Quoted from Cauger5:

I’ve been in the industry for 20+ years. 20 years ago, you could get a theater of magic for $600… twilight zone for $1,800… the list goes on and on.
Here are the variables I think are at play with the rising prices, and it’s more than just 1 or 2:
- Stern has 1000s of units in its backlog
- Less supply of pinball machines overall, growing demand and popularity, and more disposable income for the average consumer. I know people who used to make minimum wage but had enough money to buy a stern pro because they were unemployed during covid. The barrier to own a machine has never been lower and people have never had more money.
- Stern increased the price floor on all new stern pros being created after Godzilla
- older machines are being restored; come with new and expensive mods; and are becoming less available (scarcity/FOMO). These machine prices become higher, thereby increasing the price floor of all machines of that same title incrementally over time. The carrying trade value on these older machines are always maxed too.
- Older games are being reproduced and setting a new price floor
- New pinball machine manufacturers have very high base entry
- Inflation
Probably a bunch of other reasons, but these stand out to me right away as to why pinball machine prices have sky rocketed over the past few years.
I honestly don’t see any pinball prices going down soon because no one is willing to sell less than what they paid for something, and everyone is over paying.

Quoted from EJS:

At the point I got in…pinball was a very small hobby. The general public liked pinball somewhat but interest dropped off for awhile.
Then things came back stronger I never would guessed.
I’ll always keep buying.

Quoted from bigehrl:

bought my first pin in 2021. a Ghostbusters LE, paid $22,000. Been hooked ever since!
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Quoted from Golfnutz81:

Got in last year cause I was stuck at home. Had the intentions of buying 1 which was a Bally Kiss. It was one my dad liked and so I bought us both one. Then both a playboy and I got myself a Flash Gordon and restored it.
I can’t afford newer machines so I buy stuff that needs fixed up and take my time. It’s fun.

Quoted from Drewscruis:

I was born in 1978 and have pictures of me as an infant on my dad's pinball machines. First arcade related game I bought was in 1997 a Midway bump and jump video game, first pin was a Chicago coin big flipper that I bought a year later. I'm always on the prowl for anything at a deal really. The more broken the better as I possess the skill set to troubleshoot boards at the component level. Plus I've been hoarding hard to find electronic components since the late 90's since I saw where this hobby was going. It's nice working on things knowing I've got almost anything needed to fix it somewhere in my house. My current collection of everything is well over 50 machines, I have more pins than video games but even that market is starting to spike.

Quoted from Tophervette:

Born in 1954.
Played pinball a lot in 1973 in Melbourne Fla during college at "Worlds Worst Pizza".
Worked surveying offshore oil around the world after college 1978 and was based in Houston. Where I would play Bally Playboy at Dome Shadows Rock Bar every weekend I was in town.
A pinball Arcade was set up in an old movie lobby in Bowie, MD around 1992. I put a few quarters into games there too.
I was working in Reston VA. in 2001 and found a Bally Dr. Who game in a sub shop down the street. It became a favorite lunch spot.
2019 hit like a brick wall with Covid and retirement and being stuck in the house. While surfing the Interwebs, I re-discovered Pinball. At first, I just browsed Ebay ads. Then did google searches. Found Pinwicki and IPDB, then Pinside. Started searching for pinballs, I used to play, that I could afford. Finally found a well-used working pinball an hour away for $2800.
With rusty electrical skills, a full toolbox, and a desire to learn, I jumped into the pinball hobby. It was not going to crash like so many of my RC planes. It did not take up as much room as muscle cars. With the help of Pinside hobbiests and pinball parts suppliers, I have resurrected a pinball that would have had a short life in a few years.
Now the desire to own a new in the box pinball, is only restrained by my lack of finances. But the good news is that there are two arcades full of new and old pinballs, just 20 minutes away.

Quoted from mbwalker:

Kudos for picking up a pin or two for your dad!
I guess that's what a lot people did not long ago - buy an older pin at a decent price, do some work on it, clean it up, and have a blast playing it. That's what I did when I bought a couple of 70's pins for the mancave. I thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread - to have a couple of pins at home. I was originally going to buy a pin back in the 90's/2000's, but that never materialized. Looked at few, never bought (and always wondered if I passed on a MM for a few hundred dollars, LOL) Eventually sell, maybe make a few dollars (I don't flip). I was far more interested in enjoying the pin than making a buck.
But with retirement in the near future (this was maybe 5-6 years ago), I decided to slowly upgrade the pins. Sort of skipped the 80's pins and moved into the 90's era. Then as retirement was getting closer, and the prices starting to increased (pre-COVID), I decided to start to pickup pins from the post 2010 years. The idea being, once I'm retired, the hobby will sort of be 'self-sustaining'. Newer pins will have likely increased in price but at the same time, hopefully my collection went along for the ride. So when I do get a different pin in and one goes out - not much money will exchange hands.
I did retire at the end of 2020 and I think I'm in good shape with the collection and my goal. One thing I decided to do was to actually try to play better, learn the rules, and beat the pins (or at least get further into the goals).

Quoted from mbwalker:

Like many - GZ and DP are on the list. Pros are fine. Just picked up a used pristine TMNT Pro (first pin in almost a year). Hated the Turtles theme when it first came out, but after playing one, I had a blast shooting.
Mancave is full and had to move one pin into my basement office for now.
I have 10 pins now, seems like a decent number to not get bored since I decided to keep them for awhile. Plus I tried to get pins that all play different. Some fast, some slow. Some easy rules, some deep. Some easy flow, some you really have to think and aim, etc. Wife likes to play too, so we tend to play all of them during our 'weekend tournament'. She kicks my butt often!

Quoted from Loganpinball:

Buying since 2001. I bought a simpsons pinball party at a auction for $2100 and passed on a lord of the rings for $2300. Cheapest machine I ever got was a data east teenage mutant turtles for $300 and it was working.. The prices right now on some are just insanity. I remember when the prices jumped up previously, but it made sense at the time. This wave of madness does not. A stern premium costs close to what a le was. I also miss buying a Stern that was released a few weeks after it was revealed. We ordered a premium in May and were still waiting. If Stern gets back to hammering out games quickly it would most likely help a little bit. All the flippers are also a problem, but who can blame them.

Quoted from Rarehero:

Bought my first pin in 2005. Back To The Future for $300 I was an arcade guy at the time…and I took the natural progression of selling most of my arcade games & focusing on pinball.
I got in at the perfect time. Tons and tons of games on Craigslist for cheap, learned how to fix & shop games out…bought cheap, fixed up & kept, or sold for more. I don’t buy much at all anymore, partially cuz I’m happy with the games I have, I don’t have the time or desire to do projects, and prices are insane. I’ll probably be doing more selling than buying. I’m hoping after Rush LE, I can “quit” new games….but, we’ll see. After calculating what I bought/sold games for over the years, all in my collection of 23 games cost less than a few Stern LE’s. After I sell more, whatever I still have will essentially be “free”.

Quoted from insight75:

1st purchase: DE GNR 2013
2nd purchase: ACDC Premium 2015 (first NIB)
3rd purchase: TSPP August 2020
38th purchase: Primus (last Friday)
Please help me. I blame Covid.

Quoted from ExSquid:

No joke, my parents bought this for me my sister and brother in 1976. I think that's what put the subliminal thoughts in my brain until I played a Theatre of Magic when that came out and then I knew I had to own one one day. Currently have an IMDN Pre and a GOTG Pro. The prices SUCK but eh, what are you going to do. Would love an AFM one day.
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Quoted from 03whtlightning:

I’m 42 and went to the arcade all the time as a kid. I remember playing a few pinball games back then, but not many. I wasn’t really into pinball until I went to the Louisville Arcade Expo in 2019. I was already buying/collecting arcade games at that time and went to that show for the arcade games primarily. My son (4 at the time) and I played all the newest Stern titles and some older pins as well. I really enjoyed playing, but the excitement on my sons face watching and actually playing was enough for me to know I’d be purchasing one for our home.
He really liked the Stern JP, but coming from an arcade game collecting world the price of pins shocked me! So I looked around and ended up finding a good condition Data East JP for sale local to me. Off I went and purchased the pin. Even though it wasn’t the newest Stern model, my son still had that look of amazement on his face when he laid his eyes on it. Especially the first time he saw the T-Rex eat the ball!
Here we are two years later and I currently have 4 pins now (DEJP, RS, STh and EHOH). With the current pricing of pinball, I don’t know if I’ll be purchasing any more pins anytime soon. But you never know, because my son’s favorite pin is “The King of Pain” and it’s rumored that CGC may be doing another run of them. Only time will tell.

Quoted from mbaumle:

Started buying in 2004. I was 13 years old and mowed lawns to make the money to pay for games. First game was a $50 Gottlieb '2001' from a yard sale.
I'd buy cheap-as-free EMs, read Clay's repair guides as if they were the Bible, fix them up, keep the ones I liked, sell the ones I didn't. I'd almost always turn a tidy little profit when I'd resell them, and I put that money right back into buying more/better games. It also helped that my dad was a fan too, and would always help with driving me around and loading them.
Fast forward through the years, and I've amassed (what I would consider), a pretty nice collection for someone my age. There's really only a small handful of games I really want to own at some point in my life, but at these prices, I'm not in a hurry to buy.
One thing I consistently remind myself of is how lucky we all are to even own ONE game. Even if it's a mediocre title. Very few people in the world have both the funds and room to keep one. I remind myself of that whenever I feel lousy by being priced out of a game I wished I bought "back in the day."

Quoted from Learmud:

I got into it to play, then enjoyed the referb but I'm not in it for the money. That being said -I have little interest in buying at the prices today its a little crazy and I hope to see a disappointed group sell them off as they become bored with the pandemic man cave lifestyle. As for a great long term investment I'm not sure pins can beat Legos yet.
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I would rather find the shed and barn finds and rebuild them. The kids don't care for perfection and really enjoy the EMs. I think that says a great deal on the level of enjoyment actually needed to have some fun.
The fever has also brought out a level of parting never been seen before. I do find the need to part out just to make a buck a shame. Once gone, its gone folks -but at least everything will be "rare" lol and I know I will buy that missing part, so I am also an enabler.

Quoted from Learmud:

I gonna say a Bingo and a Pre-war too. Way overlooked.

Quoted from mbaumle:

Adjusted for inflation, your pinball pool cost $7,266 in today’s money. Considering the advancements in game design and technology today, that figure makes a lot of new games look like a bargain. [quoted image]

Quoted from TimBoch:

I got hooked on pinball while in grade school in the 70s. Every Wednesday I would go with my dad to his weekly bowling league. I would watch his team bowl, organize the rental balls, bring their empty beer bottles back to the counter and sometimes I would be allowed to help score. Each week, dad gave me a dollar to spend. Usually that meant one bottle of pop for 25 cents and then the rest I spent on pinball. This was when you could play 1 game for 10 cents or 3 games for a quarter. In 1979 my mother brought me to the home of a coworker whose husband bought, fixed and sold pinball machines. He had maybe 20 or so in his garage set up for sale. He had at least that many more in his basement that he was working on. Needless to say, I left dreaming of having a pinball machine. I bugged my parents for weeks and even made a pinball machine out of my legos. About a month later, we returned to her coworkers house and we were shown a few of his new purchases. One of these was a Bally Hi Deal which he just bought and would sell "as is" for $250 and told us that it did work and he would set it up for free play, but any mechanical issues after we took it home would require us to pay. I was very excited. My dad, not so much. My mom, trying to consider this expensive toy. This was a lot of money for my parents. Needless to say, my parents made a major sacrifice for their son who was hooked on pinball. We moved the machine into the basement and played it for hours. One of my greatest memories is of how my mom and I would spend time cleaning and waxing it. Over the years it was played less and less and I often felt sad that it just sat in the basement unused. Around 2010 I asked my dad if I could move it to my house and he thought that was a good idea. This allowed me to finally change the rubbers and ball which had been in it for over 30 years. Hi Deal has worked with few issues for the last 42 years.
Fast forward to 2015. I finished my basement to better accomdate the games I had begun to acquire and now had a dedicated game room. In early 2016 I found a Star Trek the Next Generation, my holy grail game, and after having the price shock wear off and feeling much the same as my parents way back when, bought my first pin. This led to buying a Tee'd Off and Star Wars Ep1 in 2017. In 2018 I had looked for some time for an Addams Family for my daughter who became interested in my new hobby. In 2019 I bought my No Good Gofers from my friend who I got into pinball and sold the SWEp1 to make room for my first new game. In early 2020 my Medieval Madness remake SE was delivered. Later in 2020 after a summer of looking for an Williams Indiana Jones, one was finally found, but I needed to sell the Tee'd Off to make room. So for about a year, my lineup is complete. Each time I go downstairs to play, I try to play Hi Deal at least once in memory of my parents who allowed me to enjoy these great machines .
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