Rarity and desirability tend to drive up the price.

That one game they make over and over again with different pictures and sounds IS pretty good, though........

yeah, can you believe that some dumb old 1964 mustang convertable cost more than a new one?

it's all cray cray I tells ya

If you have a couple of modern TVs and game systems in the house and own a computer and mobile phone you can probably afford to get into pinball. My kid has Xbox One and there's more TVs than I even use. Instead of buying a home console gaming system, I bought a pin for just a little more.

Problem number one: I don't want just any games - I want my favorites.
Problem number two: I want to collect and never sell any of my games.
Problem number three: My wife thinks I have more than enough games already.
As a result this hobby is no longer affordable for me (to add any more games).

+1

You just have to find the right game and be willing to use a little elbow grease

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You may think spending 6k+ on a pin is crazy, but then again there are those that think anyone spending even $500 on an ancient box with old wires to bat a ball around are crazy. It's all relative really.

DOH, love your Shelby, I just sold mine Blue with white stripes....and Oh look I can buy more pins

I think everyone would agree and I've seen a bunch of posts touching on it. Affordability is not just from a pinball standpoint....EVERYTHING has gone up in price. Labour, Cost of Goods, the list goes on. I thought I would share funny story...I told some of my coworkers I bought some pinballs...everyone is like cool...pricing came up and this thread in terms of affordability and everyone had a story about how expensive their respective hobbies are now compared to when they started ...Snowmobile's, Boats ( have you seen the price of a wake board boat (Holy cow), one of the girls who was listening in the wings chimes in laughing you guys buy toys I buy fashion and it ain't cheap either..she buys 3K and 4K thousand dollar purses....Head slapping forhead...

Very true, those games can’t be beat! They even perform better on location, fewer breakdowns.

But hey, look at my collection. I love the old pins and cars the best. I’m just observing.

Prices on DMDs and modern games have gone goddamned stupid. Same with System 11s. I'm finding myself more and more inclined to purge my collection of half the DMDs and replace them with early solid states (which can still be good value for money.)

Problem number four: I also collect and never sell cars and my wife thinks I have more than enough of those, too.

i like the one stuck under the rail. What the hell happened there? mice don't really get themselves stuck like that. It's like he was doing some kind of dance routine and it went south fast.

Because MM, AFM, and MB are SUCH different layouts...

Or Most of Pat Lawlors, or most of Borg's after Pat Lawlor made one, or Steve Ritchie's 2 layouts....

True they were given more monies to play with though. The back to back Kiss/Aerosmith was a bit much I'll agree.

That mouse's struggle sums up how I feel during some restorations.

BTW the Momma mouse on the playfield had 4 baby mice attached the her and suckling. I picked her up and they held on as I carried her and her family into the woods.

WMS was falling into a rut there at the end, true.

But, White Water, No Good Gophers, Cirqus Voltaire, Creature, Judge Dredd and before that Mousin' Around, Whirlwind, Radical! Diner (just the different layouts from the games I own).

Compared to that, Stern is literally making the same game over and over again with different pictures and sounds.

Cargument - buy what you can afford

Used pin - 88 Camaro ($6000)
The pin - chevy Cruz ($18,000)
Pro - Camaro RS cloth ($24,000)
Premium - Camaro SS leather ($39,000)
LE - Camaro ZL-1 1LE ($59,000)
JJP Collector - Porsche 911 ($92,000)
Super LE - Lamborghini Gallardo ($249,000)
Super Duper LE - Lamborghini Centenario ($5,000,000)

Not attacking you personally; I am going to provide clarity with my thoughts.

I remember when AFM on eBay was $3000 in 2009, BSD was $800, and Whitewater was sub-$2000. TS was not even $1800, Johnny Mnemonics could be had all day long for $1200, and Scared Stiff was $2500.

I am coming up on my sixth year in this hobby. I'm not brand spanking new, and I'm not a seasoned veteran in terms of ownership. I loved playing pinball since JP was a brand new game in 1993, and I played AFM when I was 15 back in 1996. I have always loved plunging the silver ball.

I say this because I did not need "Pinball Arcade" or some other device that got mainstream's attention to our hobby. I have loved playing pinball since I was 12. So for me, it's frustrating to have waited until I was a commissioned officer in the USAF, finally able to afford these machines, only to watch prices take off like a rabid rocket in 2012. I put some decent time into the DE/Sega games, enjoying those games, before stepping up to the "oooooooo, ahhhhhh" games of the 90s B/W era.

So, what I have done to help offset the "ouch" factor is I buy one or maybe two games a year. I am bringing home CFTBL late Dec/early January, and that will be my first new addition to my collection since 01 January 2017. I was used to buying a game every 3-4 months, but I realized I either had to slow my purchasing or buy cheaper games. I know what I want: TZ, CFTBL, maybe SS, MBr and Alien/Houdini. In order to afford those games at the prices all of those are at, I made the realization to slow my spending on pinball way down. It's just the way it is for me, subjectively, and I am very happy with that.

Hope that did not come off as preachy. That was not my intention. I would rather buy my games a bit more slowly and enjoy each new addition than spend $20k-$25k in a single year.

damn you spend a lot of money on cars. I havn't paid any of those prices on my last 3 cars combined. Should be.

Used EM or Early SS - 97 escort ($500-700)
Used DMD (gottlieb, Sega) - 2002 caravan ($1200-$2500)
used DMD (B/W, Stern, capcom, DE) - 2010 cars ($1500-4000)
the Pin- (early 2000's buick (old people car)
Pro - used 2012 car
Premium - Used 2015 car
LE- new car
JJP- Some new overpriced earth hating gas guzzler
Super LE- Private jet
Super duper LE- Full time hooker for a year.

I think the above two posts fit in *perfectly* with this thread and summarize it all very nicely! They both go to show how pricing is all relative, and how different people are willing to spend different amounts on the same things. For some they won't spend much of anything on a car. For others they will spend a lot. Different people have different comfort zones, what they can afford, and/or what they want out of their cars. Exactly like pinball machines, for every person that thinks it's insane to spend more than $1000 on a pin there will be others that are totally comfortable dropping $10k on a machine. To them it's worth it and/or they can afford it and/or they feel it provides that value.

Given how more and more people are being exposed to pins and retro in general it therefore shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that prices have gone up as it's not just hobbiests and dumpster divers buying them anymore.

No it's not affordable any more. Why invest a single dime in your entertainment and happiness.

Time to give it all away. And go live in a forest and become a monk.

LTG : )

OP,
If you have to ask, you can't afford it.

Sell them all.

for the right price i'd sell all mine. Shit. 150k i'll give you my whole collection. out of that..... 5 games have production runs of 60 or less. and you instantly would have one of the better Zaccaria collections over in the states.

I think, for a lot of people, it is more a case of, is it comfortably or enjoyably affordable as opposed to can you afford this or that pin. In my case, the prices, lack of choice (being in NZ) and having to wait weeks and weeks for parts (aside from shipping costs) when fixing or restoring a pin mean it is no longer fun "affordable" enough...sadly ☹ oh well.

Despite the rising prices, I enjoy the thrill of the hunt for bargains, hidden treasures, and neglected games.

Not everybody wants to or has the time to do that, though. But on the other hand, there are some collectors who go far beyond that and pick-up games in bulk with a fair amount of frequency. Wish I had the contacts (and space) for that.

Is this hobby still affordable?? It depends on what you can afford. If its less affordable that it was in the past, that's a factor of the prices increasing more than your affordability.

My affordability gap is more in line with the prices of air cooled Porsche 911s. I can remember when I could afford them if I had my money now, back then. Never the two will meet.

That not even a tough decision

Sterns top pins are way better than anything from the 90's for me anyway. I agree it would be nice if the weakest pin from Stern was lets say TWD and there were marvels of pinball tech to be had but thats not the case and that applies to all manufacturers, hopefully it happens in the near future.

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Someone please define "affordable" as it applies to everyone?

You're either going to have to lower your price, or install rainbow puke LEDs in all of them.

I don't think anyone could define that word.

I think that was what most people were getting at. 8-10 thousand dollar toys are not designed for the average guy and that average guys should focus on older or project machines. I teach school so my income is well below that of probably most one here. Yet I have owned 70 something pinball machines and have a great time in the hobby. I have a brand new game but I didn’t buy it NIB. NIB has never been affordable for me yet the hobby is general is

Many solid points,

I have said this before. Anyone can afford it if they really wanted one. They choose to afford it. People that say "I wish I could do that" are just spending their money elsewhere. They may have a corvette in the garage, or go out to eat twice a week, maybe go to the bar and drop $100 every Friday night. Maybe they are into racing, remote control cars. It's possible they bought a $5000 pool table instead. Maybe they just came back from their annual vacation to Belize.

Reality is, people just have other priorities. The average person cannot afford to do EVERYTHING they want to no. However if a new pinball machine was important enough they would find a way. Skip the vacation for one year. Maybe even pick up some part work.

Yep, my older brother always says the same thing when he comes by the house "I don't know how you can spend 10K on a game" but he just spent twice that on a kitchen upgrade which includes a 10K stove and some kind of granite counter tops. Whats wrong with a regular stove and an adequate counter top and 2 new pins. Everyone has their own priorities when it comes to spending money. I have the sickness so pinball controls my finance, extra money for me means new pin time, color dmd, mods and never a vacation, new clothes and ceratinly not a f en stove.

Your brother sounds like he is a married man. And you sound like you are not a married man

and you sound like a wise man.

Guess which one my wife suggested I consider regarding a new Elvira pin next year.

Ha Ha Ha. The oven part of my stove blew out 25-30 years ago.

I have one pinball left on my shopping list.

I can still fry steaks, bacon, eggs, potatoes, and make tapioca pudding, so I'm good

10-12 years ago I stopped at a Cabbala's sporting goods store in western Nebraska. There were all of these fishing boats for sale. These were run of the mill fish boats. There were not any Rangers in the bunch. All of them had signs attached that said $100.00 per month (or some similar price). In smaller letters was the statement "for 120 months". My mental calculator kicked in and 12 months per year divides into 120 for 10 years !!

10 years for boat payments !! $12K for a fishing boat !! Most cars pay out in 7 years now and I remember when car loans were a max of three years. 10 years for boat payments ?? !! I can buy a lot of fish from the grocery for that kind of money.

Recently, as I was doing some nationwide looking on Craigslist for pins, I was a shop down in the southeast part of the country that was listing quite a few pins with monthly payments as part of the sales pitch. While I can justify making car payments ( I have never made car payment. I go for the depreciated high milers), I cannot see making payments on a used pinball machine. And without available financing (for anything) prices come down.

So, the questions are:

How many are financing their pin purchases to satisfy the addiction?

Would Stern shut down if financing was not an option? Or are there enough people flush with cash to keep the train running?

Stern sells to distributors...maybe net30 terms but probably not. No financing going on there.

Pinball has always been expensive to me. I bought High Speed for $750 years ago, and that was expensive. I bought Sttng a few years later for $3100, and that was expensive. I spent $9k on afmr this year, and although expensive, no more so than those other pins, even though those sound cheap now. The truth is, that $750 for high speed was way harder to spend at the time than buying the afmr now.

I find that the prices are high enough now that most games don’t seem worth it to me. ac/dc, Metallica, and afmr are, so far, the only ones that I thought were good enough to buy nib. I am not particularly looking to buy more, but I also was not planning to buy anything when I saw afmr.

Location pinball is getting way better around here as well, so I have less incentive to own them. I currently have 3 pins, and 11 vids, and that is about all I want right now.

It's true, there's always been an "upper end" of the hobby, even 20 years ago, and it was usually guys buying NIB games, or guys who didn't have to sell a game to buy a new one.

that's too much work, and i'd rather see them on fire than to have a colorfest shitshow in the GI's.

I just browsed through most of this thread. All the stuff about the wife/girl friend objecting just cracks me up. I've been with my wife for 11 years. She's not into pins or arcades much, but she doesn't have any say in what I spend my money on and I have no say in what she spends hers on. We get along just fine and have completely taken out the chance for any money arguments, which seems to be the start of most things with other couples I know anyway. All you have to do is never have a shared bank account. Split up your mtg/utility bills evenly according to the percentage of money you each make, you pay bill a, b, and x, and she pays c, e, and y, and you each have the rest to do whatever you'd like to do with, so long as the house is paid for first, because obviously that's the most important thing. Neither person needs to touch the others leftovers.

Does no one else do this?

I've got around 100 pins/arcades...... not a peep about it from the wife, as it should be. She goes crazy with her hobbies too and it's great. We both get to explore our passions, whatever they may be at the moment, without having to bother the other about spending whatever it costs. If the money is there, have at it. If it's not, save until it is and proceed

I bought one of the Rob Zombie pins from Spooky last year and she just laughed. Of course, I did the same thing when she bought a bunch of stuff to build her chicken coops more like a house......

Yeah I don't understand a joint bank account either.

What excuse will they use to back out of a deal if not the wife?

We live on two different continents, yet the same well worn excuses inevitably make an appearance.

The additional $220 shipping last minute dealbreaker on an $8500 machine always tickles me as well. Never wrap a machine for interstate transport unless the money has actually cleared and in your bank account.