We don't exactly have Kelly Blue Book for this hobby. Pinballprice, mrpinball, boston pinball, and pinside are really only good for getting out of the parking lot and into the ballpark when it comes to prices.

Pricing police and pricing cheerleaders, at least in my opinion, are a natural phenomenon born out of a completely unregulated market and that the both act to bring order and stability to the market.

Take away the price police, and the price cheerleaders will drive pin prices unnaturally high. People buying in at such a time become mistaken about what the community is really willing to pay because the non-buyers simply say GLWTS and keep their pricing opinions to themselves. A (comparably small) crash ensues. We see this on a smaller scale every year as we move from the holidays into the summer.

Take away the price cheerleaders and the price police drive prices unnaturally low. The exact reverse happens and people selling at this time sell their machines for far less than what most would pay. While this is good for people getting into the hobby, it's bad for sellers because it devalues the time and effort they put into their machines. I speculate that owners that might want to sell a pin will be less likely to keep it well-maintained. Why pay for that high-end restoration if you might just sell it at a loss.

What if we have neither? This is what I call a "sucker's market" or otherwise known as "Ebay Syndrome". With nobody shouting about what they think a pin is worth, pins get priced all over the place. The cheap pins get bought up by speculators/collectors/etc; people who can afford to hold onto them for a while. They then get posted for sale at very high prices. They don't move, but so what? There's no immediate limit to how long a pin can be sat on and re-posted. All it takes is one sucker with too much money and too little information to click the metaphorical "buy it now" button. The result is the appearance of high value pins but with an extremely low number of sells. This causes the hobby to stagnate because it naturally trends towards pins sitting in storage going unsold. It could take many years before a seller is finally forced to reduce prices.

I say both policers and cheerleaders are ideal. Their incessant arguing serves the purpose of flooding the community with as many pricing opinions as possible that covers both ends of the spectrum. Maximizing information helps both buyer and seller make the wisest choices they are capable of. This information is vital if both buyer and seller are to come out feeling like they made a fair deal. These feelings instill confidence, and healthy markets revolve around confidence. Yes it may be annoying at times, but this is the kind of market info that companies pay big bucks for.