Thanks, very good read and very interesting.

All the LE game have made people ask $5000 + for B level $8000 is LOL

And how many motorcycle manufacturers are there or should there be using this logic...................... just saying........

You seem have it out for the high end pinball market lately...lol.

Also..."limited sales of Hobbit...". What information are you basing that on? That is simply not true. Did you see that over 170/1500 pre-orders are coming from Pinside alone?

I do think at $8k people, including myself, have to pick and choose very carefully what pin they are going to spend that type of cash on. Same goes for pins at $5k though...I for one cannot afford to buy two $8k games a year, let alone 1 every year. I'm looking at what $8k ($7.5k for many Hobbit buyers) gets me. I want complete deep code through regular updates. I wants lots of toys (yes, toys!), magnets, newer tech (such as an LCD), features (included topper, invisiglass, shaker) etc. Those are the main reasons that I've choose JJP games when it comes to higher priced pins. If I'm going to drop $8k on a pin it better offer a lot of value.

Thanks for the good discussion.

While I see your logic, there are millions of people with the disposable income to buy an $8k pin in Stern's target market so it's reasonable to think that they can sell several thousand a year. That's why it's so important to have a popular license that can attract the non-pinhead.

I hear ya. You have some good points.

At $8k I think the company offering the most value wins. That means complete deep code, newer tech, lots of features and great customer service to me. Dutch Pinball could very well compete with JJP in the higher end market if TBL turns out as well as its coming across as in teasers.

I do think that JJP should consider making a $5k game in addition to an $8k game. I don't mean pros and premiums but rather two separate games offering a different set of features. Have the $8k game be the loaded wide body game but then also have a standard body game (with the LCD, using the same platform) with a few less toys and features for $5k. If JJP could ship the $5k games within a couple months after they are announced they would likely take a good number of pro sales away from Stern.

Why are you so obsessed by this? Jack's not going to lower prices for you. Stern's not going to lower prices for you. Don't buy NIB games if you don't like the price. Clearly there are people who will buy these games or else you'd stop seeing the high prices.

Just don't buy them. That's all you can do.

Not trying to be a smart ass, but I can buy a fully loaded game for $4500 (and starting to fall) finally. And that would be TZ, a top 3 all time, sure-fire pin. Aside from and LCD and modern boards, what exactly is the "new" technology that many bring up on here? Ultimately, it's just pinball. You hit a metal ball and stuff happens. The pin community has been totally bamboozled into seeing value in any 8K game.

They can enjoy the party now because soon it will be game over for new machines if current pricing trends continue. And as I said in a previous post, remakes are in fact killing resale. I don't think I've seen a game actually sell on Pinside in a week. Kill the resale market, kill the hobby ultimately. NIB purchases are up. Those are now used games and many will want to unload them after wearing out on them over the next year. They won't buy the next NIB when they see what happened to the value of theirs.

I think the point CraZ4Pin is making (and I agree) is that the market for $8k pins is much less liquid than the market for $4k pins. If you buy an $8k pin and decide the value isn't there, you're going to have a lot fewer people to sell to. I also agree with usandthem - it's only pinball, and spending 4x as much won't make a game 4x more fun.

Why do you want Stern to Fail ? Why does JJP need to take their business model to survive ? Why do you always compare the two companies and why is Stern always on the bottom of your opinion ?

Riiiiight. And when I was young, we used to walk 5 miles to school, uphill both ways.

Too many people on here think that because they used to get pins at a lower price, that there's no market for pinball if prices continue to climb.
Of course, nearly everyone wants new toys, cooler features, deeper code... It all costs money.
Stern didn't have much trouble selling Met LEs, and though I'm not sure if Stern sold all of the StarTrek LEs, I'd say they did well enough to call it a success. (No arguing the game needs a code update before buyers all agree to that statement though).
Medieval Madness? Yeah. Expensive, but they sold pretty well.

Here's the good news; if you love pinball but don't want to shell out the NIB price, just wait til others have tried out the new pin and pick it up a couple months later when it's out of the box and a little easier on the wallet.
This hobby is not for the poor. Lots of man-caves out there with thousands and thousands of dollars worth of pins. Hike up the price a little more and people will still buy them -if they like what they see.

If I went back in time, knowing how much I'd enjoy my favourite pin, I'd happy pay $10,000 instead of $8,000. It's still great value considering how much we enjoy it.

Heck no. I want Stern to be successful and to be around for a long time. My point just refers to a potential opportunity for JJP to compete with Stern at the $5k level which is something they are not doing today. If JJP made a Stern pro type game that leveraged the JJP LCD platform, offered regular code updates like they did with WOZ and sold them at the same price of Stern pro games I think they would get a good chunk of the sales in that price segment.

Stern is not at the bottom of my opinion. Far from it. I think at the $5k price segment they have some games that offer a great value. Do I think they should offer more with some of their $7.5k+ LE's after seeing what you get with a JJP game for the same price. Absolutely yes.

Look how many people wanted a TBL pin before the price was announced compared to those who actually preordered after.

Didn't MetLE sell out in a day a year ago?

I know many many people with so much money it is sick. They have all heard that I collect pinball machines. They ask how much? Then they look at me like I am a dumbass when I tell what the price ranges are and what I have spent. With all the millions of people with disposable income, most will never spend even 5 K on a machine.

I guess the goal is to show the manufacturers that the market for $5-6k pins would be significantly larger.
JJP managed to convinced people that $8k is the new price reference. In this range we have JJP, Sterns LE, MMr, TBL, P3... NIB buyers ready to spend that amount are not that many. And they are not going to buy every one of these pins. Forget about operators too...correct me if I am wrong, but I doubt there is a single WoZ on location in France. I doubt we will ever see a Big Lebowski pin in a bowling alley around here.

In the $5k- range we have Sterns Pro... nothing else (besides Predator, sold out). Here is where some competition could be healthy.

In between stand Sterns Premium, AMH, Full Throttle.

Interesting read

But I think that there are a large number of pinball owners who do not post on the forums
Also people who can afford to buy two or more $8000 games tend not to brag

Toys mentality - It is bizarre but I have had a few people do the pinball wave (exactly like the Mexican wave) midway through a game when I tell them the price I paid for my pins (and I'm a cheap bastard, look at my collection). Its all fun and laughter and they say "awesome I'd love to get <insert favorite pin> for my house" then when the price sinks in its "Farkin Ell" both hands go up and they walk away shaking their head.

As I said, I found your original post in testing

But I know of ten guys of the top of my head that can afford $8000 games but never post on pinside

The market will decide who stays and who fails
Only a couple of games that have been announce appealto me

Reliability and choice of themes will be a decidingfactor
No longer so we have to accept what Stern offers

I sold one watch to buy 2 pinball machines, thereby transferring watch money into pinball money. THIS is the point on which the entire argument turns. There are millions of things out there that people are buying instead of pinball machines that are all in the same price range. That money starts to flow in, and it is, then secondary pin market is completely irrelevant.

We are spending a lot of time talking about $8,000 machines, but for the most part, they don't exist in quantity. Stern may have the LEs priced that high at MSRP, but the street price is significantly lower. The LEs are a niche product for people who like to have collectible pieces, so they need to be done in low quantities to maintain the appeal to their target audience. The premium models can be bought and shipped for $6500 for the same gameplay. Most people who ordered WOZ paid way less than $8000. MMr is really the only one in quantity, and I think that is an exception due to the high price of the original at the time it was announced.

$6500 is a good price point for me. I am willing to add a couple of thousand to that to get a really nice Refinery Edition, but I would not pay that extra for an LE. To me, the LEs and that Dirty Donny painted version of Metallica are just blatant cash grabs from Stern. They just don't do the extras as well as the other people who have stepped up to provide mods for these games.

I am also a little pickier with new games. Now the bar has been set high with Metallica. I need to like my next NIB pin at least as much as Metallica. That is going to be a tall order, and I hope one of these companies makes one that I like. I may change my mind once I play some of the games that have been announced, but for now, there is not a single announced pin that I would be interested in buying. Of the rumored pins, only The Walking Dead interests me, but that one will have to be really well done.

I think there are plenty of people who will pay for a new pin. I don't think we will see many for $8000 for quite a while. That price requires a really special game. I also think that a lot of buyers will buy for $6500 and then add $1500 or more in mods though. So, I guess I do see a lot of $8000 games. My two NIB pins will have cost me more than $8000 each by the time all of the mods are purchased and installed. I will get plenty of enjoyment from those two games to make the price worth it.

I guess my answer to the question in this thread is no. I don't think there is enough demand for high quantity $8000 games. I see those as limited quantity items, and I think there is enough demand from collectors to sustain that small market. I think there is plenty of demand for for the high quantity pins though. Those sell for $6500 and $4700. There is also enough demand for mods to keep new cool toys coming in.

Whilst I could buy an $8k pin, I doubt I will as to justify it to myself, it would need to be so much better than all the other games out there.

Most expensive game I bought was STLE which sat next to my Met pro. Apart from the blingy lighting, Met pro actually looked better quality ( metal ramps I guess ) and Met was more fun to play.

So, highly unlikely I will be buying at this price point. Too many games from all other eras that are just as much fun and way cheaper!

As someone that has sold pinballs to the home market for the better part of 35 years, I have long been questioning how on earth these companies think they can continue on with a business model that includes $8000 pinballs. I know what the magic number is for the vast majority of people based on a whole lot of experience, and it isn't anywhere near eight grand. It is actually under three! For now the market has absorbed it, but there are too many models competing for this market now, and a big issue is going to be people that can afford to do this simply running out of space. These aren't baseball cards people are collecting, and there is simply a finite amount of room. Also, I think for now it is clear that more games will keep on being made, so the whole scarcity thing is going away. I think a lot of people got in more as an investment than for the real love of pinball, and I just don't think those kind of buyers will be around for the long term. Finally, we are seeing more and more public places like barcades, coming on line and while this may help expose new people to pinball that may ultimately buy one, I think on the other hand people will feel less compelled to have them in their homes. The fact that you simply couldn't play a pinball in many areas drove home sales. Businesses like bars are always looking for new revenue drivers, and I think we will see more and more pins on location IF they can buy a model for under five grand or just get used games. Experienced operators will never spend eight grand on a new pin as a rule. They couldn't even manage a decent return on a new $3200 game back in the day, which contributed to WMS closing their factory.

All these factors make a compelling argument, imo, that the trajectory of $8000 games in quantities that will fuel more models cannot continue at the current rate. And, I would love to be wrong! No one knows...the whole home business model is still evolving. I want to see where things are three years from now. It sure is bringing prices down on classic models though, and I think that's good for the hobby because as I mentioned earlier, joe public for the most part has a budget of under three grand, period. Whether it is for pinball or a multigame, the majority just isn't going to spend more than that. Been that way for as long as I have been selling pins. The $3500 plus sale is the exception, not the rule.

I agree that most view it as a toy and will not spend even a few thousand, but it only takes one in thousands to sell 10k games. You could say the same thing about someone who spends $50k on a boat, $8k on a wedding dress...

My wife thinks I'm a dumb-ass to spend so much on pins, but for me there is no better/fun place to spend my discretionary income.

Can I make the car analogy here? I feel the compulsion to.

So, if you extrapolate the same logic to cars, you would come to the conclusion that the market can't support million dollar supercars, right? And the only ones destined for any longevity are Chevrolets and Fords?

High end stuff is attainable to a very niche group. The whole 1% deal. People aren't marketing $8k machines in hopes that the masses will flock to them. It's not reality and not a good business plan. There is a reason Stern sells a ton of Pros. The same reason Chevy sells a ton of $18k cars. That's the market sweet spot.

LEs and Hobbits and other machines aren't designed to be sold to the masses. Never have been, never will be.

The people on this forum, as much as people may not want to see it, only represent a fraction of pinball owners. A lot of the high end collections I've been in are owned by people who have no interest in cruising the forums. This is a skewed audience here.

Makes sense. Even within a Brand/Model, companies offer good/better/best. Audi A7, S7, RS7...for example. Stern offers Pro/Premium/LE...same idea.

Consider yourself fortunate if you own any pinball machines. If the games are too expensive, they won't sell and prices will drop.

What difference does it make if you think there's no market for 8k pins? Stating over and over that no one will buy 8k pins doesn't actually make it true, regardless of how many threads or polls pinside starts.

I'm not aware of a pin manufacturer yet that has a warehouse of unsold $8k machines with the refusal to drop prices. All of these claims frankly sound like sour grapes to me.

The more competition in every segment of the pinball market is better for us collectors. If JJP were to make a "pro" version I would be really excited, as there is just more pinball to be had, and maybe this would entice Stern to keep making quality "pro" models with more and more features as well as deeper and deeper rule sets. Each manufacturer pushing the others to higher standards...

I was with you until this. Why would this be sour grapes to anyone? If you want a pin and can't afford or don't think a particular title is worth $8k (or whatever), there are plenty other options.

I'm not agreeing or disagreeing, but you are basing this statement on what? The revitalization of the hobby imo isn't being driven by the resale of 80's and 90's machines - that's what kept it alive, but it didn't bring it back from the dead.

Another pinsider wrote:

This hobby is not for the poor.

richpindude.jpg

dp

I've got to agree.

It's just another example of why carguments almost always fail.

It sounds like sour grapes to me because standing up and proclaiming "there's no market for $8k machines" is an unnecessary statement, unless you don't want there to be $8k machines; and what reasons are there for not wanting $8k machines? I count one: "I can't buy them all".

The argument that it destroys the market is ludicrous. There's high end houses, suits, watches, beds, TV's, speakers, etc. that average joe collector or owner can't buy - it's not bad for the market, it's that average joe isn't the market for those items and now (imo) average joe is upset he's being excluded by the $8k pin as well.

Again, just my opinion and interpretation. I personally can't afford $8k pins either, but I welcome the manufacturers to charge whatever they can sell for and maximize profit. Supply and demand will keep the price exactly as high as it needs to be at any given time, and frankly this hobby will see a recession whether the pins are cheap ($4k?) or expensive ($8k) because even at $4k that's a huge waste of useful household funds on a stupid toy.

Let Stern or JJP come on here and proclaim "there's no market for 8k pinball" and then I'll start to see it as a legit statement with no 'sour grapes' connotations.

The comparison between cars and pinball machines is funny

Germany makes more cars per year than the USA, Germany is not known for making cheep cars

The market will decide if $8k pins survive. I won't be buying one but we all benefit from those that do. Designers have to produce an experience that buyers deem worth $8k, or manufacturers will be forced to adjust.

Personally, I like knowing there might be "something better" out there that I can't afford right now.

What worries me is that one of the new guys will not survive in the long term
The new games are run of a PC, will replacement board be available in 5 years, in 10?

Less resale value will ultimately lead to less sales.

How many times does this history have to repeat itself before people believe it? (American auto industry, housing prices)

This is not a good comparison. You're comparing unrelated highly-regulated industries (automotive, housing) to a niche luxury item (pinball).

I'm glad a lot of these new games are over my "never pay more than" price. It removes a lot of temptation.

35% can afford at least 1 $8k pin a year! That's a lot! Thanks for giving the manufacturers more justification for high prices!