Which sales? Ebay prices which are awful, "reported" prices for sales on Pinside which are always wrong and never reported?

If someone tells me that my game is worth $1,500 less or whatever than I'm asking, then I tell them go find that machine for that price and ignore them. The game will sell at my price and I know it.

Sure, but that won't happen to here we are.

Games with more sales on Pinside tend to reflect a more accurate price range. For instance, TZ and TAF seem to be up to date.

https://pinside.com/pinball/machine/twilight-zone

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https://pinside.com/pinball/machine/addams-family

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https://pinside.com/pinball/machine/waterworld

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It doesn't look like there are too many recent sales for waterworld.
https://pinside.com/pinball/market/classifieds/archive?s=1&ad_machine_key=797

All the price estimates come from confirmed sales data.

And keep in mind, those estimates and are just a starting point. Sellers are free to do additional research and put whatever price they want on a game, and buyers are free do to additional research before buying a game.

A price estimate is not gospel. It's an estimate.

There is no great tool for valuing pinball machines or any other relatively small volume item. Big data may eventually help but teasing out accurate information from the lies and omissions is currently an impossible task and may never be possible.

Restricting to a specific date range, using the median value, and throwing out the outliers MIGHT help but obviously it's more work. Possibly asking in the feature request area would get robin thinking about it but would the new numbers be significantly better than the current numbers? I doubt it since condition varies so widely.

Keep in mind that estimates include games in various states and conditions. Not just fully restored plug & play examples.

Slightly off topic, but is there any way to view sold listings and what they sold for for a specific game on Pinside? If there is I haven't been able to find it.

As usual the OP misses the point.

These “pinside values” are not there to actually give you lockdown accurate information, they exist to drive traffic to pinside and it works.

Exact same thing as another “10 thread a year” subject, pinside pinball machine rankings.

These are to drive traffic to pinside, and for novelty use.

Seems to be your method,
46 unsold
“Decided to keep “. Hmm

Oh snap

anything to keep the value of pinball machines down is a good thing. Not sure what you are complaining about.

I really wish that wasn't an option. The only thing worse about pinball price inflation is where people don't disclose what they sold for. I wonder if the estimated average includes all sold values even though they are not displayed in the classified when it is archived? That would be helpful to know.

Bottom line is if you want something a bit close to current value... just look up the archives and take a look at asking price, if it sold, and if you are lucky...a reported value of sale.

The point here though is that you are complaining they aren't using recent sales data, but you also aren't giving them any recent sales data. I understand if you didn't sell these machines on pinside, but how do you propose solving the problem of getting sales data if you yourself don't even sell games through pinside? Where should the data come from?

I like the idea of discussing this, but would really disagree that $2800 is reasonable for a frickin' Waterworld pin. Yeesh. I am one of those guys that uses the pinside value and see alot of folks listing way over and it bugs me.

www.pinballprices.com lists the average sale price by year so you can what's going up, or down and by how much.

As far as I know, you can still turn off the forum post feature for sale ads and avoid any price policing. I think a lot of pinsiders who have and buy games have a good idea of value if they are looking at a title to buy w/out relying on ave Pinside sale price.

If you are having problems selling a game here the reason is simple: your asking price is too high.

Not pinside’s fault.

This. A broken project game and a highly restored game go to the same price guide. The price guide is fundamentally flawed.

It's only accurate for relatively recent games and the most in demand games.

I actually think the pinside average is pretty good. You just like to try to sell your games for 50% than they are worth.

bingo

I'm pretty sure that's just correlation, not causation.

Honestly, I dont know that a waterworld for $2600-$2800 is reasonable.

You also have to factor in location. A Waterworld may be $2800 where you are, but is probably much less in bigger markets. Pinside includes everything. It has no mechanism for adjusting to your local market.

Also, here are the "recent" sales ads for Waterworld that I see. One is $4000 for a "high level restoration". One is $2500, the rest are under $2000. This is the data. How do you propose we fix this?

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/for-sale-waterworld-9
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/for-sale-waterworld-8
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/for-sale-waterworld-7
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/for-sale-waterworld-6
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/for-sale-waterworld-5

That's not how it works. I've sold dozens of games on Pinside and I've never once looked at "Pinside's suggested value."

You think a Waterworld is worth $2800. Clearly, you are clueless on what games are "worth", are having no luck selling your ridiculously overpriced games, and are taking it out on some dumb algorithm that nobody but the greenest noob takes seriously.

People don't check that when they see a For Sale ad. They just see the For Sale ad and if it's $2800 for a waterworld they chuckle and move on.

Everybody gets pissy when their games don't sell. Most adjust their asking price or declare in a huff they are "going to ebay!" or "taking it off the market!"

Others whine about Pinside.

Only one of the above stated options actually helps you sell your game - guess which one!

Hell, I'm looking at sales posts on one of the larger Facebook sales groups and they are all low $2000 or less. Waterworld ain't worth $2800 to most people in most of the country. You may be able to find someone to pay that, but that doesn't reflect the value to most people in the market.

No it would be impossible to fix because so many people over price their junk

There just isn't going to be an accurate price guide. It all too highly dependent on condition and location. It is what it is.

But again, I don't mess with those people. I price my games fairly for my area. If someone doesn't like it, then they move on. I've never had to lower my asking price. But I guess I'm not asking absurd enough prices to begin with.

Frankly, this post smells like someone who overprices their pins and wishes Pinside values would catch up to their opinion of value.

$2600-$2800 for waterworld is way too much.

I find the pinside average values are mostly fairly accurate. Price right and it moves.

I don't whine about Pinside, or whine about pinball pricing on a certain game in a certain ad per se. What I whine about is not having the cash back when TZ was going for $1200 a pop!!! Who could have imagined that NIB prices would get this high?!? Or that the average price for a pinball machine in working condition has gone from $1500 to $3k within about the last 5 years. I remember when you could find player pins for $1K that now go for $4K depending on the title. I remember when reproduction playfields were a pipe dream, but now have fueled and driven a frenzied restoration push that has some prices of "restored" machines topping the CE/LE prices. And the collector market has gone freaking nutz... I sometimes wonder if all this "restoration" is not just pin shaming others to spend money on a machine that they are never going to recoup. Who (in their right mind) would pay big bucks to restore a Raven or Hollywood Heat, or Genesis? And after they did, who (in their right mind) would pay for a fully restored Genisis machine? (My appologies to Genisis owners everywhere)

Some people just don’t understand, or care to understand, the condition variable. I agree with TreyBo69 above, if you know your machine is worth once price but someone else disagrees, great, they are free to purchase somewhere else at that price. If they can. And if they can, hooray on them.

Also, some people truly don’t care about condition, which I get. I am not one of those people.

And yet you have the grey heart?

You seem to have your own price guide that doesn’t come close to reality
Based on some of your recent postings

The "as usual" snipe was unwarranted.

That stings, man.

Pricing a game really isn't that hard unless the seller has put a bunch of mods on the game. Most sellers want to see a return on those, but the reality is their lucky to see $.50 on the dollar. There are a few exceptions i.e. color dmd, maybe PDI glass, and a few rare mods that were made (WOZ witch and monkey)....I typically price my games based on whats recently sold the last 6 months + whatever I think is fair for the upgrades or give the seller the option to buy the game with some removed (i.e. color dmd). That being said I don't like to ship as you can eliminate a lot of drama if you can sell locally. That way the buyer can inspect, and play the game and theres no surprises....

This any good? https://www.pinballprices.com/

Well, I see so many “less than desirable” titles jacked to $4k+ after the owner, usually a noob, finds out his uncle has a Genesis in the basement, buys it for $500, dumps a little into restoring it, Does a basic shop job, all LEDs, powder coated everything, new reproduction plastics, new targets, new playfield, new Translite/BG and then throw it up on CL for $5000... yeah, that’s doing us all a lot of favors for sure...

True in theory. Application is tricky. Keep it anonymous? Invites abuse. Keep it public, invites judgement. Short term, pita. Long term, yes, a huge boon for accurate pin prices. I suggest Robin look into a real world application as Pinside could be the hub of pinball reference pricing.

Now maybe if it was Punchy the Clown... I could see it.

46 unsold

To be fair, he thinks Waterworld is a $2800 pin. So maybe he does have 46 unsold.