No way thats You!

This is the image in my mind

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That's it!!! I'm calling miss celo to figure this out!

Chunky Oooodin!

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We could’ve had some tasty waves, arcades-a-plenty and a still semi-thriving punk scene.
Plus some great (but now defunct,) local eating as one would do.
Heck, Charley Brown’s even made it into the 90’s...
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I don't see any manufacturer surviving, if the economy is hit hard enough. In discussion Friday with Betson Enterprises (H. Betti Industries, Inc) in conjunction with all 18 national/international branches, the only one that continues to see large sales of pinball is the Pacific Northwest. This is a fact from one of the last remaining large volume arcade distributors in the world. Redemption, jukebox, and certain arcades make 2-3 times pinball, monthly, period. Many operators refuse to route pinball permanently for those that remain out of maintenance reasons. The new pinball market is extremely tenuous in terms of sales.

Private and commercial sales simply won't carry the weight. The "revivalists" that play many of the games presently don't have the resources to buy the same games, and certainly not at present absurd prices for turded out used titles or in volume. Conversely, technicians don't drop $12+K into Dialed In Collector's Editions because they already know better. It is not like I have not seen this same history before. Williams tried increasing prices in the market in the late 90s (with a stagnant economy), and it backfired as operators waited for closeouts.

Personally, I look forward to this downturn time for the hobby, as that is when I find what I look for at realistic prices. It also forces increased quality of the remaining few new games, if a manufacturer does survive. Prices for A titles stagnate as the economy catches up with the inflation. A good example is TAF which will hover.

Senior collectors "clean up shop" when new collectors bail or move on during these times, and the process starts over. Pinball will survive in its own merits through collectors, not manufacturers on this particular round of industry history. Stern barely survived and was prepared to close in 2009, living on reruns of LOTR, TSPP, and SM up to that point. Collectors bought their other trash game titles to keep production rolling. The only time manufacturers were "saviors" was in the mid 1960s and 70s where they turned out hundreds of EM games for the public to play, and operators played their own role in keeping the game alive.

This is history and knowledge in the industry.

All this has got me to wondering what will happen to prices of the items on Pawn Stars and American Pickers.

Never mind. Don't want to start a war on here about politics.

Are the only folks who will give a shit enough to pay more than $500 bucks for these things someday...unfortunately most of us won’t live to see that day

How much is an Imdn le worth to these kids 30 years from now?

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To be fair, at that age you are probably more concerned with finding affordable lodging and building your career rather than dropping $7k on a toy.

People have been saying "in 20 years when you guys all get old these things will be worthless" for AT LEAST 16 years. I know cause that's what I l kept hearing when I started in the hobby 16 years ago and people were bitching about $3500 MMs.

So...only 4 years to go you'll be picking up AFMs on the sidewalk out be the dumpster for free.

I'm so glad!

It surprises me to hear people think they will not be around to see the changes.
I already did, repeatedly, and I am not THAT old.
I was in the arcades when I unboxed and set up games like F-14 Tomcat or Funhouse, now of which are 30 years old.
You just have to be patient, perhaps this is in short supply for those that "must have this game now"?

Collectors easily spend upwards of $4-5K for fully restored Whirlybird Helicopter, Digger Crane, high end wood rail games today. Just because they are not pinheads, does not mean the market does not exist. We are constantly being bombarded by collectors looking for older games such as these to restore, but that is not our business focus for my company, and we don't give up hard to find titles anyway. There is a market, but until titles flatline based on age, appreciation does not substantiate keeping things around $2K or much less.

It takes an average of of 20-25 years for titles to reach these levels or more.
The exception was 90s WMS titles, since there was a void in the market based on availability of more advanced products after WMS closure, despite the less than spectacular economy, but also the general overall tepid quality of the overall games Stern produced in the 2000s.

The one difference between today's games and earlier games is the technology is not easily repairable, so many examples will not survive for that reason alone. This same example can be seen with manufacturers such as Atari and Gameplan in the 1980s, where parts are simply not available to replace. Other manufacturers were abandoned for decades, and only had a catch up of resurgence in the past 15 years due to aftermarket boards. That is a long time to wait for a fix.

A poor economy accelerates the transition of games between new hands, but especially between older (seasoned) collectors.
It actually helps the hobby more in terms of perpetual growth of repair knowledge, not exclusive to sales of new owners entering into the hobby itself.

Just like some of the old cars that are never driven, some of these games will never be played. The high end collector: "I have this in my collection and you don't."

Has anyone ever met anyone like this? Fortunately, I haven't.

Not personally, but I have a couple of stories.

Check this place out...full of them

Pinside.com

Thank you for the link. Interesting to see all of the pinball history there. I appreciate it!

It's great when people can substantiate their bold claims.

I assume you are speaking to me. Yes? You want to hear the stories? They are a bit boring.

No, not directed to you. Happy to listen to any good stories though.

Bill Maher said he hopes there’s a recession soon. Great guy.

Thanks for the invite. I'll do what I do best and put you to sleep
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Depression Glass: A Definition

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression_glass

" Depression glass is clear or colored translucent machine made glassware that was distributed free, or at low cost, in the United States and Canada around the time of the Great Depression.

" Most of this glassware was made in the Ohio River Valley of the United States, where access to raw materials and power made manufacturing inexpensive in the first half of the twentieth century. More than twenty manufacturers made more than 100 patterns, and entire dinner sets were made in some patterns.

"Common colors are clear (crystal), pink, pale blue, green, and amber. Less common colors include YELLOW (canary),

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I have not seen him in years but an old friend of mine collected, traded, and sold depression glass. Some us here load up a pin and drive for miles to reach the next pin festival to sell a pin, or buy a pin, or gawk, or just shoot the shit. The depression glass hobby is no different.

I had a friend who was into the hobby of buying and selling depression glass. Almost every weekend my friend and his wife would load up the van for the next show & sell. They might drive all the way to Colorado for a show.

One time, when the show was local I went out for a look-see. It was quite impressive with glass of all different colors laid out on folding tables. Beautiful rainbows of colors. Everywhere. Every once in a while you would hear the sound of glass breaking. Many single pieces of glass could be bought for $30.00 or less. However, some of these glass specimens are quite valuable. How about $700.00 for a water pitcher with some parrots festooned all the way around? So, when the sound of breaking glass was heard everybody sort of sucked in their breath.

Some of this originally low-priced glass makes pinball look like a cheap hobby.
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Ebay was still in relative infancy when I realized I could clean out my attic and make a tidy sum from my childhood treasures that had been unceremoniously shoveled into boxes years before. I started selling and did very well ( when I saw that a bobble-head doll of a Cleveland Indians baseball player that my mom gave in 1963 was selling for over $400.00 I knew my two pieces of plaster and a spring was destined for a new home. After a while I developed a nice 100% Ebay feedback and had credibility).

My friend called me one day and asked if I could sell a piece of glass for him on Ebay. I said, "Sure."

He had located a guy in Oklahoma who was selling out. This was a guy with money to burn and according to my friend, this dude had developed one hell of a collection of rare depression glass pieces. According to my friend, this well heeled individual was in a competition with some other rich bastard with accumulating rare and very rare pieces of depression glass. Call it a friendly competition, I guess.

The details escape me, but goes along the lines of the money burner getting beat out by the rich bastard for a particular set of rare depression glass pieces. In some way, this was getting rubbed into money burner's face and it pissed him off so bad that he said "screw it" and started selling.

That is the story part of the "I have one and you don't" attitude of high end collectors. You might conclude that these would be selfish individuals. I am not inclined to disagree.

End of Story

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Up above I all-capped the word YELLOW. One of the patterns of depression glass is called Mayfair. There is pink Mayfair, green Mayfair, and I believe there is blue Mayfair. In the hobby these colors are fairly common. And then there is Yellow. I don't much about Yellow other than is ultra rare.

There was a medium size square yellow bowl that was produced. Only TWO were produced. So you are talking scarce. From Money Burner, my friend scored one of these two yellow bowls. He was giddy about it. He said it was worth $7K-$8K and he was getting it for $4000.00 ! One piece of glass for $4K---and you thought pinball machines were expensive. I thought is was all BS.

For my friend, I put up an Ebay auction for this rare piece of glass. We put it on a reserve price auction, of course. It has been too many years but I think we put the reserve of $4K to match his purchase price. I think the final bid I got on that piece of glass was $3800.00. Since it was a reserve auction, I always wondered if we had a real money bid or if it was someone sort of testing the waters to see how high they could go without getting stuck with the bid. I remember that there were not too many bids and at the time I thought they were real bids.

My friend laughed it off and did not seem to be bothered that he might have paid too much and went ahead and added this piece into his nice collection of depression glass.
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Here is one last thing you all may be able to relate to.

My friend and his wife owned an extra house in their town that they used as warehouse space for all of their glass. He ways always telling me how much glass they sold at where ever. My friend was just an old country boy; One day he finally admitted to me that they did not make much money at it. That it was their hobby that they could enjoy together, it kept them busy, and they got to meet a lot of people.

My other story is about a different friend who used to paint and "weather" model trains who was sort of "F'd over by a different rich bastard who was into the model train hobby. If you like throwing your money into black holes get into the model train hobby.

Nope.

LOL that came out of nowhere.

Please allow me to complain about Fox News for no reason in particular...

Wishing for a recession when people in his fan base live paycheck to paycheck seems a little bad to me. But hey who cares about common sense.

Still out of left field but whatever, you're probably not a real "post 277" kinda guy

Does suggesting people who live paycheck to paycheck waste $40 a month on HBO make any common sense?

Is it common sense to bring up Bill Maher for ABSOLUTELY NO REASON AT ALL in the context of a patented completely-non-political Pinside economy thread?

And does common sense dictate that an atheist's "wishes" on the economy will have any effect?

SO MANY QUESTIONS!

The thread was about economic crash and it was the first thing that came to my mind. Did Ray mean to think of the stay puff marshmallow man in ghostbusters?

You realize the guy is an entertainer and says shit for ratings right?

Alex Jones says crazy shit all the time for ratings. Call him out too.

$10k by Xmas!

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10K Rubles maybe!

10,000 Rubles = $157.18 American

I do find it funny that Hillary is the waitress in the background.

Some people can obviously be bought and owned CHEAP.

Careful, or you will wind up like that red headed female comedian who pulled an effigy of his head out of a box. I forgot her name and I don't think anyone has heard from her since. I think Big T called all of his TV buddies and told them to not broadcast here again. Ever.

As the market and home prices go up people feel rich spend on toys a crash freezes spending many will be hurt. 2007 the distributor I bought my first two games from went under and Stern took a partner things will get ugly

They say cars are the first thing to slow down. Guess what the car parts are slowing down. Get ready!

LOL when Ebay was just stating antiques were strong and there was big money to be made. Now many if not most items that sold for $2,000 now go for around $400 most antique shops and shows are now gone so the value can disappear

I assume that has to do with the tariffs. My company has been impacted by them and were all just hoping this nightmare ends real soon.

I’m on board with that.