I am as honest of a person as you will ever find and I can't stand to see someone rip another person off but it's their games and they can put any price they want on them. When someone is making a big purchase like a pinball machine, you have got to do your homework and educate yourself. If you don't, it's nobody's fault but your own.

So what you are really worried about is the prices of games going up In general sounds like. Pinball is like anything else, they are worth what people are willing to pay for them. That is what determines the price, PERIOD! Just because a couple of idiots pay 5K for a Stern Meteor, that doesn't mean that the prices of a Meteor is going to go up. You are concerned that you aren't going to be able to afford pins in the future, that's exactly what this is all about. You are worrying way way too much about this for real.

Pinball is no different than any other hobby. Right now pinball is very popular and people are really starting to love it again. There are new generations of players getting involved also instead of just us old farts from the 70's and 80's.....this is a great thing IMO because I love pinball and I want it to live on forever. The one downside to it though is the popularity of the hobby is what drives the price of these games new and old both.

This kinda sucks for me as well because I am not a rich guy by any means. I just an average Joe that goes to work everyday and I save my ass off to buy a game here and there, and it's not easy believe me. I could also be priced out someday if things keep going the way that they are. Heck, I already am priced out of a lot of games. I can't go pay 9K for a new DI machine, no way. I can't buy a BM66 or a Stern LE, thank God for Stern Pros is all I can say and truthfully I can't really afford them but I save my ass off to buy them if there's one I want.

The thing is though if Pinball loses it's popularity then prices are going to fall back to where they are sensible again and hell they may even plummet to almost nothing again someday. The economy is also another factor that drives these prices. Bottom line is I'm glad Pinball is getting popular again and I hope it keeps getting more popular, even if it does drive prices up. This is not even close to the same thing as me selling my like new Jack Bot to some uninformed kid that just inherited a bunch of money for 10K. That wouldn't raise the value on everyone's Jack Bots one penny and if anyone thinks it will then they need their head examined, and just for the record I wouldn't do that to someone even if I had the opportunity to.

Sorry but I just don't believe that one fake bid on EBay made everyone's AFM games skyrocket over night. I don't believe it would even if a game actually sold for that much. I have an old Supersonic and if I tried hard enough I could probably find a sucker out there somewhere that would way over pay me for my 700 dollar game, but even if I pulled that off it's not going to make everyone's Supersonics start selling for 3, 4, or 5K overnight. It's all about the popularity of a game, and the availability of a game. People want what they can't have, that's human nature and people want whatever is the flavor of the month or what's hot also. Maybe someday my Supersonic will gain in popularity and be worth more money, but I don't see it happening anytime soon.

Lots of chipping clear coat on the new DI games that are shipping right now. JJP games are also about 3K higher than a new Stern. I think I'll stick with my junky Sterns.

I've been reading that thread and it sucks for sure, but we also don't really know how widespread the problem is just yet. I hope this isn't GB all over again. All of the AS playfields seem to be really nice, not sure why they all can't be that way. My point was though that everyone talks about how high of quality JJP is but they have had lots of trouble in the past as well, and these DI playfields are chipping pretty bad so far looks like. Both companies need to get these playfield problems figured out because it F'ing sucks.