I'm probably the wrong guy to answer, because I would never lease a car. (Though I looked it up and it seems as though about 1/3 of cars are leased these days...which is much higher than I would have guessed).

Leasing is, of course, *more* expensive...even though it's disguised as something that saves you money.

Buy a $9k pinball machine, and if you hate it, you can easily find someone who will buy it from you for $8k. If you aren't willing to pay $9k, buy a $5500 pro. Or, save $7800 and go play 1200 games of it on location.

I do see more value in renting pinball machines, where you would keep cycling in different games every few months. You can probably find someone in your local area who would provide that for you - but you likely wouldn't be getting the latest NIB games.

You've got all the newest games in your collection. Would you have done things differently if this was an option?

Very interesting question. The market would dictate the viability of this I would think. As of right now, the market is still solid enough on used machines that it would either make the lease a bad deal financially for the leasee or the leasor. Essentially, a lease is simply the use of the vehicle and its monetary costs, or pinball machine in this case, divided and financed for the term in which the lessee has possession.

So it doesn't get too deep in the weeds lets have an example. Let's take a modern stern Pro. Right now, you can purchase a new Stern pro, MAP pricing, for what, $5,300 with no tax and shipping? It has been a while for me. That maybe slightly off, but for the sake of the discussion, I'll assume it is correct. In 12 months, unless the game is a total WWE type dud, you would probably be able to sell it at $4900, and that is a worst case scenario. Probably more. So. The lease payment, at least in theory, if it is following the standard, would be based on a residual buy out of $4900. $5300-$4900 is $400 divided by the 12 month term. $33 per month. Usually any upfront "downpayment" offsets these costs, but in this case, that would seem to be impractical.

Fascinating premise for sure and intriguing idea. I don't think the current market would support it though. It would be impossible to make money on, or make zero sense for the lessee. If the market turns upside down, and that is somewhat possible given the influx of new pins, this may become way more interesting.

Not necessarily if you do your homework and win the bet on the residual, or buy out a favorable lease when it is over. Or if you are the kind of person who buys a new car every 3 years and lives in a high tax state. You pay all the sales tax up front on a buy, and you only pay sales tax on the monthly payment amount on a lease.

You'd get a better deal with a 0% intrest credit card. Make a decent down payment then, make monthly payments till it's paid off. If at anytime you want to offload it, sell it and pay off the rest of the CC balance. No need to worry about early termination fees or jumping through hoops.

Though I do think there may be some potential solution that makes sense for some, the example OP gives I think won’t work.

No one is going to spend $2900 for a year of a pinball rental. At the end of the year, you have no pinball machine and no $2900. Instead if that person bought a $2900 game, in a year they have a choice of keeping the game or selling, probably for what they paid.

Similarly, if someone could afford to save more and buy a NIB Pro, in a year, they still have a game or can sell for $400 less than what they paid ($800 if it’s called Munsters).

In the example, there’s just too much loss at the end of year. That would have to be improved. Those who don’t have as much money will seek alternative ownership options with better end results. Those more affluent won’t need this service anyways as they just buy NIB.

Bingo, how many $2800 year old Deadpools are you seeing out there for sale?

Some Distributors have had leasing for arcade items for a long time. The new Star Wars and halo cabs can be $20k+. I know places like Betson do.

Insurance on a secured toy has to be cheap, right?

There is no easy setup for this with a pinball machine. For a car, it’s pretty easy to turn around off lease. The dealer will have a full repair shop, and if there is anything besides normal wear and tear, the person that leased it gets smacked with the bill (it was in your agreement).

But on a pinball machine, it’s WAY more subjective. Say I drop a screwdriver on the playfield and it causes a small chip. Is that a tiny chip? Or is that a chip that will begin to peel up paint because it’s where the ball travels? What if I stop playing it and return it with that, and the next person gets blamed? Are they paying for a playfield? Say I don’t clean it once in those 1200 plays... am I returning it like that? Am I charged for a shop job if I don’t know how to do one? If a board pops, am I fixing it? If I think I know how to, and I make it worse, is that my fault? If I don’t know how to repair it, is the lease company sending a guy? Who pays for the board that’s out of warranty, but had a defect?

I put a lot of time and effort into my games. Leasing them would make make no sense to me. When I buy a game, if I miss something wrong, that’s my fault, and I’ll fix it. But if I leased it, that’s going to lead to finger pointing. And I’m nice. I know a lot of assholes that would drive the leasing company right out of business. It’s unfortunate that machines are expensive, but the solution to that is to not buy them. You can have just as much fun on a $1000 game.

Leasing sometimes makes sense if you are generating revenue from your machine. Say a game leases for 250 a month however it generates 600 a month in revenue. There is a positive cash flow of 350.00 and in most cases a portion of your lease payment is tax deductible. Every 24 months the game gets rotated for the latest and greatest. However when the machine is not a strong earning piece this model is not as attractive. Sometimes costing you money per month plus you have no way of selling the game to partially recoup your initial investment.
With arcade machines it makes more sense because of the depreciation factor. Pinball is expensive although it's resale market is much stronger then most other hobbies. Buy a game for a semi good deal and in 12-24 months the game usually maintains its value. If you choose to operate this game the resale value drops a percentage however the revenue that you have collected from the machine is usually far greater than the loss of resale value.

These figures are generic numbers just used for demonstration purposes. There are benefits both ways however evaluate all options prior to making any large financial decision.

The more you know.

My parents ran an arcade in the 90s and they absolutely leased all of their machines for a few years until they could afford to buy their own. They leased around $100,000 worth of machines for a large arcade and paid a monthly fee. The leaser changed out a certain percentage of the machines monthly to keep things fresh and were responsible for all maintenance. Leasing a large amount of machines as an upfront investment to open a business could make sense, but I don't see this working in the home environment. The leasing terms weren't that great for the leasee and the first thing my parents did when they had the money was buy out the lease so they didn't have to pay the fees. It is/was absolutely cheaper to buy and sell machines yourself than to lease them.

It sounds that your scenario was different then leasing. Our company Amusement Services of America is an amusement operations company. We provide amusement devices to many types of locations. We place our equipment inside of your location and we split the revenue that the equipment generates. We are responsible for keeping the equipment looking and operating perfectly. We also rotate a portion of the equipment on a routine basis to keep there customers excited to return. At no point during this agreement is the equipment the property of the location. This model is beneficial to alot of locations. Arcade is only one of there revenue streams where they can focus there time on other aspects of there business.

What you are describing sounds almost exactly like the business model my folks were using, except there was no revenue split. In the scenario you are describing, if the location gets no business you are owned no money. In the scenario I am describing, if there is no business, we still owe the arcade leasing company money.

In any case, this was 25 years ago and I'm sure the business model has changed. I may not be describing things correctly and it may have been closer to equipment rental.

In any case, I don't see leasing in the home environment to be advantageous to the customer in almost all circumstances, but I could see it being beneficial as part of a business model, particularly in lowering startup costs.

you can lease with places like betson for 3 year like 200 to 225 a month something like that.

This is a very interesting question regarding the price/value proposition.

I'll open with something I ran into perhaps 15 years ago; It was definitely before the economy collapsed in 2008. I was at a Cablela's out in western Nebraska just walking around looking at all the crap money can buy. Out in the front of the store all of the fishing boats were lined up for sale. I'm not talking the Bass Pro rigs with all of the bells and whistles. These are "run-of-the-mill" regular guy type fishing boats. All of the price tags were showing the list prices of, say, $12,000.00. But you could own this board for "just $100.00 per month for 120 months".

Hmm...lemme see. 120 months/ 12 mo./year = 10 years of fishing boat payments. At $1,200.00 per year. That's a lot of frigging money to go fishing, no matter which way you cut it.

Yeah. Pinball machines are getting into the price range where many buyers would not exist if financing was not available. I am still trying to wrap my head around the fact that people will finance a pinball purchase, in the first place.

So, let's back up a little bit more. Before 1978, car loans had a 3 year life span. 36 months---and after the last payment the car self-destructed. It was Detroit junk at its finest. And then Detroit got its head handed to it by the quality of the Japanese cars coming in. Detroit changed its game and started producing better quality cars. But the car prices went into the stratosphere. It was called "sticker-shock". In 1977, you could buy a Detroit tank for $4000.00. In 1979, the price had moved up into the $15,000.00 price range. And we were all going WTF is this? !!! You want How Much? Get outta here.

And to make all of this new pricing paradigm palatable to the buying public, and to be able to keep selling cars, the car makers jumped onto the leasing bandwagon. Banks live and breathe auto financing and got on for the ride. And to keep sales moving, cars loan terms were extended from 3 years to 5 years, and now, I believe 7-year cars loans are the norm.

I financed a car purchase one time. One time only. I learned to hate car payments. Every frigging month here came another Fking car payment. I did not mind paying rent. I did not mind paying utilities. But I hated that car payment.

I'll be damned if I am going to have a payment plan for a pinball machine.

And you, OP, raise the issue of leasing pinball machines. I can see where the pinball manufactures are going to need to keep pulling hat tricks with financing to keep the hobby going. But leasing a pin would not be my cup of tea. As others have mentioned, the market might not be ready for leased pins to the home buyer. But it is something the industry will one day have to consider, I suppose.

As a side bar on financing: I read Lee Iacoca's biography when he was still running Chrysler. And he got his first real recognition, in 1956 while at Ford, when he came up with the auto financing plan called "56 for 56". You could buy a new 1956 Ford for payments of $56.00 per month. And Ford sales took off.

Lease a pinball machine? No. I would do without. But does not help the industry.

Are the leases for distributors only or can any pinhead get one?

Betson offers lease rates however you should be very cautious. Know your numbers. The lease rate always is based off of full MSRP. plus freight and taxes need to be paid up front. This means there is an up front fee to start the program and say the game is a huge hit and you want to keep it after your term has expired because the game was sold at full MSRP your buy out option is usually ridiculous. Adding all of your set up fees including payments with intrest you usually end up buying that game for thousands over what other Distributors would have sold you the game outright for. Also keep in mind they charge a document fee of roughly 200.00 for creating the paperwork.

Just be careful in what you sign.

As others have mentioned there are already places that will finance or lease pins.

I think the first true X-as-a-service we might see in pinball is Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), where you can pay a monthly subscription and have access to the library of games that work on your machine, a-la multimorphic or even potentially deeproot. Subscription tiers giving you access to different levels of content.

This would be a significant infrastructure investment to do it properly with 100% uptime, so I think it's currently beyond the reach of smaller players. deeproot might have the pockets for it though.

Interesting topic!
Leasing... as an independent... not a fan. It just helps make big companies bigger.
I invested in a video rental store in the nineties after having worked at one for over 5 years, two years after I took out a huge loan, a video leasing company called Rentrak came on the scene and chains like Blockbuster and Hollywood became HUGE customers, a short two years later I filed bankruptcy and was working for 10.00 / hour at my local Blockbuster.

In terms of personal leases for individuals........as long as resale values for recent release pins are so high it would make ZERO sense to lease one.

All the old head arcade owners say Betson was mob-run with mob-like financing rates. FWIW, Joe at Pinball Star is supposed to have a fairly reasonable financing partner. Financing toys is no bueno for me, but if you can make it work for you...more power to you.

Seems like an absolutely terrible idea.

You buy a game now, even if it's a stinker you can sell it in a year at a $500 loss. So why throw away money every month on a lease with no equity? Depreciation on a NIB pinball game these days is very, very small even on flops.

It seems like it would only kind of make financial sense for someone who can't afford a NIB game, in which case they probably shouldn't be leasing one either.

Leasing anything, to me, has never made sense and is akin to paying rent. You can pay all your life and never actually own anything.

I have worked with people in their 40s that have never bought or sold a car, they've leased their entire lives. They don't want the hassle of buying/selling/repairs, and want something new every few years. They don't want the responsibility of home ownership (repairs, etc).

If you have to relocate for your job every 3 years, sure, rent something. Otherwise, historically, real estate is one of the best places you can put your money.

With a trade in MD, you only pay tax on the difference between the 2 cars - so it's the same thing

Add that to the list of things Maryland does better than PA. I am really starting to hate it here at times. MD has mandatory sick days and insurance for certain industry workers (healthcare, teachers) as well. Better pay and COL in certain areas compared to southcentral PA as well. Their gun laws are still shit though. But I digress, back on topic.

If pinball leases more closely matched what an auto lease did in terms of residual after the term being somewhat close to actual value, I can see the idea having some merit.

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On the surface I agree. However, we are talking about financial sense in a pinball forum where guys spend over $10,000 on just one pinball machine. Guys that buy these expensive games sight unseen and then turn around to sell days or weeks after receiving them. Perhaps there would be people open to having games basically routed in their own home. You would have to pay for plays but wouldn't have to worry about maintenance and dealing with buying/selling while getting all the latest games. Cost wouldn't make sense to most but maybe it would for those that have more disposable income. There are a lot of areas where there is virtually no pinball on location so maybe this would also make sense in those areas.

Here's the part I don't get.

Who is going to be doing your on-call maintenance on these games? Who is gonna drive over there and attach a loose flipper coil wire?

How about creating a new enterprise, Puber, use people with years of experience off Pinside to provide service in their geographic area, tie it into the Pinside Map and you'll off and running.

As someone who as operated games in public venues, and done monthly rentals (set on free play) in offices and one home...I would never put a machine into a house for coin play. What happens if they barely play it? My machine is then off route, making no money, and I have to move it in and out of their house, virtually for free.

I'm not interested unless they're putting 500+ plays a month on that machine, and even then, I'm not interested unless they're keeping it for 3+ months. Moving machines is awful, particularly in houses where there are stairs, narrow doorways, nice walls & floors that can't be damaged. And you pretty much can't outsource it without having to babysit the movers anyway, or spend hours coordinating between yourself, movers, the location where the machine is, and the location where the machine is going.

Also, they'd have to be willing to learn to take the glass off themselves to fix a stuck ball or replace a broken flipper rubber.

If I did that it would be the lease of my problems.

Don't think it'd fly. So much of this hobby is either restoring or modding. Not all, but for so many this hobby satiates their "tinkerer" OCD traits. Leasing would remove that. For those that just want to play for a year and get rid of.........way cheaper to go play on location plus you get the social interaction of a pub or a league.

The furniture rental places have been making a killing for years renting things at three times the cost to people who can't afford to pay, so there has to be a market for a lease/rental somewhere. Instead of targeting those that can't afford it....I would target those who can. There are a lot of folks that will pay good money for someone to bring in a pin, take care of it, and rotate them out just because they don't want to bother with it themselves. I just sold a couple of pins at WELL above retail to some folks that wanted delivery and turn-key service. I was happy to oblige, and did complete delivery and setup. I am sure when they tire of the machines, we will be talking once again. Given how folks are these days, this will be more and more common as long as the economy stays strong.

Good topic though...beats talking about which of the new pins we should be buying

So Commercial Lease is easy.. Residential is a nightmare. We have have looked into long term rental in homes or leasing but its almost impossible to get insurance to do so. People just take your stuff and move ect.. look at rent a center ect

There goes the mod leasing idea. Check every mod on the Mod Couple's website. Chose a lease program for your game(s). And have all of the mods you ever wanted at once.

No more picking and choosing, jockeying around pin purchases, hiding occasional boxes from the wife - just one big box to explain.

Would have been great.

LTG : )

Can the interests on pinball lease be a tax deductible ?

Consult your tax advisor.

I do agree with you and think that this may work and some people may like the idea of leasing a pinball machine. Personally I don't like to even lease a car so I might not be the person who would lease a pinball machine.

Obviously pricing would have to be worth the hassle for whoever is operating the game. In the end, costs would probably not make sense for most. Just thought it might work for some.

I have some friends with some furniture rental stores in California. They do quite well. Their markup is 4X retail. With furniture. Washers. Dryers. Refrigerators. TVs. There are lots of repairmen around for those kinds of items. But the wholesale purchase is cheap. If the TV breaks, take out another one and toss the broken unit.

They also do a lot of repossession work.

Pinballs are not cheap. 4X on a $5000.00 pin means a rent-to-own price of $20K. I don't know. There would be some risk.

Are you talking about the same people who will not even bother to properly return a grocery cart to Walmart's cart corral?

Haha. No.

Just do what the buy here pay here car places do...wire in a GPS transponder in a discrete manner. You can even shut the machine down remotely if they don't make their payment.

As others pointed out... in the current market of very little depreciation, it would not make sense for private individuals to lease unless they really need that pinball and don't have the cash to buy it outright (in which case they still probably shouldn't be leasing).

But lets look at establishments like bars, club houses, bowling alleys etc. They could lease a pinball with no upfront costs other than lets say a $300 down payment. they can put all the shipping, taxes, etc in to the monthly payment so they will have monthly payments of say $100-$150/month which should be fully tax deductible. A wise lessor might even throw in repair service for an additional $xx/month to ensure the machine stays in good shape. The establishment can then start getting positive cash flow from the first month, rather than having to wait for a year and cash out only when you sell the pin.

Also, this would allow a bar owner to get several pins without needing $30+k upfront.

Note - if they finance it (rather than lease) the taxes are not as favorable. They would would not be able to deduct the cost of the machine up-front put rather they would depreciate it over 5-10 years. Then when they sell it, they will be taxed on the revenue from the sale.

Note: I am not a tax professional...talk to one before listening to any advice given here!

An even better system than this already exists: operators. Establishments pay nothing up front, nothing ever, and they collect a portion of the earnings.