Pinball fanatic David Silverman has 867 pinball machines, some dating to the 1920s. He hopes to open a multimillion-dollar museum in Maryland dedicated to this unique American game, which saw its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s.

Washington ? David Silverman has 867 pinball machines and a $2 million dream.

By day, Silverman is a landscaper who specializes in Japanese gardens, but in his spare hours, he is a full-time pinball fanatic. Over the past 30 years, he has amassed a collection of machines that dates to the 1920s. They are housed in a specially constructed building in Silverman’s Silver Spring, Md., back yard where, on Saturdays, he often has people over to play the games for free.

That’s fine for now, but his big dream is to open a museum to share his collection with the world and to educate people about pinball and its history.

In his vision, the National Pinball Museum would be 10,000 square feet of pinhead heaven (pinhead is the term for pinball lovers). It would showcase all facets of pinball, including the game’s history (it was a French invention) and the ways in which pinball reflects American culture and history. It also would showcase the artists behind the machines.

In a building roughly the size of the National Zoo’s panda enclosure, there also would be classrooms where people could learn about the game and be trained in pinball repair. The museum would even have a restaurant that would serve “an elegant array of foods and pinball-related snacks.” Silverman wants to call it “The Flipper.”

Pinball’s heyday was in the 1960s and 1970s, but the arrival of video games spelled the end of the game’s reign. Only one company, Illinois-based Stern Pinball, still makes pinball machines.

But the game remains big business among collectors, who pay upward of $5,000 for a machine at conventions or online sites such as eBay.

The Pinball Expo, which celebrates its 26th anniversary this year, attracts more than 1,000 pinheads annually to Chicago. The machines have even gained favor among contemporary artists. The Smithsonian American Art Museum recently included a pinball machine as part of a retrospective of the work of William T. Wiley, a California-based artist who used a pinball machine as his “canvas” for a piece that focused on global warming. Museum officials invited Silverman to give a talk about the game’s history in October.

“We love having it in the show,” said Joann Moser, the Smithsonian’s senior curator. “It’s so different from anything else. It shows an artist not fussy about the definition of art.”

Full tilt for pinball

Turn the conversation to pinball, and Silverman really gets going. Backglass, the rise of the flipper, the evolution of the bumper — Silverman is a one-man database of all things pinball.

Silverman knows that pinball was banned in New York until 1974 and that machines popular in the 1950s often depicted voluptuous women in various states of undress. That’s because pinball was then a man’s game, he said. The idea of women playing? Scandalous!

His pinball dream might seem a bit ambitious, but two pinball “museums” exist in the United States: the Pacific Pinball Museum in California and the Pinball Hall of Fame, on the Strip in Las Vegas. But if Silverman is successful, his would be among the first on the East Coast, he said.

“Pinball machines really, truly are American art forms,” said Larry Zartarian, a board member with the Pacific Pinball Museum, which started as a nonprofit effort in 2002. “They reflect history. They’re also kinetic; people can interact with them.”

At a time when museums are struggling financially, Silverman said that raising money and finding space for his project will be difficult. He has looked at a few sites, but most were too expensive or not centrally located. Fundraising efforts have netted some money (one local blogger collected almost $200 in quarters to put toward the effort), but that’s a far cry from the millions Silverman said he will need.

He was teaching at Ohio University when he bought his first machine, Gottlieb’s “Subway” for $100. His apartment had so little space that he slept beneath the machine. He bought a second machine, a third machine and so on.

“It’s a hobby that went a little haywire,” Silverman said.