When self-described "Pinball Amasser" Richard Conger stumbled onto what he believed to be the world's first pinball machine, it was sitting in a farmhouse basement. The owner refused to sell him the game by itself, so Conger bought the entire farm.

That was 40 years ago. Today, at age 72, Conger has a truly impressive collection. He owns more than 500 different pinball games, 700 machines if you count duplicates (he sometimes has three of the same game). About 200 are in working order, and he intends to fix the rest.

"My time is measurable," says Conger, a retired high school teacher. "In another 30 years I won't be able to fix pinball."

Most of the machines are in various states of disrepair. They are piled floor-to-ceiling in storage rooms, and fill up what he calls a "barn," though the structure was erected not for livestock and hay bales but for broken pinball games. He still owns the farm he bought for just that one machine, but Conger lives on a separate eight-acre spread in Northern California that accommodates his collection — a sleepy property he dubbed the Silver Ball Ranch.

Pull the plunger and read on to tour the ranch and dust off this impressive collections of aging relics.