Too late dude. The cows are out of the barn! The toothpaste is outta the tube!!

Your hatred of noobs cannot fix anything now. Day late and a dollar short. Where was your righteous loathing back when it could have mattered?

All you can do now is a hope for a bubble burst.

I wonder if pinside has any thoughts on that?

The train has left the station!
The ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah!
You missed the bus!
Elvis has left the building!

Personally, I am glad there is new blood so manufacturers can still be making machines.

That is like saying I think too many people are eating chocolate candy and wish they would stop so I can buy it all for myself

I’m a long time player but fairly new to the hobby (6 years), but one of my favorite parts of the hobby is getting people stoked about playing these games. I think it’s great when people get into the hobby after playing at my house, and I have at least 5 new buddies in the hobby as a direct result of my basement. We have parties and once in a while someone comes over to talk with that look….uh oh he/she’s hooked. I think it’s great for the hobby personally and am willing to wait/pay a little more for the health of the hobby.

Nobody likes pinball anymore. It’s too popular.

Odd to wish for this as you own a pin repair shop

Adding that I am having more friends come over who want to play pinball who did not even now it still existed and seeing the look of joy on their faces is priceless. Very grateful that I was able to reconnect to games from my youth and being able to enjoy the new frontier of games that are coming out.

Let's not be like the people that killed square dancing as a hobby. The square dancers themselves. They formed cliques, did not want to get young blood in and got what they wanted - a nice comfort zone and a hobby that is on the down swing instead of the up swing (or allemande left ).

The only point your making is more people getting into the hobby has made it a more expensive hobby for us. Things being harder to get right now also have to deal with supply shortages.

The more people that get in the hobby the better. More companies will get into the pinball game and possibly create competition. More IP holders of note will want to work with pinball companies. More young people will discover pinball and want to become a designer someday.

It sucks things are more expensive, but its not just pinball. Bring on all the new folks. Id love to have more pinball friends.

From a profile that's less than 3 years old, I'm unclear on what constitutes new people?

I’m also a long time vinyl guy which has, as everyone knows, had a crazy resurgence over the last few years. Same deal. Hobbyists are pissed about not being able to find anything anymore and the prices have gone through the roof for used records and turntables. The plus side is that pretty much every new release is coming out on vinyl which, although expensive, is very good news for guys with turntables.

“Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded” Yogi

There is nothing like the joy of takeing an old busted up machine and getting it playing again ....new people can't do that yet so there are still deals to be had ....just means you gotta change your aproach and treat it more like bitcoin mining ........after all it's just one hobby among many

I would say that this insane resurgence is good for the hobby.
ESPECIALLY OLDER MACHINES

There has always been a finite number of classic machines. Now at this point parting them out is INSANE. Prices are rising so fast that you can make the same if not more by just selling those projects that would have been parted out 10 years ago.
If someone parts out a Cheetah or Quicksilver or TZ in this market, they clearly don’t care about money, because total garbage-pile machines are selling for 5-6k alone.

Interesting that the pinball repair guy is complaining about new people getting into the hobby.

Hate to break to you but it’s not just pinball. This is happening in almost all luxury or collectible goods markets.

Pinball is The Broccoli Tree. Meaning we destroy the things we love. We change and sometimes destroy those things by loving them, and wanting to share them with the world. I love pinball and it is always more fun with people.
More people make for more pin companies, more innovation, more part makers, more restoring of old school pins, and the greater need associated more people give birth to some amazing small businesses right here on Pinside that make parts and mods for our pinside. Even South Park and Baywatch pins need love! I think more is better…but I only recently had money to start buying pins. Anyway good night.

and I would add that making your own machine is going to get easier in the future because of it. I see the home brew end picking up steam in the future and I would guess we will see some pretty interesting machines.

How about all the people who own 30 or 40 pins? Aren’t they driving up prices and demand? How about the flippers who buy games to sell them before they even take delivery of them?

Pinball is still boutique.

Enough new people get in to the hobby and economies of scale can kick in for the manufacturers increasing profits and reducing upward price pressure.

Enough new people get in to the hobby and demand can drive increased competition, downward price pressure and increased production capacity.

Enough new people get in to the hobby and production and supply of replacement components can increase reducing the cost of parts and increase their accessibility.

Enough new people get in to the hobby and the more incentivized skilled individuals will be to service and maintain pins as a profession.

And if Enough new people get in to the hobby and none of the above happens I can sell my collection in 15 years or so for
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It’s great that all these people are getting into pins. Sure prices keep going up but the new pins are amazing. And all the buyers are making it possible for pins to get better. We’re in the middle of a golden age. If anything, the higher prices are are making us more careful what we buy. Instead of going after any good buy and racing across town to get the pin first, I’m carefully selecting the pins I want. And with the higher prices, I could sell 1 or 2 pins to get a nib. 5 years ago, I would have to sell half my collection to get a nib.

Shhhh, about square dancing I don’t need more people filling up my dance hall… Promenade!

Reminds me of the movie Gangs of New York. The resident Irish unhappy with all the new Irish emigrating into the country.

Many years later the country survived.

I'm sure pinball will too.

LTG : )

Don't blame new people coming in but the like, 3(?), manufacturers who have done nothing to up production.

Was interested if any engineering jobs at Stern... No career page or nothing on their site. Doesn't seem like they have any interest in keeping up with demand.

I read something about Jersey Jack... Supposedly he serviced pinballs but there was one manufacturer (Stern) who was slow as hell to release pinballs so he had less and less work until he made his own pinball company.

So like yeah... Never knew a market could be dominated by so few companies with such poor and unstructured releases/manufacturing.

Though in general, I agree. New people coming in who are just transient or trying to be cool or those with money to just drop for the sake of it (not passionate or even appreciative)... Totally lame.

You sound like a selfish person.

Yep. Still selfish.

These are true. Aside from pinball, I'm also interested in vinyl, retro video games, and cars, but the markets for all of these things have gone through the roof.

Yup. I blame the people like the OP

“Pins were great 2 years ago too though. Hello DP, hello JP. I'm not sure new buyers are why pins are so great these days, I'd say it's more the new designers and coders we've gotten recently. Elwin, Eric, Tim Sexton, Raymond Davidson, ect.”

Pins from 2 years ago are new pins. And anyone who started buying pins during the pandemic is relatively new. Don’t hate. There’s plenty of room for new people. Including you.

Too late. Too bad. It is now inevitable. And the blame falls squarely on one person. This guy: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/it-s-time-to-make-pinball-mainstream

It's bad for the prices but good for everything else so I still like the increased popularity of pins.

Spare parts are so much easier to find nowadays due to pinball being popular and actually being a lucrative business now. I rather have expensive but 100% working games than old crummy pins worth almost nothing with missing unobtainable key parts making them unplayable.

Popularity is good fort the hobby overall.

I'd rather have high prices and a thriving marketplace than low priced machines and no parts to repair them. I dumped all my machines back in 2005 because the market was terrible at the time.

Weren't you looking for your first pin just 2 years ago?

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/price-check-gorgar-1

Kind of a dick move to steal a game from everyone that has been here longer than you don't you think? Thanks for driving the prices up for us!

Everyone of us was new to pinball at one time.

That dude is hilarious , he didn't do much better in the Bob Saget thread .
It's funny seeing new guys go off , without reading the room .

IMG_20220113_233226 (resized).jpg

The more the merrier. Jump in, the waters warm.

I don’t care if I completely get priced out and have to sell all my games. The best parts of this hobby are the people.

What do we think? That you're selfish. I was in the hobby before you, so I could say you helped ruin it.

Unfortunatley the booming hobby has attracted so many scammers lately. One FB thread about pinball has a constant stream of new to the hobby people asking about the credibility of one super deal or another. "Hey guys, is this Attack from Mars ad for $3K legit?"

Of course the old guard has been responsible for funding scammers like DeepRoot.

Any hobby ebbs and flows. Not everyone will stay in the hobby for the long term. Machines break and they either have the time and dedication to fix it or they sell it and try something else.

More people in the hobby preserve the B and C titles shed by Baby Boomers retiring to Florida, which otherwise might be dumped.

More people in the hobby expands the manufacturing base for new games from multiple companies. Higher prices allow veterans to trade up. Larger base, more economical for parts manufacturers to reproduce parts.

I'm happy that there is more pinball on location these days.

Has anyone actually quantified how popular pinball is and how much the home market has grown? I guarantee that it is still incredibly niche. I would also warn against assuming that sales for at home luxury good like pinballs or hot tubs will continue to stay high once the pandemic is beyond us. Whether that’s 1 year or 4 years from now. I’m not suggesting pinball will “crash” but rather correct its growth pattern to what it was closer to pre pandemic.

This is like when people move into a neighborhood which was clear cut to create, then complain to city hall when someone wants to chop down a tree in the adjacent woods.

We tried to buy a new hot tub in Sept. Now we are on a year long waiting list. Damn those new hot tub buyers!

For me pinball machines have always been expensive .
I got a JJP GNR LE but I didn't just pull $15.5k out of my back pocket .
I was able to do that after years of buying and selling other pinballs and arcade machines .
I could have gotten a few old a games but I felt like putting all my money into one new game and I'm loving it , and I'm not even a GNR fan

I've been telling people that PINBALL SUCKS for 15 years, but people haven't been listening!!!!

I'm gonna go to my gameroom now and get in some games, but I'm not gonna like it.

I'm just being sarcastic and joking of course. Pinball is sorta fun.

Been collecting vinyl for years. I'm done. Back in 2015-2018 I was finding hundreds at a time. For dirt cheap. Those days are long gone. I recently gave up. Vinyl is as bad if not worse than pinball as far as prices going up and difficulty in finding deals. Too many eyes looking now

Not sure this is happening. Been in the hobby for 7-8 years now and prices have steadily climbed and have doubled in the last year.

The way I read this is as "waahh, i can't easily horde games to myself and hide them from the public. waaah!!!! whoa is me!!!! i like pinball to be elitist"

as others have noted, there's a special irony coming from someone ho hasn't been here that long. i've been playing rabidly for 9 years. i owned two machines but couldn't afford them any more. i'm not bitter that i'm priced out of the market. but i do get pissed at people who complain about prices but then lock machines away from any kind of public play. would i like to be able to buy a medieval madness for 3K? sure. but that's not gonna happen. the only consolation is when people make their machines publicly playable. having them public stifles demand because players don't have to buy, they can play.

If you paid 15,500 for a gnr le you got robbed. They are 10k NIB still and sold daily

Oh no, more people are enjoying my hobby!