The market is great for buyers
I have picked up:
Sorcerer - $170
Space Station - $100
Pool Sharks - $100
Granted the machines needed some work, but even with parts and new boards, I am still under a grand for three great games. I do see the same machines for sale week after week from the guys that are trying to flip for top dollar.

Awesome. Good for you daddy o.
I have been thinking of starting a thread about this topic for some time.
Like anything else, everything that goes up will go down.
The true believers among us who love pinball will keep loving pinball.
The flippers/ speculators etc will move on to the next thing they see to try to get rich quick. The smart ones who get in early will make some money.
The sheep that get in the game late will lose money and blame someone or something for their bad luck.
The most important thing to remember is to just play pinball often and have fun.

And keep pumping the "under rated" claim and "just trying to get out of the game what I paid for it".

Awesome luck Daddy-o!

I having fun and low prices make it easier! I also just sold my Pat Hand and Gorgar to make room/upgrade and sold both for less than I paid for them. And nothing for my labor to get them running. I think I like working on them more than playing.

Keep me in mind if you decide to sell the Sorcerer. It's the game that got me hooked on pinball 24 years ago.

Sorcerer is an awesome game. I got mine for $150, but it was in pieces. The only thing missing was the display controller board. Sent my playfield out to John Greatwich and am going to do a full restore on it.

Not in the foreseeable future. It's my 14 year old daughters favorite and is one of the few things that gets her out of her room and off the iphone.

HA! Glad I am not the only one. High Speed is my 13 year old daughters fav and I don't know if I can ever sell it without her losing it, lol.

Yea, my playfield is all bare wood between the top flipper and the targets. But it plays like a champ!

in spite of people here saying SS is a $2000 pin, $975 is upper end in reality, unless its a really good restored one.

Do you have any games for sale?

or a new playfield

prices typically go up during the holidays.

One other thing is I don't think it's crazy or unreasonable that it took someone a week+ to sell a game. Or to not get interest in 4 days. There are a lot of games out there. A game like Comet isn't exactly a high demand title.

So often it's just about finding the right buyer. Someone really wants a Comet. But they're not obsessively checking Pinside or CL every hour on the hour. Sometimes it's really just the luck of the draw for your ad to get in front of that buyer. Who might happily pay your price. Gotta be patient.

I have a South Park for sale.

Why in TX...never where you want it to be!

happy to get it wrapped for safe travel and work with your shipper to load up.
just PM me here on pinside

The hobby money is going into the pockets of manufacturers instead of back into the pockets of the hobbyists. It's leaving the circle, and that is what spells a dry spot.

Luckily still a lot of people waiting with cash that will pick up the slack, but not forever. Companies will suck dry what there is and inevitably kill it all again, and it will dry up again, and the cycle will start all over.

Shipping always kills it for me.. 500 bucks to ship a game these days.

i'm getting shipping for about $370ish these days for a pin.

$430 for me from Memphis to Upstate NY. Only reason I was willing to fork over that much is because the one I bought is pretty hard to get

$370?
East Coast --> West Coast $450 via STI.
-mof

ahh... i'm right between the coasts. maybe that's why it's lower ?
i receive & send in all directions.

map-of-Texas-in-USA-2.jpg

This is certainly how every Texan I've ever known sees the U.S. map...

Terminal to terminal is still only about $240-$270 from midwest to wherever.

And we live smack dab in the middle of it!

Thank goodness I don't need another pin Labnip, you are too close!

you want to buy my South Park. . .
you w-a-n-t to buy my South Park . . . . .

hypnotize-1.gif

Where is the South Park listed.. Dam mystic hand voodoo

as stated, a super restored one. even a new pf in a marginal game overall, is still a $600 game with a $600 playfield

nope, mine is a keeper.

The seller posts their sale price, why do they have to post your buy price too? That puts everything on the seller. I really don't like it when people say "what's your lowest price"? Make on offer and negotiate! If the seller has posted his price, state yours and go from there.

I find people get butt hurt at an offer for just 100 or 200 under their asking price and never get back to you. those sellers go on my blacklist. I do not need to deal with that shit...

As I thought I stated if I like the sellers price, I will pay it. I don't have a compulsive need to try and knock down a sale price "just because".

If the price is coo-coo for cocoa puffs crazy, I will usually not even bother contacting the seller.

The one exception is when it seems the seller is not sure of the price, e.g. they tell you in the ad to make them an offer. In that case I will just ask "what do you want out of this game to get it out of your home", which brings me back to the first scenario above.

I don't think this is a complicated philosophy

images.jpg

I didn't realize "super restored" was an actual grading condition.

I disagree with your pf scenario as well and i think i'm not alone on that matter unless you're saying it's installed in a game incorrectly/inop with every item in the game needing replacement. even if the remainder of the parts are "players game" quality, it's worth a premium over one with a blown out playfield. At least TO ME it is.

It's in the same category as "HUO since 20xx"

I don't agree at least for me. It took me forever to find a Whirlwind in the shape I was looking for, Finally bought one out of state and had shipped. Wasn't bargin basement pricing either.

Also traveled 600 miles RT to get another pin in great shape in june. Lastest purchase looked at numerous options and elected to buy new Star Trek Pro. I should be good for now, time to ski and snowmobile. Cheers.

there are no actual grading conditions and I wasn't going to say "high end" or people here get pissy unless it was actually HEP. The point was SS is a base 600 game, if you just throw a PF in its a 600 game with a 600 playfield. you might get 1200. That's not a super restored game by any means. People are doing exactly that and asking 2k or more, is freaking insane. Even a really nice space shuttle is still a space shuttle. I love the game, mines not going anywhere, but its not a 2k game unless you find one still in the box and stored well, otherwise even that NIB is likely going to be trashed. Sure I might get more than 1200 for mine if I were selling and found the right sucker, and I'd gladly take as much as a sucker is willing to give. That still does not mean it was "worth" that much. If you were at expo you would have seen mine, its very nice, its a fun game, but its still "just" space shuttle.

^+1

Hi,

South Park pinball for sale.
Here you go --> https://pinside.com/pinball/market/ad/15934

PM me here and I can send pix.

Well, that's not what you said the first time. What you just said makes sense and I agree, it's not complicated.

Man, only $100 - $200???? Dude, I have people try to knock off $200 - $800+ with my FS posts.

No joke, I have had people try to tell me "Man, I'll buy your HS2 for $1600" when I had it listed at $2500.

Not only did I strip the PF down to nearly bare bones clean it and wax it two times, I installed all new rubbers, all LEDs and flashers, prototype mountain, key ignition, hand-polished the habit trails, replaced all the speakers, installed ALL cliffys available for the machine, re-aligned the shooting lane so the ball made a full lap around the PF as it should, replaced all the factory speakers with MUCH better ones and diagnosed multiple electrical issues. And then some dumb nut tried to offer me $1600 when I was asking $2500.

I'll be honest, some people are VERY lucky I don't call them out. Knock me down $200, that is expected. Try to steal it from me with the year 2000 - 2009 prices, and I consider that a VERY low thing to do - especially when I offer what I feel and consider to be a VERY thorough FS posting with 40+ photos and a 10 minute video.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/fs-hs2-the-getaway-1

Yep, I've seen quite a handful of pins sitting at prices that would've made them disappear in 20 minutes 6 months ago.

Still out of my price range, though

i've sold 2 games in the last month.
1 pin
1 arcade

both sold in within like 4 hours of posting.

about to sell another.

i'd say the market is "grrrrrreat".

Why get emotional about a low offer? You have the option of turning them down or not answering the offer.

When I low-ball, I feel like I am at the very least trying to help someone out. I don't know their situation. Maybe they are hurting financially and cash today/now could at the very least put food on the table or pay an overdue bill. They can and often do take offense.
Also, sometimes a seller really has no idea of the value of what they are trying to sell. I saw a broken pinball about a month ago for I think $1,000 or so. I contacted the seller told him the cost to fix and the value when fixed. Had him down to $200 til someone else got it for $275.
If you use C/L, you gotta bargain some.

Yup, it still happens. You probably priced them at a "reasonable" price. And that's what is happening in the market. If I saw a game I was looking for at a reasonable price and condition, I'd still jump on it. So does the soft market come down to the question of what is reasonable?

It still begs the question..... Were your prices grrreat as well?

good point.

maybe... i made money on one and broke even on the other.
but included in both those cases was covering my original shipping cost.
so in the end, the prices were both higher. maybe i bought low?

demand is definitely out there. buying prices are higher now than a year ago.
hmmm...

i'd say they were fair.
good for home-owner to home-owner prices.
they definitely weren't company to home-owner jacked-up prices.
honestly, i'm just as happy selling them to another home owner and enjoying their excitement about them as i am getting them originally for myself

i don't plan to retire on my current mancade inventory... well maybe on Tron LE