Like many of you, when I started in this hobby (well to the point of buying for home), I thought around $1,500.00 for. DMD pin was pretty crazy, but took the plunge. About 2-3 years ago sold a pin and said yeah I can't buy a NIB. I mean I financially can just thought it's insane. Now I've bought 3 new stern, new spooky, 10k on a jjp, and ordered a bond. I'm now at the point I'm close to saying wow...this is crazy. Lol. I love them but I struggled to pay for family vacation (mentally). That's when I'm like ok dude, get a grip! I just was playing demo man which I paid 1900 and felt bad doing so. Still amazing. Old stuff is still ok since I'm average. I don't know...it will work itself out. If I end up having to play old stuff at home I'll just pay on location all good.

True, but I mean it this time.....

I’ve said it before, “no mas”. Won’t go more than 12, then 16 etc

As an enthusiastic “collector” and player, it’s the first part that really has no meaning much anymore thanks to the rapid change in pricing and production quantities.

Bottom line, now we can get whatever we want whenever we want and most likely at lower prices by waiting. FOMO is over along with “collectibility” for the most part.

I am looking forward to playing BOND for years to come! And reconnecting with my other games

or just a idiot

I am out at this point. Can’t justify the prices any longer. I started in 2019 with a Bally Kiss. Bought and traded 24 pins. Bought 9 NIB pins. 7 stern, 1 CGC, and 1 spooky Halloween.

Right now I have JP premium, GZ pro, Rush LE, and Halloween. Only one that I am interested in will be Jaws. Only movie my dad took me to see and I was 4.

Then factor in the new price for toppers with Mando at $1999. I am topper guy.

I do not care who you are, the fun factor will NEVER equal the price of todays games.

Dude! Jaws in the theater at 4. Did you still want to go in the water after that?

The thing is...Bond is a SUPER DESIRABLE them for so many.

Pinball, of course, is addicting. I'm guessing these price points aren't sustainable, however. They will have to be top tier themes every time, and that isn't happening.

There is always a last fix. Sometimes its voluntary, sometimes it isn't.

I have a feeling I will see this same post in 5 years…

Stern and JJP pinball pricing is way to high as of the newest releases. Out for now! Looking for older pins on trades. No more NIB at this time.

When pros are effing 11000. There is no theme, no designer, no game to come out that i will shell out any more modern day ludicrous money for. I can't stand how games that used to be 1500 not super long ago are now 5500.

Not priced out and never will be as long as it's a theme I want. I will find a way.

I think many of us don't necessarily feel 'priced out' as much as we feel 'valued out'

Any item, regardless of its' audience, pricing, or usefulness...has a perceived value. Once that line has been crossed, it's game over.

I went a little crazy this year and got an Ultraman and and Alien LV. The Alien was $16,000 CAD which was more than $2,000 higher than the price I was promised due to exchange rates and “fees”. I think that price jump and the fact that Ultraman was so underwhelming has cured me of my NIB buying.

Exactly the point. I can still buy every new Stern game but it doesn’t feel good anymore too me personally because I no longer do see the value at these over inflated prices. I have bought at least 15 + NIB games but will no longer buy NIB from JJP or Stern when asking basically 10k for a premium and 12k for a JJP base model game. Just doesn't feel right to me.

Been collecting and restoring since the late 90s. I guess the reality is, I haven't felt priced out yet - but you have to understand, I never buy new, and usually look for the pin that needs love. That has gotten harder, yes, because the home user market has gotten well established, and because there are very few parts you cannot find (Backglasses and playfields specifically), so the beaters aren't at beater value anymore. Not always though. It's just a little harder.

But I just picked up a trashed pin for 250. Boards are in excellent shape, it worked after I fixed a few fuses. Now, it's not a desirable title, but I do what I do for love as much as for playing.

I haven't seen it. I have my list of pins from the SS era, and they get snapped up as long as the prices are reasonable. Rarely do they sit for more than two weeks, and often much shorter. This is from the pinside marketplace, fyi.

I’ll never be “out” out.

But Fomo is out the window and cheap solid states and second-hand less popular Stern pros are in. For example I just picked up a mint Avengers Infinity pro for $5500 and I’m in love with it. Truly great shooter and I actually prefer it to the premium.

If anything truly stellar comes out I can always dip into my “fancy” reserve to sell something and fund it.

I do have a deposit down on a 007 pro, but I can always transfer it to something else if the code doesn’t shake out the way I hope or I don’t love the shots after putting time on a location game.

So BTTF comes out..... $250,000

Cru says "No problem"...... grabs his bank robb'in mask and heads out to make a withdrawal.

Spot on and I have to laugh at the people on pinside cheering on the manufactures to destroy the flippers.

Well the manufactures have eliminated flippers so now we have this, way higher NIB pricing which leads to higher used prices.

Hope all those flipper haters are happy.

In none of my other hobbies do I hear the people cheering for lower prices.

I have had pins since being a kid and recently moved into a home where I can have some pins and had the money to buy what ever I wanted and wife who wanted some games as well. I declined my Bond LE, and will maybe get the special edition depending on price and number of units made.

My only real pin dream theme is Ozzy, so I could do that in a premium. Godzilla did it for me, selling my LE playing a prem.

I feel a bit like zaphX I have the money but it is just getting to be to much of loss on the fun to dollar ratio. I am keeping what I have maybe a couple new proven fun games, but the buy for you try is over for this pinball weirdo.

I have been collecting for a little over 17 years. I cannot say that I feel priced out yet. I have over 50 pins in the collection, but I have no modern stern or JJP. I cannot justify spending that much money on a toy. I know that statement sounds funny, with the amount of games I own, but I cannot tell myself that a new GZ prem is fun enough to replace a couple of my DMD era B/W pins. I have a tough time buying games over 5K. Ive only spent 5k 3 times on my Mystery Castle, Williams Mini Bowl, and very recently (last month) a Williams IJ.

I will say that when I look at the pinside classifieds, its disheartening to see the majority of what's for sale to essentially be above 6k. And anything under that mark starts at $2500 and goes up. Unfortunately that gets you Cyclones, Secret Services, and other low tier games, when it used to get you games like JM, Demo, BSD, stuff WCS, ect.

A good portion is all overpriced sterns/JJP stuff. And you know what? That's fine. Kind of like the new car market, someone had to pay sticker price for the car to drop significantly when you drive it off the lot. The problem is that a good portion of collectors who overpaid, are not willing to take a financial hit for how deep they got into their game. So all you are seeing are these high prices that guys aren't willing to budge on.

The deals are out there guys, but If you cannot wait a little bit, those deals will never translate to you.

I also have NIB UM and Alien LV. Sorry to hear that UM does not rate higher for you. I must be the crazy one here, but I really enjoy UM- so different than my stable of awesome Stern games. Shots are actually difficult to consistently repeat which is challenging/frustrating. Same for Alien.

Yeah you folks up north and down under really feel the inflation. I thought we had it bad here in the states.

Seconded.

I’m not a seasoned vet like many of you who have been here for years and seen the highs and lows. I got into pinball with IMDN 2018 Huge fan of Maiden and once I heard I knew I was getting the pin, what I didn’t know was, I was going to get hooked.
the skill aspect of pinball came from owning and learning on my IMDN, then I began to seek out more pins. Before that, my perception of pinball was a money scheme for people entertained by a silver ball for a few mins before unfairly draining. Had no idea you could control the ball. Having full access to my own pin allowed me to understand and be exposed to this brilliant and fun game. Then I went and Bought AS pro & MET Prem. Again wanted more. The pricing wasn’t cheap, but the fun to dollar ratio made sense to me. I passed on other hobbies or rather focused more so on pinball. Got Rush Prem & GZ Prem.

Were I to be informed today that IMDN was being released and considering entering into this wonderful hobby, think I likely would have passed and never even realized what I was missing. Would have just gone on focusing on motorcycles, guitars, rifles and other fun things.

I am grateful for entering this hobby when I did and meeting some really wonderful pinheads who helped me get settled and started. Also for my current pins, as I don’t see myself being as invested as I was before, largely because of the current trends.
Bond is a top 10 theme for me, but the value isn’t there anymore, Not for me to want to buy.
And as others have mentioned, selling/trading doesn’t seem too appealing now as many are going for every dollar to then be able to buy the new overpriced pins.

Nobody likes opportunists who perform no value add and only disrupt the supply. EOL

I've only had a handful of pins and they are generally getting increasingly newer and more expensive. First was a $3k Hook that needed work, then sold that to get a RCT from a friend and had that for a couple years to get a HUO Deadpool Pro that I got an awesome deal on and love it - that will be a cold dead fingers sale. I got a old Bally from a neighbor that was either going to be sold to me for cheap or put in the trash, it was in rough shape. I fixed it up, cleaned it up, got it working and sold it for triple. I then got a used, but awesomely updated/maintained WPT, have had it for a couple years. But now I am on the neverending 'in line for' NIB GZ Prem - I'll get it somewhere between now and the end of time, hopefully. That was because my wife has upped the count that I can have from two to three.

For the most part, it's not the money for me now, but like an earlier poster said, it's a value proposition. I could get a GZ Pro a lot faster, but the Prem has many more 'things' that I just WANT and think it makes it much more enjoyable. But I could/would not say the same for the difference between DP Pro/Prem.

Agree. Better flow of money is to the manufacturers. They have employees, a factory, put cash flow into getting more games out the door, put money into designing new games, supply distros with products for them to make a living on, have money for a black sawn rainy day (you never know), pay local and federal taxes.

Or

Johnny six pack flips a game and makes $1000 bucks and pockets it.

Take your pick.

You collect pinball games. Most think that is crazy. Want to get a really crazy look? Tell an average person you are flying out to a pinball show and explain what you do there or tell someone how much you paid for your last game and even if you paid $2500 they look at you like you are reckless.

We are all nut jobs. Nuts!

Bond LE was the one that priced me out of buying.
I had one coming, when I received the final invoice on it I was out.
Here in Canada it was just under 20,000.00 thats nuts.
Canadian Peso isn't helping us here either.

Godzilla LE was about 15,000.00 that was not that long ago either.
I also bought the Godzilla pro for location at 9,000.00
New pros are over 10,000.00 now.

I don't see 5000.00 in added value for Bond with vibrating dick, lol.

It hasn't stopped me from buying games though.
They just aren't NIB right now.

Everyone pays more so Johnny six pack doesn’t make a 1,000 bucks. I get it. Seems very special needs but I get it. Don’t agree with it though.

I do and would like hanging out with the shaker mover.

This is how I am, but for some weirdos value does not factor in. I'm referring to the hype crowd and the gotta have it crowd. See Example A pictuted below. A $1 clay brick that says Supreme on it, currently for sale on Ebay for $3000.

s-l400 (resized).jpg

I'm in the business of buying and selling, and I can certainly tell you that some people are just idiots.

Dude. You will never get it. It’s a lifestyle brick.

Only been collecting for a little over 12 years, didn’t have the money or space prior. I don’t feel priced out as much as I feel that I don’t have to have every new title.

When we start out we usually want to try and even buy everything. But After years in pinball we “tend” to know what we like at a certain point, flow or stop and go, deep or shallow rules, easy or ass beater game, etc.. This makes us lock in on what we own or “might” own or like. It’s a thing.

But instead of getting old and cranky one “can” try to unlearn what they think they know and walk up to a game produced in the past they were meh on and say “what do I know about pinball ?” set biases aside as much as they can and give less liked games another shot. I have kind of done this as I went along. It’s not easy to do.

It kind of works ok also because we can get tired of what we own and like.

That must be why I have no interest in the most modern pins. They just don't engage me the way older SS and DMD titles do. Shrug

Really enjoyable thread. I'm relatively new... well, I've been playing on location since the 90s but have only recently considered buying a real machine for the home (only currently have a 5 year old v-pin but that doesn't count). I've always been floored by the people who own 50k/100k/200k collections. I used to think you guys were nuts!! This was great insight into how a lot of people got started and how the market has changed over time. I have nothing of value to add... just that as a "new" guy I appreciate reading this stuff.

Beatles is my Seawitch!

The obvious probelm with the rapid increase in prices in pinball is the same problem that is affecting everything right now. When everything gets more expensive people stop buying stuff they dont need. I think what that will do is likely cause the more casual fan base to lose interest and stop buying pins. Fanatics will still buy them but it will mean the fan base will shrink which over time will shrink sales volume. I dont think of it so much as a crash in pinball, more of a correction. Prices right now are inflated to some crazy levels and I have pretty strong feelings that they will come back down to earth once games arent instantly sold out everywhere. BUT there are lots of businesses that are intentionally trying to shrink demand with high prices. Im not saying that is what Stern is doing, but Disney is doing exactly that. Disney has intentionally raised prices because their parks had become overburdened and overcrowded. It means less people can afford Disney trips now, but the end result is that Disney is making more money in profit with lower attendence numbers than they were making with lower prices at max park capacity. Maybe in the end thats what happens to this hobby. Maybe lots of people get priced out but things continue along as they have been over the past couple years.

Another example to look at is the iphone. The iphone 3G in 2008 sold for 199 for 8GB model and 299 for 16GB model. People thought those prices were really high. Today an iphone 14pro starts at $1000 and tops out at $1600 and lots of people keep buying new ones every 2 years.

I guess what Im saying is the trajectory of pinball prices and what people are willing to pay for them is all relative. Some people are going to keep buying games for home use no matter how expensive they get and really the manufacturers are realizing that the home market is actually much more profitable for them than the operator market. The sad part at the end of the day is that the prices as they are now will cause on location pinball to fall by the wayside because its going to be difficult for operators to turn a profit.

Heres to hoping things balance out in a way that we all feel good about.

I bought for 7 years before reaching the breaking point.
My first pin was a Mata Hari in 2009.
My (almost) last pin was Ghostbusters LE, in 2016. Followed up by my final NIB, Metallica Pro later on in December, 2016.
Since then I have only bought reasonably priced project pins for restoration. Holy cow, that's been 15 projects.
Now, I'm completely out of room. The last project pin I bought was in September, 2021. Since that time, I have not even been able to find a reasonably priced project.
So, I'm done, unless some super bargain falls out of the sky.

Trust me. You don't want most of the projects that are out there now. There are no longer decent projects, much more accurate description these days is "parts machines". Unless you buy from fellow local pinball enthusiast, you will not find much of anything worth bringing back to life these days. In 2009 I think I bought 17 machines. Last year, two, this year one.

Now, keep in mind I’ve tracked down just about every title I ever wanted to find…. But, looking at a project example of the items on my want list? Outside of a couple specific titles (Superman or Sharpshooter?), it’s fairly unlikely to happen more than once every couple years at this point.

Disagree with this example. Current gen iPhones demonstrably better due to billions poured into R&D and advancements. Aside from advancements like video calling anywhere in the world as one example, current gen iPhones can replace how many devices from 2008?
Computer (mostly), camera, GPS, flashlight, to name a few.

Pinball advancements include:
-lcd screens
-more reliability
-less parts (sort of)
-deeper rules
-online connection

These pin advancements in my mind are no brainer worth $6-10k in 2022 for a home game with modest risk of small depreciation. However I think some of us are saying theyre not worth $7-13k.

I'm relatively new. Bought a beater DE SW in 15, discovered I liked tinkering with them even more than I liked playing them. The sad thing is it is flat out impossible to buy a project nowadays at a price that makes any sense - not looking to turn a profit, but I feel like if I put hours of work and a fair amount of money in parts into something, I should at LEAST be able to sell and break even. Everyone thinks that thing that barely turns on and needs a new playfield is a gold mine. Bummer.

At this point I just hope my friends machines break so I can fix them:p

Deals are still out there. Bought The Games for 250 recently. A little work brought it back to life quickly.

No doubt! Just harder to find. I always find deals out there, just have to shake a lot more trees these days. And it’s harder for me to get motivated with the quality of projects I’m seeing now.

I rarely turn a profit on my project machines. It's happened once or twice, but most often I take a loss on them. Then again, I'm guilty of trying to fix and restore them to a level that's probably not realistic if I ran it as a business. Rebuilding all mechs, replacing every ramp, broken plastics, new posts, etc., etc. etc.

That being said, I agree that deals are very hard to come by. They usually aren't within the pinball community. It's usually someone who has this old, broken machine in their basement and just wants it gone. But once it hit's FB market place, it's no longer a deal as the sharks start circling....

For all that we can use them for and do use them for and how long they last Iphones are a friggin bargain. Buck a day.

bought my first pin in 2008 or 2009 im done with nib unless pink floyd or van halen pin comes to market. i won't pay 10k for a pinball, thats a vacation of a lifetime anywhere in the world almost.

My kick in the nuts was during COVID, when I drove roughly 800 miles to trade a beautifully modded out Iron Man VE for a rare but not-nice-as-advertised Cheetah, and the fact that I also had to throw in cash as well. That was a bitter pill to swallow. But at least I acquired my top-of-the-wishlist game that I had been searching years for. I like to have a balanced collected from all eras, and it's getting harder to find those desirable classics for a decent price. Then the $9K+ Premium price point was the icing on the cake.

I guess the point I'm making is that it's not just the manufactures who are raking buyers these days. Until manufacturer prices stop rising, I don't see the aftermarket trends changing.