Nobody has mentioned regional considerations yet, pins are bulky and require expensive shipping, which makes the market tricky. Here in California, theres a lot of classics to be had a lot cheaper than anywhere else in the country. And with such a supply, demand is weakened, prices go down.
I'm mostly talking about Southern Cal, a vast sea of people and pins. Kinda scarce up north where I am..

Umm...and where are they playing them? Even if there are a few out there, do you really think kids are playing them? They aren't. The only ones who are, are our kids. They are the only ones that will keep the hobby going when we are gone. Sad but true. The average kid (ie...not related to a pinhead) has no idea what a pinball machine is other than MAYBE something on their iphone that they never play either.

I was wasting time at a big Lucky Strike arcade in Michigan last night, and they had 1 pin. Im talking over 3000 square feet of arcade. 1 pin. I racked up like 3 extra credits from hitting the replay mark every time and getting a match, but then I had to go. I waved over a kid who was playing a redemption game to come over and play the rest. He played 1 and got bored and left. It was WPT though, not exactly a kid friendly game.

I have thought a million times recently that the future of the game is in putting money in tournaments. The remaining pinball companies should be infusing the tournaments with cash. They should be holding more tournaments. If a pinball tourney had a million dollar first prize it would skyrocket the sport. Players become famous. Kids would think it could become a career and start playing. Machine prices would go up. I have seen snowboarding almost "die" around 1996-2000 the entire snowboard industry consolidated. No money in contests. No sponsors to go around. Everybody lost a lot of interest. Now with money and Red Bull and all that jazz everybody wants to be pro. Interest increases and the sale of goods increases. The youth market wants their hobbies to be money makers. Without the dream, of sponsorship and winning millions a sport only appeals to the hardcore. I saw this photo on pinball life the other day of tournament winners holding ten and twenty dollars bills. The industry needs to think about what creates demand.

+1 I think that is exactly what is needed.

You made some very valid points hope all the influential people involved with pinball are following this thread. Stern, JJ, etc.

While I do agree with you completely, Pinball is a game, entertainment, it is competitive, it is not a sport. And if it was, you have to present it in a format appealing to the players and the spectators, very challenging with pinball. Again, I think what you said Firebird is right on, I would love to see it happen!

If they were able to make poker the ridiculous phenomenon it has become, the same could be done for pinball. It would sure be more exciting to watch, even to a non-pinhead.

Not true. High graded (CGC) books have gone waaaaay up. These are the true collectibles, not the crap from the 90's.

Didn't have the money 5 years ago for an Avengers 1 CGC 8.5 for 3500 bucks. Put into perspective, adjusting for inflation, that would be like getting a BBB for that price.

I must just be lucky then - I don't think I've ever sold a pin for less than what I paid for it originally.

This makes sense to me. I'm 47 - part of the generation that fondly remembers playing pins in arcades - and this is why I'm now the happy owner of four machines. I certainly hope my buying power increases as I get closer to retirement - and yes - once the kids leave the house I will have more room in the house, and will certainly buy even more pins. ... <<--what's he smokin??

Sadly, I agree.

I totally agree!!! I don't know what all this talk is about losing your ass every time you sell a pin. I have only sold 2, but I didn't lose any money on either one and yes that is including, in my figure, the cost to pick them up and up keep. The only game I have right now, that I would lose money on is my EATPM(paid to much as a rookie). Since it's not going anywhere, it doesn't matter. It never ceases to amaze me what I see on these forums. There's a hundred threads about, the ridiculous price of pins and how they keep going up and then invariably someone will start a thread about how these games are anything but investments. It can't be both. Please don't waste your time trying to tell me that I will lose money on every pin I sell, cause it ain't happening. There is no bubble, only limited supply of high demand pins that get scarcer every year. I'm not saying you should stop contributing to your Roth account and buy pins , just don't blow smoke about how pins are always a money losing proposition.

I know my kids will not drive the demand up.

cant see the goth and emo punks buying pins

If they made a nightmare before christmas pin they sure as hell would.

Comes down to demand (or how many boards out there), hence why rottendog won't put the time in to making a replacement system 9 board (17k at best).

I see boards going one of two ways:
1. Proc will eventually interface to every CPU out there, so long as someone has extracted code into Pinmame. Getting a driverboard to interface with it is a completely different story
2. I've actually looked into what it takes to reverse engineer a board (as-is, no improvements made). If you have schematics (I.E. an engineer doesn't have to take a physical sample, trace the inputs / outputs / logic), and all your asking is to recreate the circuit, create a PCB layout (with specified connectors, and supply your own roms), I believe your looking at about $200-$400 per CPU (minimum 10 quantity). Of course once it's laid out, it gets much cheaper.

Really like any hobby, it takes someone to invest and take a risk to get something reproduced.

Pinball is gaining traction, Look at all the video titles coming out on xbox and others. the williams collection by farsight has been released to reasonably good reception on every major system. These games inevitably lead to an interest in real pinball. Pinballfx2 is one of the leading downloads on xbox live. I see this increased interest driving up price on real machines just within the last year. will it fade soon? I doubt it, I plan to be in the market for machines for at least the next 40 years or more, Lord willing!

My kids could care less about pinball. I have a nice collection and their friends don't even want to give it a try when they come over. At major arcades I see mainly adults play pins. When we die off, there will be a lot less demand and prices will go down. So I plan to out live you all and get some great deals 50 years from now.

We all know this, supply and demand. Right now our hobby is on the rise. I have met many new collectors recently (bought first machine within the last 2 years) more buyers equals more demand. It's clear the demand is high, stern is on the rise, boutique manf popping up left and right, a new company JJP coming any day now. It's an exciting time for pinball!

But how many hobbies have you had and changed over the last 10 years? I hope to have pinball forever, it's a good hobby to have even as I age. But i will no doubt have less.

One more consideration to the supply and demand rule, is, with all the new and exciting pins continuing to be released, there will be a surplus of machines, and the cool oldies are gonna have to go to make room for the latest and greatest new titles. Just some thoughts, I don't have a crystal ball.

But one prediction I can make, if prices continue to rise the way they have.......you will get more takers (sellers) which means more games for sale, which inevitably causes a drop in prices. Once there is a small dive, many will panic trying to recoup their investment, thus causing a crash. This is how it always happens. It's not if, its when....... But because our hobby is growing, this is not for a loooooong time! (I hope)

Markets go up and markets ALWAYS come down. Pins will be no different. Sooner or later supply will out duel demand and demand will definitely weaken at some point as well. They will come down to more normal levels. They will always have value but probably more like what we were seeing in the early 2000's. Guys getting older, downsizing, heck there are a lot of pins coming home from overseas... when it will happen no one knows. Will it happen?

That's a BIG 10-4!

Pretty sure we're paying more for everything than we used to. My parents still shit that they have to pay $3 for a loaf of bread cause they used to pay 25cents. I can hear them now "What $10 for a pair of socks, ridiculous."

Absolutely we are and INFLATION will be with us forever especially with the printing presses running day and night but what's happening with pins is not related to inflation for the most part. Its a collectible market with extremely high demand. Pins have already blown past anything related to inflation...

IMHO, the future of pinball is precarious. The baby boomers currently are driving the market with there financial wherewithal. Most of todays kids know little of pins and have limited interest.
I see fewer & fewer routed pins in the future, simply because of the somewhat dismal return on investment for vending companies. And of course, training someone to repair pins is very costly.
Where are todays kids ever going to play a pin, and grow to enjoy them?

I agree with that. But alot of it still has to do with inflatation in general. Collection markets rise more aggressively however. Just paid $300 for a pepper mill that I'm sure costs only $25 back in the 70s. People are realizing it's better to invest in products rather than buying cheap crap and throwing it out when it breaks. That pepper mill for example will only go up in value but I'll get to use it for the next 30 years and then sell it for profit before I croak. Same thing with pins, if the hobby stays alive that is. Herein lies the rub.

a year old thread really....

Sorry to open an old thread, but this is an evolving sort of discussion. I've done a little designing and reverse engineering of PCBs, have created and etched many of my own smaller sized boards, mainly guitar effects pedals and analog synthesizer modules. I did graduate to making a small professional production run of 20 dual LFO boards for use in analog synths. I populated the boards myself using both thru-hole & a few larger-sized solderable SMC parts. I think I went with Proto-Express for the PCBs. They worked out to about $12 each (plus tax & shipping), but they were also about 1/4th the size of say, a Williams WPC A-12742 CPU board.

If I were to reproduce a WPC A-12742 CPU on a small scale of like 50+ PCBs, a double-sided board with silk screening of that size would probably work out to about $50 per board (I'm guessing it is around 6" x 10"). The components themselves couldn't be more than $60 per board on Mouser or Digikey as well, maybe less in bulk, but then you have to factor in the assembly time, which my guess would be about 1 1/2 hours per board. But it could be done as a community/group buy. I would be willing to reverse-engineer and produce something smaller that was in need, either PCB boards alone, or the whole populated boards as long as it is worth my time. I considered re-creating the Say-it-Again boards for Centaur based on a PT2399 Digital delay chip to spare all of those desperately hunting down a super-expensive impossible to find replacement SAD4096 IC.

Wow-here we are now in 2020

How the time flies by-did your prediction/s come true?

He missed the mark on a few but his basic statement was all pins will gain in value.