Pinball machines are a luxury item, and as such, there is going to be market volatility.

Anyone who things it is an investment opportunity, rather than a hobby, is going to be in for a surprise.

How many threads can we have on pinball prices before the server crashes? Anyone???

Enough with this stuff. Seriously. You can spend days browsing other threads on this.

I hope you are correct. The only people that wouldn't want to see this are the ones that are in this for the profit, which in my view does not make them hobbyists or enthusiasts. Lower pricing will not expand the market, just as this "pinball boom" hasn't. I say that with confidence because I deal with a lot of people who would be the target income group for pins and literally none of them have brought a pin into their home in the last 3-5 years. Pinball is and will always be a niche hobby, which summarizes most hobbies.

I don't indulge into the hobby more simply because I have better things to do with the money (family events, education, vacations, etc.). I would love to be able to more in the hobby and lower costs would make that a reality.

ya except your totally wrong. there is not over supply, most people collect older machines and there is only so many of them out there. the market is good for buyers and sellers right now. the aftermarket parts production is driving the market. this topic has come up many many times here.
the video game collector market is strong too.
i would not use a hobby as a sole investment but there is money to be made if games are bought right.

Trekkie, While I am not an old school forum person from the rpg days, my understanding is that the sayers of nay have been predicting the downward spiraling of pinball and prices for as long as there has been the internet.

The pinball buying community is pretty sound financially. I know of none buying machines on margins or credit. If they have cash, they buy. If the mortgage is due, a machine is not purchased.

While yes, there are a few that purchase LE's on speculation, that has nothing to do with the health of pinball.

Spooky Pinball for instance has very controlled overhead and a self contained infrastructure. Short of a Zombie Apocalypse , they can weather any storm. And even if there were Zombies, they will have a pinball machine for it.

Agree with most everything as a Cpa/lawyer/finance guy myself.

Except that it won't be Stern doing the LE's.

The boutique guys will have that market cornered. Sorry, but they simply don't have the fixed overhead to spread and can truly create a "limited" pinball experience. See Jpop, Spooky, Dutch, etc…...

I don't agree with this. Just because you are an enthusiast doesn't mean you don't care about the value of things you own. I'm not in this hobby for the money, but I'd be pretty depressed if a month from now my entire collection was worth half of what it is now.

I wonder whats gonna happen to people in my price bracket (1-2.5k). Those machines are not necesarily "hot" but still good quality. Id love to be able to have a TS or RBION for that price b/c those games have been rising lately. Will STTNG come up a year from now for 1500? I feel like these topics always center around the high end when the majority of machines out there are middle to low cost

low prices = yay
high prices = boooo

guess that about sums it up for me

As long as everything moves evenly it shouldn't matter. If all games value drops by 50% you still maintain the same relative value.

i put a reminder on my phone to come back and revisit this thread in 3 years. see you then!

Pinball wise, yes, but my net worth would go down. If for some reason I had to get out of the hobby and liquidate my pins, I would be substantially worse off. I can afford the hit if all my machines become worthless, but that doesn't mean I'd want them to.

Its all relative though..... you would only be depressed if you were "cashing out" and getting out of the hobby. If you were just looking to switch up titles, it wouldn't matter because whatever you were buying would have gone through the same recession.

Worth to sell is different than worth to trade...unless you need to get rid of a machine due to space constraints then to me as long as I can trade a MET for a ST or a Shadow for a Congo or Adams Family for TOM then I don't feel bad...as long as games depreciate evenly across the board I'm good with that, like I said unless I had to downsize

EDIT: looks like the last three posts beat me to the same point as I was typing

3 years? You will be out of this hobby in 3 weeks... Or is it 3 days? I can't keep track

The future is now. It's always now. Or just a tad after now. Look around, the market is correcting. It will continue to do so, until it's just a market again. We survived the bubble and most will survive the correction. Some won't, of course.

How about some investment tips if you're so good at it?

buy low...sell high

I would say no to STTNG. Sure 1 or 2 maybe had for cheap but they will get snapped up quick.
Pinball needs to really move into a completely different concept before multi ball dmd 90s themed pinball games takes a serious tumble. But by then STTNG may become so that much rarer. That you will have to pay for it. It's a proven winner

he actually sold his entire collection last week and then bought them all back this week.

Agree. I think games like STTNG, TZ and Indiana Jones will maintain their current values and likely go up in value due to the high prices of NIB games as well as the rarity of finding those games in good to excellent condition. People will look at a Stern, JJP or DP game for $5k-$9k and wonder what else they can get for the same price if not cheaper.

hey now, i am very deliberate about buying and selling. I was sick of my TAF before it even was in my house but it's still here.

still fun to give you a hard time

LMK when you want to sell IMVE. Maybe I will give it a whirl or put it on location>> I think it would do well.

If so, then the 2 or 3 JJP games that manage to make production (WOZ, Hobbit and possibly the Lawlor game) will be oddities like the two P2K games. And Stern will continue making pins with no competition driving them to innovate beyond the conversion to LEDs.

i've noticed.

need taf traded/sold first. that might get me off the ledge.

why is this emoticon humping a pinball machine?

I'll guess that JJP is around for a long time making one high quality title a year that people will buy due to it offering a lot of features for your money as well as deep complete code.

Maybe there is a part of an emoticon's anatomy that fits into a coin slot?

I tried that. Only purchased games from people's basements and then re-sold them from the second floor of my two-story home. Didn't work for me and too much trouble going up and down all those stairs.

so where is the best place to park my 401k for the next 2 years?

I would rather lose money buying pinball machines than losing it on a piece of paper like in the stock market.

But actually I don't pay much attention to either as far as gains and losses.

To me, owning a pinball machine is a luxury just like owning a hobby car. Note: A car today is a necessity, but hobby cars are the one's we store in the garage and drive on weekends or to car shows or to dinner. There will always be a demand for them and there will always be a limited amount of people who can afford those types of vehicles.

Now, there are all types of hobby cars. High end luxury cars, muscle cars daily drivers, classics, antiques and fixer uppers. Just like a pinball machine, some cars appreciate in value, while others slowly loose value. Some go WAY up in value while others drop like a rock. Some are restored to CQ while others are fixed up to stay running and are driven all the time.

So, if you want to buy a machine as an investment, there are plenty out there and you can buy those. If you buy one hoping it will raise in value, you are "playing the market". It may or may not go up in value. For those of us who buy machines to play the heck out of them and have fun, making money isn't the issue. We just want to have fun and if they go up or down a little, it's no big deal. We may even trade games for another title we'd enjoy more. But no matter what, the most important thing in this or any hobby is to have fun. You can have fun playing them. You can have fun fixing them. You can have fun restoring them. Just so long as you're having fun.

As for where the market Is headed, I think (like anything) some machines will slowly dip in price and settle in at there basic "sweet spot" price. Just like you basically know what games you can find between $1-$2K or $2 to $3K or $3 to $4K etc. Once they settle in, depending on the quality of the machine. That's where they'll basically stay. The pinball machine world will not have a housing market type crash IMO. But either way, enjoy what ya have and have fun. If you're afraid or worried about losing money on your machines, you probably shouldn't be in the hobby to begin with. My respectful $0.02 anyway.

Well said brothah. I've lost more money than I care to remember on stocks. Once it's gone, you have nothing to show for it but a little tax write off. At least with a pinball machine, if it loses all it's value, you'd still have a great machine to enjoy for years to come.

I'll keep posting this in ever price thread. It may become monotonous as the threads themselves, but at least it's funny.

what do you think about this rumored 50% market crash that's supposed to happen any day now?
http://www.moneynews.com/MKTNews/Market-Collapse-Finance-Stocks/2013/03/01/id/492699/

I love that tim&eric skit "there's no meat on it, throw it back! I'm not gonna feed it to my family"

too old, poor, not enough, 16 pinball machines

I have no degree in finance and I predicted this influx of over supply and saturation a year ago coming to a head. There's a post or thread about it but I'm not wasting time digging it up.

LE market is done. JJP has stated no more limited editions.

A limited edition should be one that has proven itself in standard sales to justify being made.

If you really want to make money on your 'investments' route em.

As far as future prices (5-10 years from now) too many variables to guess.

As stated in my will.....
My pinball collection must not be sold and will remain in the family for no less than 4000 years.

At that time my pinball machines will be priceless artifacts.
This is truly bubble proof investing.
My plan is perfect, I win.

O sweet another pricing/prediction thread! I was thinking to myself this morning we need a bunch more pricing threads and Hitler reaction video threads.

I don't see this as a clear-cut either/or (either a hobbyist [good guy] or an investor [bad guy]). I don't expect to make money when I sell a pin, and, indeed, I never have. At the same time, I wouldn't be thrilled about losing, say, $25k when I eventually downsize, which I assume I'll do when I retire. Would a sustained downward trend in the price of used pins make me more conservative about buying? Yes, especially since I expect to have to sell most of what I have within ten years. Losing some money is perfectly acceptable since I have to factor in the value of playing the pin for however long I own it. On the other hand, I doubt very much that I will play an $8k pin enough times to be happy selling it for $3k. I cannot see how the market can sustain such high upfront costs if resale values drop that dramatically.

Flowers: if you're referring to the dutch tulip thing, that's a bad example since you can make as many tulips as you want. You can't make more old pinballs without a lot of work and "adjusted for dollars" for materials and tooling. Whether you build a medievel madness or a space shuttle, the retail price of $8k isn't likely to vary by more than a couple thousand dollars.

beanie babies: dumb hobby where people got caught up in the profit. Nobody really cared about them, they only cared about buying them and reselling them. Most pinball collectors care about collecting and playing, not flipping

dot com stocks: that's because it's a very risky market. You could have the next facebook or twitter app, or you could have a failed idea that isn't marketed well.

housing: This was inflated by a rush of poor people getting loans they couldn't afford. When hundreds of loans failed, Of COURSE this is going to cause a rift in home values. Why would I buy home A. for $180k when I can buy a foreclosed home down the street for $130k?

I don't have one written officially yet, but my wife knows if I die first to contact all my local friends and let them fight it out with prices. At least I know they'll pay honestly.

You just lost 2.24% of your investment in a few hours on JNJ! Stocks are a Ponzi scheme rigged against the average investor. I will take hard assets any day (including pinball machines) over this corrupted over inflated/unsustainable stock market.
If one of the company's you own stock in goes bankrupt you get nothing, on the other hand if my pinball machines drop in value I still win! cause I will play my value out of them.

Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) -NYSE 

104.20 Down 2.39(2.24%)

Ok here's another question: Is the current "hotness" of pinball something that will be maintained for a long period of time or just a temporary fad? I pretty much got into this hobby b/c of pinball arcade. 5 years from now that simulation wont be a shiny new video game anymore. Doesnt this have a lot to do with the prices bubble?

Jack Daniels is a ton more liquid than the stock market. Now THAT makes sense!