I agree...I'm in it for the fun.
I have my "want list" and plan now is not to budge, don't care about future value.
I just enjoy playing/fixing Pinball!

Yes, some things are cooler than money.

Pinball, bacon, beer & girls are a good example.

I wouldn't mind. I've never sold a pin yet. I just can't bear to part with them. They were too hard to find and bring up the condition I wanted. I think I'd be way happier if pins dropped in value across the board, as I'd be able to add more to my collection for less money.

If my pins lost their value tomorrow it's cool....I just want to play pinball.

Yep. It would be like any other form of entertainment, you pay to play. I'm not in it to make money or even break even. It is all about fun!

I would still be collecting them but I doubt I would buy a NIB. I would still be buying fixer uppers. I expect a NIB to lose some value but if they automatically lost 25% of their value just by opening the box then I wouldn't buy one ever.

Please let them drop! Maybe then I could afford the ones I really want!

Honestly, I would have had a harder time convincing my wife to let me buy one.

I hope they come down even though i would lose money then i could afford a listers like mm afm whitewater and so on I am definetly in it just to play pinball and thats it at any cost

$200-500 drop in a year is a cheap entertainment expense ($17-$40/month) for the hours of entertainment it provides. We're only talking about a couple lunches, 1 dinner, or less than half of a cable/satellite bill.

pinball is my crack. if they loose value that means they would be cheaper and i can get more of my drug of choice.it would be a win win for me. its like toys,everyone is always its a collectible!
i open the package,give it to my boys and say go have fun.

I really dont care about the what they are worth...until its time to buy the next one.

I like your attitude sir.

I agree with uncle fester on this one.

"You can't take it with you"

I would still have the passion and the bug but would be even more selective of titles as they would all be potentially a loss not a wash or gain.

I would still be a pinhead. I would rotate titles more.

Yyyyup. I buy 'em to play and enjoy.

Once they are in my house I don't care what they are worth. I'm just happy that I can play pinball whenever I want to.

If pins cost half as much, I'd have twice as many...

You mean like it was every year except for about the last 3? Used pins were pretty flat in value unless you did some work to restore them and NIB gradually lost about 200-500 a year in value depending on how good the game was.

I m not in for the value! I'm in it cause I love to play pinball.if prices fell I would be even more cause that means more pins for me!

I was thinking about this today. Would I be as passionate about collecting pinball machines if the prices were not steady and were typically falling. For example, the pin you buy this year, next year it is worth what you paid minus $200 to $500 (and it would take a while to sell).

To answer my own question. I would have a smaller collection and change out more often. Looking more for projects that I can fix up. Fixing up games for me is about 2/3's the fun.

How about you?

Can I get back to you on this, kind of busy right now.

WH2OTD_039.jpg

+1

Dissapointed? Yes. Totally devastated? No. It would be all good. Like most folks, when hard earned money leaves the houshold it is usually for a very good and well thought out reason/desire. If value goes up or down, the original reason for spending the cash would likely distract from spending too much time thinking about a + side or - side value change.

What would be more bothersome and troubling is buying something and having someone ruin it or steal it away While Pinball machines are pretty heavy and unlikely to be stolen easily, I fear more someone breaking in my home and realizing they are heavy and since cannot be easily taken, they instead will ruin them on the spot That is far worse, to me, then losing a little internet percieved value on a pin I bought

It would just be like every other form of entertainment, one that eats your money.

yes!the increase in value of existing pins is icing on the cake!

Yes, and I'd easily have more in the collection.

Pins are about the only thing i buy that hold/increase there value. Houses(these days), cars, boats, motorcycles,household goods, jewelry(depends), etc. all go down and i still buy it all. None of these things except my motorcycle provide entertainment or joy. So yes, im going to buy no matter what. Since they do go up in value(for now) I will be smart with my money and take advantage but if all that changes I wouldn't slow down or even blink an eye. I would change my buying strategy but thats about it.

I certainly don't expect my motorcycle to go up in value either and its also my other fun. I am buying pins for my game room to keep and play. Its money thats gone. Its for fun.

It's all worth it at the end of the day...
Coming home and pushing the start button on a fully functioning, clean, LEVEL machine, is priceless.
"Mental Health is Mental Wealth", I say!

I also like to say, "Groove is in the Heart"...

Never been a thing for me, started collecting pinballs way back when they weren't "cool" to own.

What he said
I never give value too much thought... until it's time to buy of course.

Im in just to have fun and keep the pinball fever alive and well!

Yes. it's playing them and modding them up that is fun. i like the collection value, but if BBB was suddenly worth less than waterworld, i would still keep both.

I can't even fathom a world like this, can you? A craiglist ad that says "For sale, a medieval madness. Fully shopped, working 100%, full LED's, cliffy protectors, no cabinet fade, no backglass flaking. Home use only. $800 or best offer"

Yes.

There's no room for "businessmen" in a "hobby" that is supposed to be "fun." I'd love my pins if you could buy 10 for $1.

I slum the EM's because pinball makes me happy, keeps me busy & keeps my mind focused on things beside wanting to stab stupid people in the face!!
See.. PINBALL SAVES LIVES!!! you can't put a value on that!

ETA: The way things are going today, my pins are worth less after I get my hands on 'em and try to fix 'em...

I would love pinball just as much but would likely do less buying/selling. I probably wouldn't buy nib either but wait for HUO to come to market.

well said...

-jon

If I thought too much about the value of my games I would be a nervous wreck

I collect pinball machines because I like them, their dollar value is not important

my favorite games are not nesasarily the most expensive ones
(OK, AFM rocks)

MMM..bacon, here is a good bacon flowchart, funny.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fncll/2129889439/

That is what I was thinking, it was easy to buy NIB now because the pins seem to hold some value right now. If the gap was bigger I would just wait until they were a couple years old but I would still buy them.

that would be great! i would buy even more at low prices

Hey,

To directly answer the question from the OP, if the situation you mentioned above (any given pin would drop $200 to $500 a year) occurred, then it would have almost no effect on me whatsoever, as the value of games relative to one another wouldn't change. I almost wish I could get that kind of consistency, if the truth were to be known.

Say some guy has two machines for sale for $3,500, a TZ and a TAF. You go to his house, and buy the TZ. $3,500 out of your wallet. A year later, you decide you want a TAF instead. Your TZ now sells for $3,000. However, by the same logic, the TAF should now only sell for $3,000 as well, so you're not out any money. If you're staying in the hobby, and all games are dropping in price, you'll still be able to shuffle games that are regarded as more or less equal without taking a hit.

Maybe it's not exactly bang on, but by putting down $3,500 on that TZ, you have said, "I'm willing to pay the going rate for a so-called A-list pin in today's dollars." If you want to keep an A-list pin, and they're all shifting prices at more or less the same rate, you're not losing or gaining anything until you go to sell that game outright and not replace it with something. Then the going rate matters.

Where it gets dicey is when the perceived value for one game changes and others don't, which tends to be what happens and screws everything up. I was talking to a fellow Pinsider tonight about my WhiteWater; I'll use it as an example because I know its sales patterns reasonably well. A while back, there was one for sale locally for $3,500, and I myself said that I thought it was too rich for my blood (the fellow I was talking to this evening mentioned my words, and I don't blame him for doing so ). At the time, yeah, $3,500 for a WhiteWater was above and beyond the going rate by quite a bit. Fast forward to now, and I'm advertising one for $3,500, and I've seen a handful for sale in that ballpark range. The market has changed, but only for that one pin. This is really good for me, because I bought a pin and now that one machine seems to sell for more than I paid for it; when I bought it, there was probably a good $1,000 difference between it and a TZ, and now there's maybe $500. It's not so good for the guy just trying to get a half-decent pin to start out.

This is the part of things that is more likely to affect what pins I do or do not buy, and I guess that in turn might affect the enjoyment I get out of the hobby. Part of the fun of this for me is scouring the message boards and Craig's List and various other places looking for something new, or setting up a trade, or road tripping 1500 miles to go get a machine.

The passion or the thrill of the hunt or what have you is going to be lost on me when there's no real value left to be rung out of any machine. I'll use DMDs as an example, but it applies to more or less any era of games. When I started just a couple of years back, TAF and TZ and a few others were the big buck machines. By my perception, people started playing cheaper machines because they represented value relative to the others. A $2,300 WhiteWater represented a better deal than a $3,500 Twilight Zone, so people bought the WhiteWater instead, even thought most people would say TZ is a better game. All of a sudden, everyone likes WhiteWater because it's cheap enough to play and people are spending a good amount of time on it. Pretty soon, the bang-for-the-buck is gone because everyone's playing it and wants one, the prices jumped, and now you're choosing between a WhiteWater and a TZ. It's happening with The Shadow right now. A year ago, every thread would consist of "the translite looks like crap", and they'd sell for under $2,000. Now you'd be hard pressed to find one south of $2,000, and the translite doesn't much seem to bother people. Yes, I own both WhiteWater and The Shadow, and that's probably why I've paid attention to them, but other examples would be Funhouse now being hard to find, and me thinking some guy was overpaying when he spent $3,500 for a routed AFM last year.

I personally have a thing for Twilight Zone. I'd like one someday. But if I had a brain in my head and wanted a really well-rounded collection, instead of spending $5,000 to $6,000 on a really nice one, I'd track down Bram Stoker's Dracula, Judge Dredd, Johnny Mnemonic, and Demo Man. I'm not a fortune teller, but they're the games getting a bit of a groundswell behind them, and it really wouldn't surprise me if they were $2,500 games in two or three years. Eventually, and I won't say when because I don't know, I think it's going to cost too much to get any game, let alone a decent game. That's when the passion will be out of this for me.

Man, I type a lot. I'm going to bed.

Luke

Hell yeah, I'd love to see this hobby bottom out then I could own 50x the amount of machines I own now, I dont care about making money or pins I own going up in value, I've been pretty lucky with my NIB purchases - SM, IM, TRON LE have all gone up in value since I brought them NIB but I wouldn't sell them, I was offered silly money for my TRON LE but did not and do not want to sell it as it gives me unlimited amount of entertainment and fun which is priceless in this day and age especially.

Me thinking of the value of your games, since you are in Australia, makes me nervous...

Nice collection for down there, I heard they are scarce down there, now I know why

It's only money. They get cheaper, I'll buy more

I've got a buck and a half invested or committed in pins. I wouldn't put that kind of money in them if I don't feel the games would at least retain their value, and when lucky, go up. That fact broke down any hesitancy about putting that kind of money in the hobby.
That doesn't mean if the pins went down in value I wouldn't still buy and play them, but it would be on a smaller scale, maybe half of what I have now.

I would not even consider a NIB. But if prices were falling I would have all the titles I want.

Only thing that would change for me is I would be more cautious and picky with my purchases. I wouldn't be able to afford too own many pins if they all lost their value, maybe just one or two.