Yes, inflation and pinflation both are no bueno. I'm new to the hobby, so it's rough for me to justify spending as much money as I would spend on a used car, to buy a pinball machine. Right now we have 1 machine, from 1980, that has cost us about $1,500 to get up and running well.

The addiction has set in. A second pinball machine will happen. It's just a matter of how much I can justify spending to myself and to my wife.
Right now we are spending $22,000 on a new roof, gutters, and trim for our house. Yes, inflation has jumped that cost up as well.

Boo COVID-19. Boo Congress. Politicians are no bueno.

Anybody have an Apollo 13 they want to unload for pre-stimulus prices? We are working on an outer space theme to our pinball collection.

Skip the roof and gutters. Get a tarp and a POTC LE.

Completely incorrect and offensive. Not surprised to see you here as the top commenter.... SMH.

Economic collapse is imminent. Prepare accordingly.

This (uncertainty and speculation) is one of the main reasons I invested so much into pinball machines that I enjoy playing - even if their values suddenly plummet, I can still enjoy them. I can't say the same for stock certificates...

One other thing that plays into this is that the USA has a Labor problem. Companies will not be able to keep up with supply and demand because their suppliers who make the products will not be able to supply them. This goes for everything.....from food to pinball parts. Prepare for HyperInflation and it's going to be brutal for the average American family. I am seeing it now in the industry that currently work in and it's not good.

This is it.

It's gonna be like 1979 again!

Well at least I'll be able to pick up some Billy Beer. So kitchsy!

The Maverick of Wall Street has some good insights on inflation, Intrest rates and money printing. He has been spot on.

This hobby is immune to the ups and downs of the economy. The majority of Americans don’t think about pinball let alone think about buying one. It’s absolutely irrelevant to most working people. Pinball is its own bubble, generally separate from the usual economic factors.

Speak for yourself and some others but I shut down all spending on pinball.

And 5 people took your spot

Uh I got in around 2010. B tier WPC games were not going for 1100 in good shape. Back then C titles quickly went to 2k. I can remember getting 2500 for my dr who in late 2011. Projects were more prevalent back then, but competition quickly heated up and a lot of people went from hobbyists to flippers.

Bullshit. I have records right here baby! WHere's your documentation?

Not my fault you were overpaying for games back then.

Here's the games I bought in 2010 / 2011. Yeah there were a couple old lady steals like the creature but the vast majority were bought off RGP or Mrpinball.

Bronco 1/10 500
High Speed 2 2/10 1250
NBA Fastbreak 2/10 1250
Blackout 3/10 600
Flicker 3/10 500
Firepower 5/10 700
CFTBL 7/10 1000
Taxi 8/10 800
KISS 8/10 1000
Prospector 9/10 500
No Good Gofers 10/10 1300
Popeye 11/10 900
Wipeout 11/10 400
Capt Fan 12/10 1300
Jackbot 12/10 1100
space odyssey 12/10 700
space mission 12/10 500

Bow and arrow 1/11 400
Road Kings 1/11 900
Strange Science 1/11 free
AFM 2/11 2400
Fireball 2/11 600
Dracula 3/11 1100
Mars Trek 3/11 600
Joker Poker 3/11 800
Simpsons 4/11 700
Meteor 6/11 500
Jungle King 8/11 250
BOPinbot 8/11 1100
Jackbot 9/11 1100
Fish Tales 10/11 1000
Bobby Orr 12/11 500

Yet you still have 4 games. You didn't sell them...and even if you were to, there isn't a mad rush of collection purges, so all of your games have held their value & probably worth more than when you bought them.

That's why the economy doesn't affect the price of games. Only a simultaneous dump of collections would cause prices to fall, as people would be competing to sell their games.

Lol, I paid near the exact same price for a few games off that list just recently... is the pinflation “Myth” busted?!?

Deals are still to be had, and there is still shit sitting for the same prices the past 10 years. I just bought a Hollywood Heat for $500 and it SAT for weeks at that price. Inflation and pinflation are real since, as you’ve all noticed, hardly any of the old farts die, yet there are more and more <1 year accounts popping up every day.

If you stop trying to buy the overhyped A++ list games like MM, MB, and Addams, then you’re gonna get burned by the price. Just buy Gottliebs and other “shitty” games, prices are pretty reasonable still and those games are honestly great!

Already above that in Pa and rising, ever since the new leader shutdown the keystone pipeline!!

More fuel for the fire.... A Williams 1987 Fire! sold today for $6,125. That was a $4900 bid + 25% buyers fee on a Bidsquare auction from Hollywood, FL. How out of line is that? Well according to PinballPrices.com (yes, that's my website) a fully restored Fire! recently sold on eBay for $3500 and it was truly restored. The other verified sales in 2020 were for $1800 and $2360.

Now the auction site did describe this machine as "collectors quality" but the pictures posted don't really support that classification. Here's a link https://www.bidsquare.com/online-auctions/whitleys-auctioneers/williams-1987-pinball-amusement-machine-fire-556-2136705

And to bring some stats to the discussion, the average price of a used pinball machine went up $440 in 2019, another $423 in 2020, and this year (based on 250 tracked sales) prices are up $789. That's more than 20% per year.

These stats are based on more than 1,500 verified sales each year (2018-2020). The average includes all titles sold that year from old EM's to "new" resales. I am working on an article for Pinside with a lot more detail and stats, comparing individual title price changes.

Fire! (resized).JPG

Yes but don’t we generally ignore auction prices? I’ve seen shitbox projects sell at auction for thousands above real, common price.

Depends on the auction... if it is an operator to operator auction, yes, if it is a public auction, not so much. There used to be a day when there were 2 prices for a machine, what you would sell to another operator for, and what you would sell to a private owner for, and they were no where near close to each other. Usually the op would sell for what he had in it minus some depreciation to another operator, but to a private owner the price would jump up to gouge them a little since the machine was going out of public rotation. Back when I bought my first machine, I went to the operator auctions and hung out for a couple of months till people got to see me and thought I was an operator. I still ended up paying $50 more than average for my machine only because the owner/op bid it up $50 since he could tell I wanted it. That was also a sobering revelation, the owner could bid on his own lot during these auctions instead of the auction house worrying about reserve prices. Public auction prices can range all over the place, especially when the price skyrockets for something really dumb, like a lost wood Space Invaders pin that the auctioneer tells people was personally owned by Ridley Scott...

Bullshit! (See, two can play this game) That doesn't say those prices are the going rate or what condition you bought the games in. Per your list strange science had 0 value in 2011. Shit, I piad 500 for fastbreak back in 2017. You must have really wanted that to overpay that much in 2011

Gotta love this. Everything around us is going up in cost from lumber to ice cream but why hasn't pin cost gone down?

This thread is dead anyway baby.

Time for a new price thread tomorrow!

Yep. $3.52 for a medium cone at DQ. Captain Fantastic will have a slightly high price tag when I sell cause I need my cones.

The frozen dairy dessert market balloon is bound to pop (see this IS NOT a bubble thread).

Only idiots are buying frozen dairy desserts today, when the price is bound to plummet next year.

Next time, tell them you used to get the same cone for 99 cents and that's ALL your paying!

Crap just realized my posting that picture I just gave away a free dilly bar. Oh well, enjoy whoever gets to it first

The kid gave you a cherry and some tap water. You made out ok though.

I got a large last summer and it was comically big.

I like this particular DQ cause they always give you a medium beverage sized water for free. Most other places give you the small blizzard sized cup. Plus their medium cones are actually medium. I still stop by to take my ma out for one just to get her out of her house for a little bit. She always gets the small size and half the time ours always look the same.

It’s all about the specific store and how they are trained.

Here you go Levi. Real wisdom!

They jacked the price of a cone at my local DQ and I can’t even get a swirl cone because the chocolate side of the machine is still broken.

Yes one by me is much generous than store 6 miles away from me. Location is king!

Hey now. My 13 year old wanted one of these for a recent celebration. He doesn't want to wait till next year for ice cream economics.
Go ahead. Slice off a virtual slice Levi!

DQ4LEVI (resized).jpg

I would like a slice of that if you don't mind. You named your son Stewart? Great name.

So there is a consumer price index that can be used to figure out how much the price is impacted by inflation. CPI today minus CPI from the past divided by CPI now times 100 is the percent of actual inflation. Not really sure which CPI is most relevant. Maybe recreation.

DQ is some kind of money laundering front... have you ever tried to "open" your own DQ franchise? It can't and won't happen... I know, I have tried. Dairy Queen is some kind of "privately owned" entity and only "they" can decide when and where to put in a new one. You have to be some kind of "insider" or "friend of a friend" to be lucky enough to open a store. So why the heck is soft serve so cloak and daggerdly controlled?!? Something smells fishy in Denmark, I tell ya... Got to be some nefarious reason they keep that tight of a control on a lowfat ice milk product. I went through the drive in the other day, ordered a banana milkshake. I thought I was stuck in a scene from a Quintin Tarentino movie... "That will be $5.38..." That's a five dollar shake?, You don't put alcohol or nothin it it? And it cost five dollars?!? Wow, ok...

That ice cream cake above my wife spent $26 on at DQ!

My initials are DQ so I feel like a traitor, but they refuse to give me a discount for having those initals so F 'em. Around here there are any number of places to get reasonably priced soft serve, but if you're happy with vanilla, it's hard to beat McDonald's.

Do you guys ever look at the other nice niche items on the buy and sell pages and think - "Damn that's cheap, that's like half as much as a MM"

That's when I realize that pinballs are in a bubble.

I used to really like those Mister Misty freeze drinks when I was a kid. I think it was slushie mixed with the ice cream. Now I'm like alright that's way too much sugar.

Prices are up, yet build quality is down!!!

Same old story!

I bet those cones have serious dimpling issues. They try to explain that it's "waffling" and it's totally normal but we all know that's horseshit!