Flame suit on...

I see a lot of comments along these lines and I get that some people might not be able to afford the hobby that they have loved and that pisses em off.

However, buying and selling pinball is a business, and if people were not willing to pay the prices, prices would not be as high. With pinball having a resurgence, people are paying the prices. I would not expect the prices to come down much lower anytime soon. A lot of longer term hobbyist are longing for the days of cheap NIB, warehouse raids, and pinball as a commodity and priced as such. Those days are over the foreseeable future. Bitching and complaining about it, while cathartic, will achieve nothing.

The stark reality is that if you are not willing to pay the prices or of limited means, you need to recalibrate your expectations about buying certain types of machines. If you can not afford NIB, look used; if you can not get something recent, look to the 90s, can't afford them, look to the early solid state and EM. Hell, with the rise of location pinball, you don't even need to own machines to be a pinball fan. A lot of players and pinball fans don't own a single machine.

Having pinball machine(s) in your house is a luxury, not a birth right or necessity.

No harm no foul. As I said, that wording and sentiment is something that I see all the time on here. My posting was more of a general comment on the state of affairs, although I quoted you.

I agree with your sentiment that it never hurts to ask for pricing concessions. I am going through an extremely extensive home remodeling and I have negotiated pricing for large ticket items (windows, siding, roofing, plumbing, and lighting. I have received pricing concessions that have totaled up so far north of 25K in just materials. However, I have spent many multiples of that amount with my suppliers to get those concessions. Relating it to pinball, if your are spending more, there is more latitude in pricing. If you are looking at a less expensive machine, discounts are going to be less.

Off topic: As part of this process I have learned for things that you would buy off the internet like lighting, plumbing, and high end electronics, place the items in your shopping basket and then call into the company's sales team and asks for their best prices. You will be pleasantly surprised with the results. These sales reps (called inside sales reps) will rather give you more of a discount so that you place the order with them (so that they get credited and paid on the order) vs letting the order be processed via the internet (where they do not get credit). An inside sales rep hipped me up to this during one of the first purchases and I now use this with everything that I purchase online. One crazy example was that LG's flagship OLED TV that came out in early May with an MSRP of $3,300 I got for $2,200 during Memorial Day Weekend. Give it a try.