their games. Please visit the Finding your serial number page for more info. If a tip does not exist for the manufacturer you are looking for, then you may also post your own tip or suggestion.

The short answer is 'probably not' since most manufacturers didn't necessarily start their production run with #1. Some manufacturers supposedly started at 1001 but that has also been disproved in recent years. Unfortunately, due to the highly competitive nature of the industry, it was common to skip ahead in serial numbering schemes in order to confuse the issue of how many games were being produced. There were probably many other financial reasons that serial numbers were not sequential as well. Some manufacterers, specifically Williams and Gottlieb, used the same serial number sequence for all their games, during those years, you can see serial numbers such as 653128 which definitely does not mean it was the 653128th game manufactured by that company, but it does generally fall in line with the order of models manufactured. More details about the serial ranges are available on each game's serial number registrations page which you can find by using the Search Page.

Sometimes, distributors or operators stamped out,destroyed or removed the serial numbers from their games to make it impossible to track the origin of the game. In the old days, gaming was very competitive and operators used individual markings that allowed them to secretly identify their games if they were stolen or to disquise them if they were in someone else's territory. In the 1990's, WMS started making distributor regions a part of the electronic serial number of every game but that was easily bypassed with a simple electronic modification. Eventually, the distribution regions of games become meaningless and these tracking numbers were dropped.

This can be a tricky task sometimes, look at the Finding your Serial Number page for specific insructions on determining your serial number location and format. Another way to find out what your serial number might be is to use the Search Page to find your exact game and look at the serial numbers that have already been registered, from that, you can see the format and range of serial numbers for that exact game which will help narrow down the choices. In some instances, a game may have multiple serial numbers too. Generally, a manufacturer put the serial number on each part of a game; the body, the backbox and the playfield. Sometimes these peices were interchanged between complete games by distributors that had many of the same model. For this reason, you may register each part seperately in the database as we are trying to track as many serial numbers in existence. If a head is matched with a different body, then make a note in the submissions 'comment' field noting which other serial numbers are associated in the complete game.

Sometimes a manufacturer stamp is light or weak and the impression just didn't make it very far into the wood. In this case, just do your absolute best to get an accurate serial number. If you can't read the serial, please do not guess as we only want serials that are 100% accurate. As mentioned in other answers on this page, sometimes a serial number may exist in multiple places on a game. use the Finding your Serial Number page to look for tips on locating serial numbers and also look at the existing registrations to find similar numbers. If you can't tell if the first number in your serial number is a 4 or a 9 and you notice that all the serial numbers for that specific game that have already been registered all start with the number 4, then you can be fairly certain that it must be a 4. HOWEVER, if there are only a handful of registrations for your specific game, then there might not be enough to make any assumptions. When in doubt, please do not register the serial number.

All of them! As long as you can clearly read them. We are tracking the existence of as many serial numbers that came off the production line. It was common for circuit boards to e swapped out of working games and put into other models of the same manufacturer. The serial numbers on these circuit boards prove that a game exists with that serial but it may not be your particular game. In this case, you should register the serial numbers that are on the main game assemblies such as body, backbox or playfield and for every circuit board, register a 'game part' serial number.

Game parts may be transferred between games of different models by the same manufacturer and sometime even by different manufacturers. Because of this, just because a circuit board in your Joker Poker pinball machine has a serial number, doesn't mean that serial number was on a Joker Poker when it came off the assembly line. Because of this, we do not track game models associated with game parts. In the long run, we are not sure how the game part information may help us, but we want to track it anyway.

I don't think Im insane, I just like compiling numbers and Im a programmer so this seemed like an interesting project for me to learn ASP.NET and Javascript. Yes, there are lots of serial numbers but I figure that over the course of 50 years, we will collect an immense number of serial numbers and the data might just be interesting. So please bear with me and give us your serial numbers. :-)

Well, I suppose they could somehow say they had a game with your serial number, but what would be the point? Serial numbers for pinball machines really aren't tracked like VIN's or engine codes. One of the advantages of registering your serial number that I see is that there is a record of your game serial if it is ever stolen or destroyed in a fire.

The condition of the game is by far the most influential property of a game. Certain serial numbers that determine 'sample' games might make the game more valuable to certain collectors but it really doesn't effect much else. Sometimes, games produced early in production actually have more electronic and mechanical bugs that have not yet been worked out, therefore, from a playability standpoint, sample and early production games may be missing 'features' that were improved later in production.