I understand cherishing something rare and elusive that you have hunted down for years, saved from a salvage heap, lovingly restored with your own two hands, blood, sweat and tears- paying attention to every little detail to create the most perfect specimen ever dreamed of. That cherished beautiful thing should now be priceless to you...

Guessing that most of the investors who spent 12K and up on their MM's did none of these things- they only found an overpriced pin for sale and did the manual labor of writing a big fat check.

Pinball is not going to die because collectors may lose money on their investments! It will die because no one new falls in love with the thrill of smashing those silverballs. Repeating what someone else said, but if a few of these repros make it as routed games it will only help the hobby thrive. If the endeavor is successful it should be a boon to every single person connected in the pinball web.

I was responding to the idea that some owners may feel their MM is 'less special' now- and directly about people putting in a lot of hard work and dedication to acquire it. My original thought was that these collectors were combing the hillsides for years looking for pins and then finally stumbled upon their trophy. Upon rereading I can see the thought may have been that some people worked their asses off at 3 jobs, eating only ramen noodles for two years so that they could save money for this pin. Even with that understanding it only reinforces my opinion.

My thoughts are if this game is such a Holy Grail then it should be a keeper and its potential decline in value should be meaningless. It shouldn't matter if you paid 1K or 25K. Also doesn't matter if you earned the money to pay for it by digging ditches or performing plastic surgery.

I'm sorry, despicable me feels zero sympathy for someone who laid out way too much money for a pinball machine and is now upset that it is declining in value. If you bought it with the intention of making profit off of it at a later date then you really don't love MM for it's own sake, it was never a Holy Grail game for you and you have contributed to the ridiculous pricing of ALL pins that we are all suffering for in the here and now. If you took a leap of faith that you would break even on it if the day ever came that you were forced to sell it for financial reasons, I feel sorry for you only because you don't have good sense when it comes to money. I am certainly not happy about anyone's misfortunes, however I don't even think this qualifies as misfortune to begin with. Let's hope that MM earns its own pinball karma by helping to deflate the current market of pinvestors so that pinballers can get a fair chance on buying games again at a fair price.