By Lisa Hix — In case you missed it, there's a tremendous public debate roiling in the U.S. about whether bankers and Wall Street financiers profited from the current economic downturn after being bailed out by taxpayers. Certain politicians and talking heads have admonished the Occupy Wall Street protestors for engaging in "class warfare," but populist rage against "fat cats" is not new. "George S. Parker was bored by moralistic games." Cast-iron mechanical banks from the late 19th century depict fat...

Why People Flip Over Vintage Pinball Machines

By Maribeth Keane and Ben Marks — I didn’t really get into to pinball machine collecting until maybe 15 years ago, but when I was a freshman in college, video games were really big. I went to Purdue University. They had a huge arcade there. I always said that Space Invaders and Pac-Man took so much of my money—money that I really didn’t have—that it would have been cheaper to just buy one of those machines. So one day I went to an auction of coin-operated video games. They had pinball machines there, too, including a 1980...