The Myrtle Beach Pinball Museum, near the Convention Center, is a museum you play: rows of machines from across pinball's decades, every one set to play, run as a 100% volunteer nonprofit.
How it got here
Jonathan Browne Menzies tells the origin story the other films confirm: founder Jerry Pinkus loved pinball as a kid, kept a machine in his real-estate office to entertain clients' children, and collected until the collection needed a museum of its own. It opened in June 2018. The founder's own film adds the simpler version: for years everyone asked where Myrtle Beach's pinball machines were, and the answer was almost nowhere — so he built the place.
Playing the floor
Retro opens with the local lore — pinball was once treated as a vice here, with an old law famously barring players under 13 — then plays the classics. Carmen and Brian put it on their top-10 things-to-do list. The practical layer comes from a 2019 interview film: 25 to 26 machines on the floor in rotation with five more being refurbished, hours set week to week (check the museum's website), and the deal as filmed — $12 an hour, all you can play. An opening-day film from June 1, 2018 records the original Thursday-to-Sunday schedule. Two closing films — the museum's pitch-and-bat spotlight and a 2019 visit — are watch content without transcripts.
Sources: the 8 videos on this page, filmed 2018–2026; prices and hours are as filmed and the museum sets its schedule weekly.
Watch: Myrtle Beach Pinball Museum, guided
2 videos · summaries from the actual guidesMore Myrtle Beach essentials
- All Fun Things To Do in Myrtle Beach →
- Broadway At The Beach →
- Wheels Of Yesteryear →
- Franklin G. Burroughs Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum →