Center Stationary Posts

Center stationary posts are fixed pegs planted between and just below the flipper tips, in the path a ball takes when it drains down the middle.^[1] The trade calls the piece a stopper, a peg or a mini-post screw: it is a metal post screwed into the playfield with a rubber ring on top, and a ball that catches it bounces up and away instead of out of play.^[2] A practised player will work shots off it on purpose.^[1]

Because it is a screw and a rubber sleeve rather than a mechanism, the post costs a designer nothing but the hole, and it has stayed in use across the whole flipper era — on woodrail machines of the early 1950s, on Stern Electronics and Williams playfields through the solid-state years, and on modern boutique games such as The Hobbit (2015, Jersey Jack Pinball) and The Mafia (2018, Team Pinball). Where Center Up-Posts do the same job only for as long as the game grants it, the stationary post is there for every ball of every game.