Those who have tens of thousands in disposable income are going to make out like bandits in a few months

Uh Ron, you don’t even have a house to put them in! I don’t think people whose job is unaffected by the pandemic are comprehending the seriousness of the situation. My son works for a ski area.. it’s closed, my son in law works for Southwest Airlines and his job is in serious jeopardy. Restaurants, transportation, bars, theaters, sports workers.. these people all will have no money to pay their mortgages or car loans. You bet they will be interested in selling a machine cheaply to keep a roof over their heads. That’s not hype or panic.. The only ones to benefit from the existing economy is possibly Amazon and the medical industry.

You are correct, I lost my house in a Tornado and I can keep my senses enough to chill out and keep calm and I for sure am not worrying about some stupid virus. I have much larger things to worry about. If someone wants to sell me a TWD premium for $4000 I will for sure jump on it. This thing will die down in a few weeks and we can get back to normal life. I refuse to live in fear and let emotion control my life. If you do work in the travel or entertainment industry you will probably take a hit in the short term and that sucks, but life can suck sometimes like me losing my house in a tornado.

Fear and anxiety are different things.

I'm not gonna think less of anybody who has anxiety right now.

A few weeks is an optimistic outlook and I certainly hope you’re right. I have serious doubts.

People with this mind set should be fined. Just stay home and STFU already about "not living in fear over some stupid virus". Thats a selfish asshole point of view that is going to get us in a lot of trouble. I had to get into arguments today with people at work about the same thing. The hospitals need to stay below capacity to keep up. If people just go running around doing whatever they want were going to have more and more cases. I dont get why this is hard to understand. Just stay inside. Please.

To answer the original thread title, the answer is most likely no. Collapse is a catastrophic event, implying that the hobby will essentially approach zero in nearly all metrics.

Realistically, a meaningful percentage of hobbyists here are going to be effected by this pandemic. Industries are being hit hard, and jobs will be lost. Whether you live paycheck to paycheck or have plenty stored in your coffers, this can and will impact your willingness to throw large sums of money at an entertainment hobby. Once the impacts are really felt, and people start to shift assets from extraneous things such as pinball collections into liquidity to cover basic living expenses, the used market will certainly be driven down by the influx of supply.

To think that the market for NIB and used machines is going to truck along unscathed is just wishful thinking. Reality should be sinking in by now.

What we are really in for here is a correction. Prices will be driven back to sane levels, with the average buyer being more price sensitive. The more useful discussion here would be what is the amount. 15%, 25%, more?

Did I say go out and hit the town every night? NO. Be smart, Use wisdom, only leave if necessary, etc.... I have a house to rebuild and a business to run and securing safe housing for my family because we lost our home. Do you get the damn picture? This is the worst possible time for something like this to happen to me, tornado was 12 days ago. This totally slows down a process that is already slow. Get over yourself.

yep....great time to buy

Dude,

Talk about getting hit when you're down. This has been a really crappy month for you. Hope things get better for you.

all good man, full speed ahead. lots going on, but got to take care of business. we have been super blessed by friends, family, and complete strangers. Tennessee is full of some good people.

Yep, there are a bunch of us ready to jump on good deals. Myself included.

1. Pinball collectors are above median age, and going to get hit harder by this virus, relatively. There will be extra machines on the market from estate sales and a few less people to buy them.

2. Investments of all types are going to tank, even more than they already have, and it will take a decade to recover. Some people will need to sell machines, so extra machines will be going to market.

3. Isolation requirements are going to cause a lot of bars / pool halls / arcades to go into bankruptcy. There will be extra machines on the market.

These three facts will combine to place huge downward pressure on the market. So yeah, the market is going to be affected. But they're not investments, they're toys. You'll still be able to play them, or sell them at lower prices and use the cash to buy into other hobbies that will also have deflated costs to entry, eg: sailboats or something.

There is no fundamental economic factor that would lead to a depression. The coronavirus is a temporary variable on the world economy. It will not have a lasting effect. The Great Recession was a different event all together. There were economic factors at play, not environmental ones.

The most lasting effect of the coronavirus is the, now likely, change in presidency.

most folks with a pension just took a huge hit. Confidence is low.

Pinball Market will slow down, I think all the manufacturers should be fine but I'd expect lay offs. Second user market for older pins probably gets harder as second user Stern games come down in price to cope with the shortage of cash.

zero chance it takes a decade to recover....everything will be back to par in 6 months

Sorry, but the world's largest health insurer is part of the sector that often gets it wrong. Their issue is that they make bets on getting to keep premiums when more members are well than sick. This is one of those times that bet doesn't pay off. It's no different than when insurers get hit with hurricanes, etc. and have huge payouts that erode their reserves.

The economic factors for an insurer and nowhere near those of the rest of the general economy. This is going to hurt, but its unlikely to cripple for a prolonged period of time (greater than 6-9 months).

I’ve not got any dog in this race, you can do what you like. I’m just telling you what I know. Use the info, don’t use it. Don’t care. You think this is not going to hurt the economy? Great. I will do what I need to do. Notice 2 quarters is equal to 6 months... You have a nice day.

I feel like even before the CoVid19 outbreak, I was seeing prices slowly go down (albeit I got into this while prices were SKYHIGH and unreasonable).

I would back up what another person said is that people should stop thinking about games as investments. Grabbing a game for a killer price according to market value is one thing, but the idea that ANYTHING let alone something like pinball has a completely consistent linear price increase because it saw a spike at one point is idiotic.

Whenever I get a game, I always figure I'm going to accidentally do something that will absolutely demolish the value of it by mistake. Plug in all the boards wrong. Drop it. Set it on fire by mistake or on purpose.

While I hope you are right, common sense might say your comment is not going to age well.

He’s had a tough time but it could get worse.. Tennessee has 56 cases of covid-19 right now spread over 10 different counties and some idiot brothers in Tennessee decided to buy up all the hand sanitizer they could find to resell at a massive profit. Nashville is ripe to become the next Seattle.

Common sense says buy now if u have cash reserves....

I have never bought a pinball machine as an investment except the very first one I bought, Pinbot over 25 years ago. But it wasn’t an investment for the appreciation of the value of the machine, it was to help curb my on site pinball playing bill. Back then, we figured a $750 dollar investment would pay for itself in reduced cost of play. Now it takes over 3000 games to justify it at a $0.25 a pop, but I was spending about $50 bucks a month on playing at the arcades... doesn’t take long to pay off $750 at 50 bucks a month. Ever since buying it, though, I have had that same feeling when I work on them... “one wrong move and the transistor gets it!” or board, relay, coil, or cabinet on fire, house burned down....

Pinball has historically been an investment in regards to routing games and collecting coin, good times or bad. With all the bars and other places closing for who knows how long, yes this will hurt pinball as an investment.

Here is what is going to happen ... take it to the bank :

1> Some pins will go up in value.
2> Some pins will go down in value.
3> Some pins will stay the same in value.
4> Nobody is ever going to make a reproduction Nine Ball playfield, and that makes me very sad!

That is all.

The real impact will be to the manufactures who can't move product, have reduced cash flow, and can't pay their debt obligations.

Bingo...

I wouldn't want to be a distributor right now either. The margins for them are so low that if you're not moving a large volume of games you're in trouble.

An Investment is ANYTHING that you buy then sell and make money. Socks can be an investment. You buy at the right time for the right price then sell at the right time and the right price. I have made money on everything from food to a bucket of bolts. Pinball can be an investment just like anything else. Times like this can create investment opportunities in anything. There will be people looking to put money into unusual places. Cars, land, houses, mason jars ect... I believe you have to open yourself to opportunities to take advantage of them.

Socks? Really?

well if toilet paper and hand sanitizer is an investment than why not socks

Toilet paper and hand sanitizer shouldn’t be bought in bulk.. you gotta the line somewhere!

Glad I stocked up on those. Don't want my tootsies to get cold.

I just hope I can get a Wonka playfield before they fold.

Perhaps even sooner! Yes there will be collateral Damage. Just learned today that they are testing (today) a new Vaccine for (human trials) in the US at Kaiser in Washington state. The drug is based on the Genome Sequence of the virus that was obtained in China in January. We are going to catch up real soon. There are other antiviral drugs that will stop the spread in the body that are real close to being approved. One of them that has real promise is Remdesivir. There are also 2 minute tests that are waiting for FDA approval that will be showing up real soon as well. We (the US) are gonna get a handle on this thing.

One of the advantages of being a low end EM pinball owner. Most of my games drop 25% in value, OMG I've lost a few hundred dollars.

The people eating hand to mouth are in line to get steamrollered... the rich are getting their wealth hammered, but the ultra rich are just going to get even wealthier as the have capital to buy all these stocks at pennies on the dollar and wait. The ultra rich are good at this, and all that money the low end is loosing, both in 401k and wages, will end up in the ultra riches’ pockets, it always does.

It’s gonna tank ! Sell me your games
30% of value now

No way that's true, and if I were you'd I'd seriously take a step back and look at the situation again... Several areas of the country about about to go through a period that will kill potentially thousands of businesses and those ripple effects will take YEARS to recover from, certainly not months. Decade? Yeah that may be a bit long but 6 months is comical... We're still going to be dealing with this 6 months from now much less "back to par".

Jeff

OK between working from home, buying some more chef boy r dee, and culling my Facebook friends list, I'll address this!

You are absolutely right, this isn't a "price bubble" thread, it's completely different. In the annoying monthly "bubble burst" threads, I've always been consistent: No, this isn't a price bubble. No it isn't going to burst. None of the things your thread suggests is supported by any current evidence. But I've always said If the economy completely collapses across the board, that's a different story.

Well, the economy looks like shit right now, so no doubt, pin prices may take a hit. Everything may take a hit. Pointless to worry about right now. I'll remind everybody what happened in the last recession; pinball machine prices did not drop significantly. People just held on to their stuff and everything slowed down.

Pinball people are very stubborn, and tend to skew "cheap" even if they have money. They aren't going to sell games at a loss unless they absolutely have to.

The difference between now and then is the massive influx of new people, and the massive amount of money they've spent in a short time amassing brand new and high end games. No idea what's gonna happen there. Again, I don't see a sell off unless people get desperate. And if it gets that bad, despite what some of you seem to flippantly think, you WON'T be reaping the rewards, because you'll have the same problems the sellers do. You aren't gonna see WOZ for sale for $4,000 tomorrow, which seems to be what many of you think happens when a "bubble bursts." By the time you do see stuff like that, you may very well not think that a $4,000 WOZ is such a screaming bargain, when you have much more important things to worry about.

Good luck everybody!

Every pinball machine is worth what you or anyone else were willing to pay for it. Until it comes time you want to sell it.

I'm not worried about the prices of my current pins going down. I am maybe a bit concerned about the pin I am currently waiting until december to get though and what happens between now and then. 1st world problems.

Don't pre-pay for anything in pinball EVER. There are literally dozens of examples as to why. NIB sales are going to tank hard for a few months.

Now if we can just start a rumour that pinball machines are better than toilet paper during a pandemic we'll all be rich.

Lets me thankful we have Pinball !
I’m gonna shop games n play

This seems misleading. Most of the jobs are minimum wage, part time. And people have several at a time.