Good ,,, They made Alot of them ( i have 1 ) now Stern can move on to the Next Pin's !!!

Back into the Vault...

They effectively devalued NIB games once they are opened by quite a bit. Mission accomplished.

you mean like anything else you buy...

It has made pinheads more cautious about NIB purchases.

It hasn't stopped them from dumping mega amounts of cash down on pre-orders yet though.

There goes my retirement plan.

Ain't that the truth!

Not counting IM vault, their sales are certainly down from the last 1.5 years.

I don't think the IMVE affected NIB purchases much.

It's had a more direct affect on used purchases - like buying a game that has a high price which is currently no longer in production (like IM was). Regarding NIB purchases, people might be holding off because of anticipation that they may be able to get a NIB "insert popular game here" if Stern makes a Vault Edition.

IMO what's affected sales....

- Mustang wasn't well received
- Star Trek did not live up to the big hype - first level modes kind of boring/same
- Lots of other pinball options available (MMr, Woz, Hobbit, TBL, etc.)
- Speculation on other games being remade - PPS or Stern
- Price increases

TWD sales remain to be seen, but they seem to be pretty good so far - except people are upset about the callouts not being from the show

I keep saying this a small hobby and it's getting saturated, so I'm not surprised their sales are down.

There was a demand for IMVE not just because of the small numbers produced originally but also because looking back it was a better playing machine than most of what had come out since then.

And then we'll release Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs back onto DVD!

How so?
Pinball machines aren't an investment.

Oh boy.

It's not about whether something is an investment or not, it's about the opportunity cost for buying NIB.

Previously, you could buy a NIB machine, play it, decide if you like it or not, and then sell it for a moderate loss, if any at all (i.e. Simpsons, Spiderman, LOTR, Tron, Iron Man, etc.). That moderate loss is increasing now. There's a HUO Mustang sitting at $3800, roughly $1000 less than the NIB price. This means that previously paying $0-$200 to play now becomes paying $1000.

People are now hesitant to buy any machine now because if the machine is highly sought after (ie. you will be able to get your money out of it after you play it), Stern will just release it again.

SO, they have effectively turned the best case scenario from enjoying your machine and making money when you go to sell it (or not losing money), to hoping that the machine is popular enough to only lose a little value and to retain some market demand but not enough demand to make Stern re-release it (i.e. losing a little money). This has an effect on the middle market that has a set pinball fund and relies on cycling games out before bringing another one in.

TLDR: Best case scenario went from potentially making money to hoping to only lose a few hundred dollars with every NIB purchase.

Lol,
Not a investment? Everything stated is about possibly losing money when selling.
So what you are saying is you are worried you will lose more of your initial "investment" because or remakes and VE.
Too funny.
People tend to forget that Stern has been rerunning popular machines for years. Now they just have a name for it, Vault edition.

TSPP had multiple runs over 4 years.
Lotr had a couple of runs over 3 years
And now IM has its second 4 years later.

Just because it has a label now does not make it any different.
Buy for the game, not the money. Simple as that.

I think for the right games people are still more than willing to buy NIB. If I think the title is good enough that it will probably last a couple years in my collection then taking that hit is not such a big deal.

we got the message from Stern last week that it was "last call" for IMVE.
I just sold a couple machines, so I bought one. Serial number puts it being made right before TWDLE went on the line.
This most likely the last run we'll ever see of them.

Not sure how you can say that when they have been known to re-run games even 6-7 years later.

The scalpers definitely took a hit.

OMG THIS MUST MEAN TRON IS ABOUT TO BE RERUN WITH A PREMIUM VE..

/ducks

The price of NIB has gone up significantly in the last couple years. Unless you are a friend of a dist, you pay a lot more than you used to. In fact if you go back a few years and look at it, most of that $800 increased loss can be seen in the price increases of NIB. Just because the NIB market handled that kind of increase doesn't mean the used market was ready for it. So games sit a lot longer now just because of the price. That Mustang sounds like a good deal (and I think it is a good game), but the market thinks differently.

And on a slightly different subject, when Stern changed the rules on distributors it all became a lot more secret. So really you don't know what was paid NIB for that Mustang. It is possible it was a lot less than you could have purchased it for. From what I can see, nobody will say what they paid for anything NIB anymore. If they feel they got a deal they don't want to sour it for the next one.

A lot of this is self-inflicted. If I buy an IMv for $4800 and want to sell it people just want to pay ~$4100 even though its in NIB condition. They want a deal, they want to gain based on my loss. The same folks that do this want to sell theirs for $4600 though. If we had more respect for our fellow pinheads and not try to screw them by artificially increasing or decreasing based on who the seller is, we'd all be better off.

I just put up my IMv for sale because the ~$4100 it would of fetched earlier in the week just increased a bit based on the announcement the pin won't be manufactured anymore in my opinion. So yes, the market is driving me and my decisions and the market sucks for that currently.

Uhhh, the secondary market value of IM did not just go up due to this announcement. Seems to me that virtually all recent Stern's in near perfect condition are currently hovering around $3800-4200.....even TWD's are going for 4k.

$4800 - IM-VE
$4200 - ST-PRO
$4300 - MET-PRO

I personally have no problem saying what I paid for mine.. We are a community and should be sharing prices paid - It isnt like we have to post where we got them.. and people can ask us privately where we got ours..

The sellers want top dollar for their pin.

The buyers want the best deal they can get.

You cant fault either side for wanting the best deal. It isnt one party trying to screw the other

Those are "from distributors" prices? Because that's what he was talking about.

Just wait for the limited vault edition to come out.

Your pricing theories didn't make any sense to me in the two Tron LE threads you helped take down, and I still don't get it. Pinball prices are not being "artificially" increased or decreased. It's a market. Not a perfect one since there are relatively few buyers and sellers, but especially for games like IMVE that are moving frequently, it's a market. Set your price too high for the existing demand (as you seem to have done seeking NIB price for a used game) and you won't sell. Set your price right (evidently your research says $4100 for an HUO) and you'll sell it.

It's human nature to like "getting a deal" -- doesn't matter if you're an ardent capitalist or a rabid communist, we're just wired that way. Seems it's your stated policy to insist on paying full retail price for used games (even if they're offered for sale for less), and then to feel injured when others don't do the same when buying from you. But it's unrealistic to expect everyone else to behave that way.

Yes, purchased NIB from a distributor

What does that mean? Examples?

Are you finally admitting there are market forces in play not dictated by ZenTron pricing theory?

U paid $ 4800 for IM VE ( dam ) ,, the other 2 , Are Good Prices ..

They have already been re-releasing titles that are in demand for over a decade.

I'm still trying to figure out why IMVE was some kind of revelation to people.

It is one thing to do runs of a game each year for several years and another to go 3 or 4 years and then re-release a game.
It is what it is. People now have a different impression of the value of a used game, so selling used games now means the games are selling even further below what the original buyer paid than they would have.

Was thinking the same thing...from the 3-4 places I got quotes from none where that high

The loss is always there. I've netted negative dollars since I've started this hobby, but dollars isn't why I started this hobby and perhaps you missed the point in my previous comment. The loss is increasing, and Im not worried.

Im just aware and adjusting my buying habits accordingly, as are many others.

Also, the cycle Ive observed is not even 2 years old, but it's enough of a change to take notice.

I also do buy what I like to play. Im very picky. Over the last 2 years Ive passed on lots of "deals" on popular games I didnt want. Unfortunately some of the games I loved when I started are on my loathe list now. So buying what you like isn't the solution if what you like changes or what you have gets old. Basically, when you want to change your collection it's going to cost you more.

I liken it to video games! If you buy a $60 game and it sucks, or gets old, and its worth $20, how likely are you going to take a risk on buying another new game you havent played? Now add some zeroes to that, and some back pain and sore arms, and that's about how the pinball hobby feels to me right now. Whereas when I started it was like buying a game for 60, and if it sucked, selling it for 50 or 55.

Truthfully playing competitive is the only thing that keeps me playing. None of my friends play, my wife plays a little, but the hobby gets old by yourself!

Since they don't release sales numbers, how does anyone know sales are down?

Chris

Because "leds and led dmd and metal decals and metal head and monger chest light and oh my god now the original IM is soooo 2010, what were we thinking? It's not worth $4000, much less $6000."

Just an educated guess, easy enough to guess Mustang and TWD did not outsell AC/DC, MET or ST.

I think that has more to do with a poorly executed license than the current market conditions.

I've been saying this for over a year now. The collector side of the hobby isn't growing nearly as fast as it was 2 or 3 years ago. The fast growth couldn't be sustained. $4500+ toys for the home isn't something most households can afford. A pinball related cable TV show could give it another slight bump, but for now, game rooms are full and new buyers are getting thin.

You don't know? Those old games were regular old reruns. IM VE was a Vault Edition. Buying any pin called a Vault Edition immediately gives the owner big time pinball cred. Ask any distributor.

Which really highlights the irony of the whole vault edition ridiculousness. The term was brought over from Topps, where the items they sold may have actually been in a vault at one time. Calling a pinball machine a vault edition implies that the games were originally built with all the others when the game was new, then set aside, in a vault no less, to be sold at a later date. Stupidest marketing term ever used in pinball, yet the collector community has embraced it with gusto. This will be the last time I ever type the words vault and edition together in one post. A remake is a remake. Nothing more. Don't fall for BS marketing terms.

I disagree...have you been noticing the prices across the board coming down? Even if you remove Mustang and TWD from the equation, there is still something that's has verifiably effected prices and sales. It maybe the $8K games are catching up with our demand.

And being a vault edition the owner can expect it to vault to the top of the Pinside top 100 ratings, too!

Like Avengers LE?

No, it has to do with the fact that a lot of pin buyers don't know what the hell they're doing.

Definitely. Absurd how much I lost on that game considering how new it is. But I do not regret the journey - which ended in a solitary cartwheel last week - one bit.

IMO, the second you slide a pin out of the box, you lose 10-20% of the value, if not more.

Clarify? How can a pin buyer not know what he's doing? Manufacturers sure, seller's sure, but buyers?