With modern pins pushing $8000 a piece, and 25 year old routed games pushing $4000 these days, you're going to be seeing a lot more Virtual Pins in the near future. I'm just finishing one right now and I have orders for 3 more. The cabs have already been dropped off at my shop.
With the prices being gleefully inflated more and more every month, the casual collector is being replaced with rich guys that obviously have no problem buying games that will soon be $15,000 each (if Gary has anything to say about it). Only in the pinball world are people willing to drop $8000 on a game they've never even seen a photo of! Apparently I'm the only one that thinks that is ridiculous. Not only that, but willing to accept the fact that the code will probably never be finished.
I've been in the pinball world since 76 and I've always been a purist, but honestly I can't afford $5-10,000 toys. At this point restorations of real pins is taking a backseat to building Virtual Pins. It's what my customers want now. It may not have the impact on pricing that Mame machines had on the video game collecting market, but I believe it's going to take a bite. I can easily see these on location, no board problems, no waxing, no broken plastics, no burned connectors. Anything that breaks on them can be changed in minutes.
It may not be real, but people really seem to like them.