See, that makes me happy cause I own TFTC. Keep talking like that - hopefully - people will get the idea it's super-rare and my machine will be worth $5000+ by Christmas *j/k*

Man, I was an odd-ball in that case . Just so happens, JP was the one I first fell for. I played a lot of B/W games, but, well - guess I inadvertently got really lucky .

Completely and totally agree on this one. I remember in 2003, TZ was MAYBE hitting $1800-$2000, and I settled for LW3 cause I couldn't venture into the $2000+ territory. As stated before, people like me and others (age bracket around the 30 mark) have grown-up, and we want our pins from our childhood. That is, IMHO, the biggest factor behind the huge upswing of the market prices.

<blockquote cite="#229293"
*Sentimental Value is not a valid variable*

lol
then my 20 yo pinners would worth less than crap!

No. You could argue pretty successfully that they have seen almost no increase with the exception of certain titles. Although, the floor (which was about $800) was there for a different reason, which was that for $800 you could part the game and sell the board set for that price to keep a better earning machine working.

And that's the big difference. So much of what was priced back then was because of earning potential for ops, and not the home market. It's been a long time since I've seen people parting out JDs, DMs and NBAFBs to pull the boardsets and toss the rest of the machine.

What were NIB pins at the time?

I believe around $3400ish, although I never bought them that way back then, so I don't know. None of the arcades I worked at did, either.

What I'm really driving at is the demand wasn't nearly as intense as it is these days(IMHO). Also if you know the seller they may let you think it over, but the average guy you don't know isn't wasting anytime. Not that they should, but they don't have to because there is another buyer emailing him every hour of the day.

I'll help you out with that. I bought LW3 off of ePay in March 2003 for about $1000. Game worked 100%, cabinet was perfect, had the blue-light topper and everything. Little did I know of any kind of underground pinball owner societies - prolly coulda got it for like $700 or so back then ): ....

cactus canyon, cv, bb & tron le. totan, tom ss are getting there.

Another factor is location. Look at California pins and compare the price to those in the Midwest.

You'd be surprised at how much interest I had when I sold my Gilligan. It is a basic game but fun. I bought one for 450, had 800 in it, played it for a while and sold it fairly quickly for 1200. The theme is relevant for people of my age (44).

Don't get me wrong, it's no MM. I do like it better than LW3 though...

And so it begins......

Yah.... no.

I use to get upset about the selling prices until recently a friend sent a buyer to my house for a pin. I was looking at selling my EM Vulcan but he fell in love with SFII?? I just got it and the kids liked it. I told him if he wanted it I would sell it for 1600.00. I figured the price would point him back to the EM..it didnt..he offered 1500.00 and I took it right away.
I told him the price I quoted was really high for the pin, I just didnt want to sell it...he told me he was putting it in his bowling alley and didnt care because he will make him money back in months.

To each their own I guess.

PS. The kids were mad!

Dude, Cactus Canyon - $13000 for a machine whose code isn't even finished - so unless you have an emulator - you CANNOT finish the game. Like BSD with a Western theme. Am I right, or is there something about CC being able to be finished I don't know about ?

CV - I have heard this one is climbing the ladder pretty quickly now from a couple people. What about it - other than it being a paint assembly line gone on an acid trip - has made it so "ooo and ahhh" ? I'll admit, the DMD screen being integrated under the playfield glass got my attention, and yeah, the lil' bell in the translite goes "ding!" - what other goodies/oddities make this pin climbing in price??

You're entitled to your opinion - my question to you, or anyone reading this - what makes you think this is not the case?

Cactus Canyon has always been a top line pin though. Even 10 years ago, it was selling for probably $8k minimum. B/W did a really smart thing with that one -- they made it in limited quantities, and then catered directly to the collector market with it. It went up in value almost from the moment it was released.

CV climbed a while ago, not exactly sure why though, honestly. It's a good looking game and plays nice too, but I don't think it's worth the current prices personally. It was clearanced out NIB for like $1500 back in the day though! I'd happily nab one for that. Of all the "A list" pins, it is one of my favorites.

Oh your right about that. I know an old operator who had machines vids and pins in the arcades in the Phoenix area and he said that Williams out of the box had major issues. Also the factory did not put mylar on the fields in the 80's it was up to the operator/buyer to do so, this was not factory done, i know I have a High Speed that never had mylar on it, thankfully i know the history and it only spent 6 years on route before going into the home, but did suffer a bit of PF wear

You been hiding under a rock? CV has been a higher priced collector pin for quite some time. Nothing new here.

What people don't see, and what they ding Stern on all the time for unfairly, is that the machines that they have either were route beaters that they bought knowing they would need serious tweaking and repair before they would work, or that they come from a collector who already did that. Out of the box, they had a lot of issues getting them up and running.

Once they were running, they worked great and kept working and had solid diagnostics (although I think the credit dot was an error, as "in the know" people wouldn't play games with them on it, and certain games - I'm looking at you STTNG and JD -- get them pretty regularly even when they are totally working) so people kept them out.

Also the factory did not put mylar on the fields in the 80's it was up to the operator/buyer to do so, this was not factory done, i know I have a High Speed that never had mylar on it, thankfully i know the history and it only spent 6 years on route before going into the home, but did suffer a bit of PF wear

True, and when they did put factory mylar on it was often very minor applications. The idea was that the machines were meant to wear, and that wear was more or less their planned obsolescence. Walk up to that High Speed and you can't see anything on the playfield because it's all worn off, and it won't earn as well as that new one you just got.

A lot of designers credit the move to clearcoated playfields as a big reason for the death of pinball on location. There are *still* T2s, TAFs, and other old pins out there earning decent coin. It wouldn't be possible for them to be going on 20+ years if their playfields were all worn to wood...

Psst. 2 months into the hobby . While I was able to keep eyes on MM and AFM throughout the years, I didn't catch all of them. I had never even heard of CV until Feb of this year - so it's new to me.

*scurries back under rock*

But... isn't the code not finished so technically one can never finish the game's wizard mode? If that's the case, to me that's like buying a car with 3 wheels (designed to have 4) but never being able to fully enjoy it by unleashing it on a country road or the interstate. Was the closure of B/W's doors or the introduction of P2000 the reasons why this occurred? While I could understand B/W's doors being closed as a reason, my understanding is RFM and SWEP1 were the very last of the machines B/W produced before shutting their doors. That being said, that would lead me to infer that CC was released before P2000 was introduced, and that would mean a company blatantly put out a pin with unfinished code. Please say it isn't so D: ...

I've played CV a couple times - played RFM right next to it a whole lot more . I dunno, something about CV just doesn't do it for me. Oh well, that just means more CV pins for everyone else .

Jurassic Park is one of the easiest games out there to find. Lot's of people like it, but it's not a keeper for most people. In terms of price, there are usually a few out there for a reasonable price. Like all machines, you might have to wait a bit. And possibly the price is climbing some like it is for most pins.

However, do I think you need to run and snatch one up before it becomes a $3,000 pin? Not even close.

For all the complaining that a lot of people do over Stern code not being perfect on first pass, this was standard operating procedure in the biz for years. I got a Demo Man that was HUO that came with code that didn't let you do almost anything on it -- how anyone kept it is beyond me. They would start with early code, and then upgrade it too.

But anyway, yes -- CC came out before PB2K did, and because of that they made a very short run of it, I believe because they were already promoting RFM and they figured people wouldn't want this. A little bit later, they did the collector's plates, and the rest is history.

I don't know exactly what is or isn't done in the code, but the gameplay is pretty shallow in my opinion. It has some cool stuff, but the real big draw of it has *always* been that it is the last regular pinball that B/W did before closing, and they made it into a collector's machine right away. Theme and play don't hurt it, but it definitely isn't the most incredible machine ever, or anything.

LOL

My bad!!

Williams/Bally was already in the process of closing in the late 90's. The P2K platform was a last ditch effort to save the pinball division of the company. CC production was cut short so that they could convert over and run the P2K line. This is why the code was never finished and the production run so short. Pinball was never a collector market till much later, after the company closed.

This is exactly what Williams distributed:

http://www.lotsapins.com/cactag.jpg

There has always been a limited collectors market. How else do you find HUO games from the 90s?

All my pins are for sale. Drop me a line to let me know what you want and send a signed blank check, I will fill in the intrinsic value.

The "collector" plaques were a marketing ploy to increase sales. Most cases were to take the production models and add the plaques to them and advertise them as a special unit so they could sell them/more.

You find HUO games because it was common for the operators to offer to put games in the homes of their customers that had the location/s to route their machines. i.e. You let me route 100 machines in your chain of theaters and I will put 3 new machines in your home, for free, as an incentive to not go/stay with my competitor.

Yes a limited collectors market did exist, yes some of the HUO came from this market, but it was very limited. CC was not selling, like everything else, so they tried another angle to move them. CC was such a poor selling machine that most company's were blowing them out well below cost, in some cases NIB CC's were near $1000. These machines were made to generate money, not to sell to a home market. The home market that exists today has exploded over the last 10 years, well after the manufactures were gone.

I am +1 with Dewey68.

It is a matter of supply and demand...
How often do you see a pinbot come up in your area? If u see one being sold once every 2 months, the supply is great. If it stays on the market for 6 months and 2 more "pop up" in that duration, the Demand is lower. Noone will pay "premium" pricing, but instead, they all become lowered in value.

If there were 5 AFM's on ebay that were in the same condition, all having the same ending auction time, the AFM's would have probably maxed out at 6 to 6.5k. But AFM, MM, MB, etc... almost never "pop up" and if the seller know what it's worth, then he'll try to get the value.

This is probably only true with Tron, and that is due to supply and demand. You won't be seeing TF, Iron Man, POTC, Shrek, FG, etc... selling for more than NIB pricing because the demand is not greater than the supply.

The crazy thing is, that with the newer manufactures: Jack, John P, and others, there will be some stiffer competition, and that usually brings some prices down. It also drives innovations. I would love to see new manufactures have some 6K games, that are "more desirable" than the current Trons, and then you might see some Tron owners selling there games to get a "hotter" title, therefore lowering the demand on Trons and rasing the supply.

Note: Tron was used as example of supply and demand pricing

Everyone brings up some great points and interesting history. One thing i think will always remain true is that great games retain their value or go up. People (collectors, players) whatever you want to call yourself like fun games. For instance TRS, isn't a real fun game to most people. i love the theme but the gameplay i am just underwhelmed about. I dont think that TRS regular edition or LE will be worth the NIB box people paid in two years. Who wants to pay 4k or 5k for a game that isn't really all that fun. now to me all pinball is fun, but TRON at 5k is more fun then TRS at 5k

Well said and I think FUN is the biggest factor as far as price. There are other factors tho. But FUN is the one behind the wheel.

And what impact will JJP's LCD have on older DMD pins and new Stern DMD's??

I wouldn't go that far... the production numbers are the same for games contemporary of the time, and not much different than many production numbers today, which is around 3000. There's plenty of well liked highly rated games with similar production numbers that can't hold a candle to these based on price like NGG, CP, SG, WD. The 35,500 manufactured TAF and TZ's have had relatively stellar price support based on their high production numbers.

Many of the new collectors that have come into the market in the past few years hardly have enough time MM/AFM/MB to decide whether it's worth the money, because where do you find one to play? I think it's more of the "must have" label that's been ratcheting prices higher than other pins.

I'm not denying any of that -- but Williams specifically *tried* to lure the collectors in with these. They weren't selling because everyone already knew about the upcoming PB2K machines, and wanted to wait for them. This was a different way to try to do it, and while they were blown out -- never heard anything close to $1000 NIB though -- trying to tell people, "Okay, so ops don't want them because they know we're doing something else, uhm... sell 'em to homes!"

You can argue that the distributors didn't know how to do this, but that was the marketing angle Williams took. The did the same thing at the very end of the SWE1 run to try to continue to sell those at a full price.

No, the machines exist because there was a market to purchase them. Generating money was something that manufacturers tried to get their machines to do because the more money they would generate, the more that operators would buy them. But really, ACDC LE is going to be sold more directly into homes than into the hands of ops to make money, and I'm sure that Stern doesn't care so long as the machines sell.

B/W had a machine that wasn't selling to ops, so they tried a different method to sell 'em. That's all. And, a LOT of CCs ended up being 'collected' by people. I know a handful of people that did buy them NIB, including a couple ops who bought them to not put on route.

On the contrary, I've seen non-modded POTCs and Family Guys selling for more than their NIB pricing already. Modded IMs sell above NIB pricing too. The jury is out on Transformers, and I've honestly barely ever seen a Shrek sold, so who knows.

It is all due to supply and demand, and Stern has been traditionally very good at rebuilding machines to meet that demand for years after the initial run -- something that B/W never figured out how to do. It's just that when machines go out of production lately, it seems like prices have been rising. Maybe it's just me, but it's interesting to see.

100% agree

I see where you're coming from, and I agree. If I implied or flat-out stated JP was becoming a $3k pin - my total bad. I think it's inching up to the $2500 mark more and more, but yeah - $3000 - not quite yet.

Wow. I'm learning more and more by the hour here. Had no idea pins were put out with unfinished code. I thought CC was a bit of an anomaly. Wow...

I had a chance to play a CC way back in 1999-2000ish at a now-defunct and leveled to the ground mini-golf course arcade. FWIW, I do remember the playfield being completely and totally unique - very different. Was it an AFM by any means... - heck no. Only way I really even remember it is by the Western theme. So did B/W slap LE plaques on them just to move them faster??? "The rest is hostiry..." part I don't know - is there a pin-related Wiki or something I can read to catch up on??

No problem. The fact you apologized alone got a +1 rating from me . I just have a lot to learn about pinball, and yeah, I'm catching up after being out of the hobby for nearly 10 years .

Dude, c'mon. Everybody knows that equation describes the acceleration per second squared of a falling playfield when your head is in the cabinet and the hinges fail.

Geez!

Dan

No, it was a lot more common than a lot of people think, but the thing is that when you look back at it, since the code was often updated properly, it looks like all the B/W games were properly "finished". Often, the unfinished code would go out on a round of sample games (usually about 100ish machines, sometimes it went on some, and it wasn't always samples) and then it was up to the people that got them to eventually upgrade them. I think that the idea was that the distributor would put the sample on display, the ops would look at that to see if they wanted the machine, and then the theory was that they would update the code before it was sold, but that clearly didn't happen always.

Demo Man was by far my most extreme case. As I recall, it had combos, one multiball working (they were all the same), and two modes without graphics. It also was missing a ton of dots and sound.

I had a chance to play a CC way back in 1999-2000ish at a now-defunct and leveled to the ground mini-golf course arcade. FWIW, I do remember the playfield being completely and totally unique - very different. Was it an AFM by any means... - heck no. Only way I really even remember it is by the Western theme. So did B/W slap LE plaques on them just to move them faster??? "The rest is hostiry..." part I don't know - is there a pin-related Wiki or something I can read to catch up on??

I don't think there is...

Essentially, and Pin Crazed is right with his thoughts on the matter too, you got a machine that B/W released and then quickly shut down production to start gearing up for Pinball 2000. They produced a very limited number of machines, and sent them out.

They weren't selling, because operators were waiting to see what this Pinball 2000 thing was all about. After the inventory sat around for a while, B/W made collector's plates for the machine to "honor" it as the last traditional release, with the thought that if they did that, perhaps people would buy it because it was "special."

You can argue if this worked or not. From what I have been told, it did work at least somewhat, although there were issues -- the plates didn't have numbers that matched their respective machines often, etc. CC was sold at a discount compared to the regular NIB standpoint, but that wasn't too odd for B/W titles at the time -- they figured out how much they were running before they started the run, and then they hoped to sell it no matter what demand was. Very few late life B/W games weren't sold at a discount.

I believe that the collector's plates were where this game's rise in value really started -- once people felt like they had something special, they tended to hold onto them. Even when I just got started in collecting over 10 years ago, they were going for a LOT of money, and the gameplay has never lived up to the price tag.

B/W tried the same thing at the end of the run of SWE1s, although I have no idea where those went. I know about ten people that own CCs personally, and I don't think I know one person that actually has a SWE1 with the collector's plate.

Perfectly said. I have paid way MORE for a pin than the normal going price because I WANTED IT.

I have paid LESS for a pin because someone was tired of it.

I heard this once, and it may apply here: "Water seeks its own level . . . buying and selling does the same thing." In other words, it is difficult to contain them both.

Mike