One of the hardest things to master in pinball is the "dead flip", also known as the "dead bounce" or "bounce pass". It's the art of strategically doing nothing:

I think it's equally hard to apply to dead flip technique to collecting. If you can own a game for more than a year and spend less than $50 on it, you've mastered the collector dead flip. I've only done this with a few games, and usually that was because new parts were simply not available.

I bring this up because I just bought a nice, fully-working "The Shadow" for a good price (I think): $2700. I want to replace the head decals, plastics and translite, and add some LEDs and a ColorDMD. That would make it a $3600 game. I'm already thinking about this, even before getting the game set up. That's not much different than a kid who walks up to a game, hits the start button 4 times and hits both flipper buttons repeatedly.

I really want to learn the collector dead flip. I lost $700 selling my last game, because I gave it too much love. This time around, I want to do as much as I can to restore the game without spending money, and then think about next steps.

That's kind of my point. I think we all expect to throw $$$ into a game after buying it, even if it's fully working. That's a relatively new phenomenon. We used to buy games, clean them up and play them as-is. I'm not saying that the after-market possibilities are all bad. In fact I find the ColorDMD damned near impossible to resist, and you can bet that when Skateball playfields are ready I'll buy one.

My wife hates Alec Baldwin for some reason, so a new translite for TS is definitely going to happen.

I'm not coming down on any real position here, it's just something I've noticed lately about my own collecting. I'm buying a lot more toys for my toys lately, especially shakers, speakers and CDMD. But like Flake said, the CDMD is portable. I rationalized my PDI glass that way too.

Even discounting the fun we have, pinball is still great from a "total cost of ownership" perspective. I'm only down $2000 after selling about 25 games over 16 years.

That's what happened with me and CSI. For the first year, I thought it was the best game ever. I'll miss it, but I'm glad it's going to a good new home.

It's hard because a lot of us have OCD. If I have one cracked plastic and the rest are good, it drives me crazy to know that there's a repro set available. If a CPR playfield is available and it's a game with especially good art (like Mata Hari), I can't just pretend it doesn't exist.

I'm pretty good about cleaning and reusing perfectly good parts, like playfield posts. But if one of them is cracked, out it goes...

I've done a pretty good job dead-flipping my Fathom. I actually reduced my cost, because I sold the chrome armor back to its original owner. I bought a CPR playfield for it, but later sold that to a friend whose Fathom needed it more than mine. I've given it new plastics and drop targets, but I've resisted the urge to repaint the cab and replace the coin door.

Fathom is a keeper. But once I accepted that its playfield was "good enough", it was easier to accept the cabinet as it is. I enjoy doing playfield swaps, but I'm OK with my "nice survivor" Fathom. I'll channel my time and $ into other pins that need more help - like this Skateball I just picked up.