There is no such thing as an overpriced turd.

Every pinball that exists is a machine that can be important to someone.

I may not personally like some pinball machines. My customers do.

To be plain, and honest...

Something will sell for what someone is willing to pay for it.

Overpriced doesn't enter in to the buying and selling.

You may find something overpriced, but here is what I'm seeing.

We bought our house in Charlotte for $160k about ten years ago. Now that house is getting offers north of $500k.

If your house is worth half a million dollars, it might make sense to pay ten thousand for a piece of furniture.

And a lot of the homes I'm delivering to are three quarter of a million to ten million dollar homes. Putting six or ten pinballs in a game room is just part of the way they want to live.

I've been to the people's homes where they have a LOT more than ten pinballs, but those people are generally not my customers (I focus on providing a reliable product that works great and then I offer delivery, setup, warranty, and home service... big buyers generally have already made arrangements for their collections.)

We just got new guidance from Stern. New Premium pinballs MSRP is $9699.00. With sales tax in North Carolina all new (and old new out of the box machines still on my sales floor) will be over $10,000.00.

Get your head around this:

New pinballs are over $10,000.00.

New pinballs are over $10,000.00.

New pinballs are over $10,000.00.

Then the pricing of lesser machines, even machines that I personally don't find valuable starts making a weird kind of sense.

Eight Ball.

Just sold through my store for $7695.00.

(Note: While I could have easily picked up an Eight ball for $500 three years ago, the $7695 price is because of the playfield swap, the new boards, etc... If I had just taken the game from auction, put no work in it... well, I wouldn't do that because I have to service it after I sell it! However, with only modest work (shopping, cleaning, minor fixes), my general feeling is that I could have taken a $500 game purchased three years ago and could comfortably sell it on my showroom today for $3200. Maybe not $5000, but still...)

(Note 2: Nothing that I would have bought at auction three years ago would be available to me this Christmas because it would have been sold at Christmas last year, where I saw a 30% across the board increase in prices, and still sold every pinball I could get my hands on. We came through last Christmas with almost an empty showroom.)

MRM, The challenge posed by chubtoad13 was to show him a single game. Selling for $5k. And I had a game that wasn't just being offered in excess of that price, it has actually sold at that price.

It wasn't a very fun challenge. Someone is always willing to pay an extraordinary amount for an exceptional piece.

Still, it was asked to show a single piece, so I thought I'd point out that it's just not that hard to sell pinballs at a 'never before in the history of the world' price.

I'd agree with the Mata Hari pinball statement.

Just because an exceptional example of a machine sells for an exceptional price, doesn't make the average price the top of the market price.