For your viewing pleasure!!

https://pinside.com/pinball/market/classifieds/ad/124610

I recall someone selling a The Matrix pinball for $98,000. That ad got removed shortly thereafter. I'm not stating that thd Supreme game should be taken offline.

Just think how much the LE version would be worth with the "Topper Supreme"...

If you had asked me I would have sworn Supreme was a grocery store chain! had to google that one to see I was wrong

Wondering why a damn grocery store pin is so special

you're a generation off, X'ers were in arcades as kids still. after them there is no nostalgia hook.

Every day I realize more and more I do not love pinball. It's good fun and I enjoy it but at these prices there are just too many other things out there. This is the first time ever my line up has retracted and I'm not interested in filling that spot. Normally when something goes out I am scouring the earth to find a pin. These days I am just thinking of all the stuff I can do with that cash. There is a Spiderman home edition for sale near me for $6700 Canadian and its listed as a rare Limited Edition, you just have to laugh.

Millenial apparently goes back to the mid 80's as well so some of us grew up in arcades but are still technically millenials. Of course I grew up with Mortal Kombat and DDR, not the classics but it still gives me the arcade nostalgia factor.

sure but being born in the mid 90's had you at arcade age in the mid 2000's and arcades basically were dead then. Sure there were a few but they were not the same as they were on the mid 80s and earlier, they were and still are mostly redemption. In the mid 80's your parents would give you a buck or two to play pinball at the front of the grocery store while they went to shop in peace. Games, vid and pinball, were everywhere. Family restaurants, laundromats, convenience stores, grocery stores, you name it and there was coin op games there. Those are the last generation that will have a true nostalgia for the games. Sure some of our kids might look back when they are older and say I remember dad having a game(s) in the house, but they won't look at it like we did. Our kids will look at them like we look at board games, just something that was in the house. Not something special that you go to do a a treat (which was really just our parents trying to get 20 minutes of quiet to do something).

For sure. GenX grew up in arcades.

Yeah this seems accurate but I think you missed one generation. They didn't go from being everywhere to being redemption games in one step. There was the mall/theatre arcade phase in between. That was my generation having been born in 85.

I was playing games like Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter 2, Virtua Fighter when I was young but as home consoles became powerful enough to run the same version as the arcade it really twisted the knife.
This bled into the early 2000s as arcades needed more and more fantastical hardware to compete with home consoles.
Any arcade that's still around has been in a slow decline into redemption game madness for a decade now.

They've actually opened a few small arcades where I live, they are all 100% redemption games.

I’m trying to figure out why Zillas are so cheap. If it’s a great game best ever why is so much cheaper then other games that are not as much fun?

What was the average price of a new EM back then? Seems like maybe the BOM of current games makes the enterprise too expensive to become so prevalent in businesses like it used to be, I bet the location player interest is still there though. EMs were far more simple in construction and BOM.

Umm....nobody was building EMs in the mid-80s.

They were, but the pins were already on their way out the door or not working. Vids were coming in droves. I know, I put thousands of quarters into those damn things and I am an X'r

Has all this been sorted yet?

Should be hammered out by 3am tonighty

Not to mention I'd love to hear how the Boomers out number Gen X, 2 to 1.

That makes zero sense that a generation is outnumbered by the previous generation to any extent, never mind 2 to 1.

sure average birth rate was like 5 kids per family 1946 -1964 , and gen x like 2 per family or less

That is a massive oversimplication on how population growth works. And completely inaccurate.

If it takes two Boomers to make one gen xer, and they have even 2 on average, that would mean the two generations have roughly the same population.

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Any way back on topic, game prices, boooooo

An argument can be made that sales of niche machines like this at niche prices don't affect the pinball market at large at all.
If it sells its going to some guy with more money than he knows what to do with and it will sit in the games room of this 3rd condo and get used once a year if lucky. Or some "influencer" to look cool in the background of instagram posts.

He has a point beyond that though. If it doesn't sell the listing doesn't mean shit, anyone can list a machine at any price. The price it sells at is what matters.

And that's the problem becasue we never know what it is

bingo

It's wild to see, and not just here - but everyone is all of a sudden coming off the higher end games because they want to cash out.
TZ, TOTAN, and a slew of LEs with 35 plays on them. It's always something about "needing more space" etc, but at what point do you stop and ask yourself - if I put 35 plays on a game and move it on for the next one, do I really even enjoy pinball?" I mean it's your money and all, but the patterns are obvious.

The people that have been quietly buying up and driving up the prices are continuing to damage the hobby as the tide lifts all prices higher. This isn't even unique to pinball sadly as you can observe the manipulation tactics anywhere. The damage comes from the fact people who genuinely want to play these games are often times priced out - but in the case of pinball, at least you can go on location to play - and that's what I'll be doing going forward.

At some point there will be some economic downturn and there are going to be people holding the bag - the ones who need to sell to recoup will be taking some baths, and the rest will sit in some "climate controlled" space where no one can play them.

Part of the problem is people buying games sight unseen in order to not miss out on the next big thing. Only to discover when they get it that it isn't all that great of a game and they don't really enjoy playing it. Then it gets put on the block with only 35 games on it.

Two words of advice bear remembering: Only buy games that you know you will like, preferably because you have already played them. And don't buy games you can't afford thinking they are an investment and can only go up in value. Lately they have been, and that's great for making money, but they won't always. Make sure when the music stops you are not holding a clunker that you don't like, or a game you are way heavy in that you overextended on hoping to sell it for even more.

Finally, will there be a collapse in pinball prices at some point? Maybe, in the short term, if the economy tanks and people start finding it hard to pay bills. But the gov has a vested interest in keeping the economy afloat, so they will do anything and everything to keep it going. Further, inflation is bubbling right along and prices will continue to rise in an inflationary environment. Lumber is higher, labor is higher, metal is higher, electronics are higher. Everything you need to build pinballs is higher - hence pinballs and most everything else will continue to be higher. Unless and until politicians decide to live within a budget just like you and I and everybody else must.

People always say this but the reality is that NIB games don't lose a ton of value, not too mention a lot of them jut got a big boost, so there's no real incentive to waiting.

yeah maybe out there where you pay 4x what most people do across the country.

Amazing that Jilly's only a quarter a game. They rake in the quarters too.

https://pinside.com/pinball/market/classifieds/ad/125961 Way out of hand.

Well,

I guess another way to approach this is appreciate what you have and look at games like SS's and EM's.

I still turn games over in trades and have LOV on order, but in the last 18 months have picked up project SS's and EM's to work on. I also picked up some nice examples also.

Turns out, to me at least, one does not need a shiny new Stern LE to have fun. A great game on Lucky Hand , Volley or Stars is real fun too!

Another outrageous ask price...it always has me shaking my head when I see a beautiful restore job with poorly aligned flippers. Screw the gameplay, just make sure it shines.

I'm not paying $12k for fingerprints, man! https://i.imgur.com/TNzZN5s.png

LOL! I just got through looking at that ad! Looks nice, but not $12K nice. Looks like the finger prints on the Armor where left after the Krylon was applied.
Too bad too, this is only about 120 miles from me.

Pinside = Club Beanie Baby now. That's the problem IMO. Limited pins, limited toppers, FOMO, stupidity.

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Yeah, I learned early on it's a game of patience. Mind numbing how much money there is out there... but in a way, just more opportunities as well.

Happy to see so many can find employment working with these machines again . None of this is exclusive to pinball either.

+1 on the flipper bats. But that's not a beautiful restore job either. The black rattle can trim job is horrible. But it is a better price on here then on his web site ouch!

https://www.elitepinballrestorations.com/restored-games-for-sale.html ONLY 18k

So what can I reasonably ask for a nice getaway?

I’m looking for a nice getaway

According to Lynyrd Skynyrd, three steps is about the going rate.