As long as the LCD does not prevent us from gluing a million tacky mods to the playfield, legs, flipper buttons, underside of the cabinet, speaker grilles and top of the backbox, should be no effect from going LCD.

My opinion: Looking at pins as an investment is going to lead to tears and anguish.

Don C.

Totally agree with this. I love pinball of all kinds but right now it seems most big collectors only like DMDs. If LCD screens start coming with some regularity, we will eventually see people who only buy games with LCDs.

I guess I had better rush then to put an LCD television on top of my Fireball with reruns of Ryu screaming "Shoryuken!" from SFII, otherwise it might get further devalued in the future. I mean hey, this is so decrepitly old it does not even have a DMD! It must be worthless without a LCD, right?

If you think this is rediculous, now you understand my belief in new technology (which is not new in this case anyway because it has been around for over a decade) NOT determining pinball machine pricing, other to inflate NIB costs unless the coding is extremely well integrated with the rest of the features. Anything "new" costs more in itself, but does not radically effect collectible items, just future releases.

When Colt created a newly designed M16A4 automatic rifle, it did not devalue an original 1874 Sharps rifle.

The cause and effect is perception, not reality. However, the scary part is perception sometimes becomes reality, based on opinions.

Some of the "biggest" collectors own HUGE amounts of EM, woodrail, and wedgeheads. Warehouses full of them, and no space or time set them all up. We are talking 100s sometimes 1000s. They do not post on PinSide.

Ask yourself that same question or other collectors in 25 years. You will find that the answer is different. Most collectors who "stick around in the long haul" expound their collections into other eras, manufacturers, and designs. It is part of the hobby. It builds experience and interest.

I'm not sure what you are saying. That there won't be people like this?

There are people today that only play the latest Sterns so I don't think this is totally outlandish.

There are always people who collect (generally more player types however) the "newest of the new", nothing wrong with that. They come and go like leaves in the wind. They sell out and move on when they get "bored".

However, as I stated long term collectors generally expound their knowledge to other eras and genres. They do not stand "firm" with only one type of machine or only one manufacturer. That is truly limiting opportunities.

For sure but what I've also noticed is that long time collectors remember what they paid for games back in the day. Some have been very vocal about paying for past games at today's prices. It's the new people that will drive up the price for the A titles of the past. The lesser Stern DMD titles will eventually lower in price just like the lesser B/W has. There was a Gilligan's that supposedly sold for $850 on CL this week. That's pretty cheap when compared with better pins from the same time period like T2.

To me, LCD is considered "bling".

If they last longer than plasma, I'm all for it.

LCD allows for more animation potential, but IMO, you don't play the LCD, (unless you're playing in video mode).

LCD displays may attract "new" players, but it still boils down to playfield layout/rulesets.

I hope so. I hope everything gets bumped down a crap load, and I can pick up SS for nothing and EMs for under nothing.

Threat of remakes is doing more damage to 90's B/W values than anything Stern is doing with an LCD.

Ben is absolutely correct here, regardless of technology used.

LCD do last longer than plasma, but in a home environment it makes minor difference. I am talking about there use for pinball machines, not televisions.

I have games I bought brand new from 1992-1994 and the displays are unchanged.

Outgassing is slow, if you turn your machines off.
25 years in the original machines?
That is longer than the technology of LCDs itself.
"Yep, them LCDs r beter, that's fer shur".

It is more likely you will have DMD board issues first with capacitors or voltage issues, that I can vouch for from experience.

DMDs may outgas, but LCDs lose pixels, and are even more suscepible to damage on the screen if mishandled.

The advantages of LCD are the decreased voltage requirements, flexibility of use, weight, and color programming among other factors of technology. Cost is factor now too as they are WAY cheaper.

Take your pick, I take original in most cases.

What damage are remakes doing?
1: It's stabilizing and cutting down outrages prices.
2: It's putting more games out there for more people to play. Remakes or not. Playing a original or remake your still playing the same dang game. We'll save the who remake vs original argument for another thread.

This is very true. However, how many large collectors are out there that are active enough to make an impact on the market verse how many fanboys, hobbyists, players, operators, noobs? Most people will work their way up from what they started playing to the newest best-est available thing on the market.
Operators need the newest thing to rake in the money. Fanboys will jump on LCD and never look back. Noobs coming into the market will have to have them. With each new system the old goes down. Sure there are some stand outs and all prices are on the rise but not as much as the next big thing.
I consider myself a collector, I want what I want. It doesn't matter if it's a EM or a WOZ.
Yes LCD's will devalue DMD's that's for sure but it's not going to happen overnight or even be noticeable. Meaning you won't see prices dropping like flies, you just won't see DMD prices making large gains once LCD's take over.

Can't pop a bubble without damaging it.

Let me put it a simpler way.

New technology does not increase the price of outpacing collectibility of "worthy" machines based on the market. It has not been this way for over 20 years.

Market adjustments in comparison to technology specifically regarding pinball machines are never in the advantage of technology in the collector world.

It does not "equal out".

This is not the 1980s with the transition from late EMs to SS, for those machines that got left in the dust. The is not the "video game revolution" of Pacman.

TAF, TZ, IJ (WMS), MM, etc is not going to be worth less in 6 months or 3-5 years for that matter because they do not have LCD. They will be worth more, based on current market insanity.
It did not happen with numeric or alpha numeric either for proper quality examples of titles.
"Top 10" late model SS machines have TRIPLED in price in the last 10 years alone. Early popular SS around 30%+ mark up, and it's not inflation, technology, or purely new title pricing effects.

Has nothing to do with the price of DMD's dropping over time. It's going to happen.

They sure do.

Current market insanity has only DMD and one LCD to gauge by. I'm already seeing better prices on A-list games and I'm not just talking about MM and AFM.
If you read my "Time Capsule" thread you will know I got out of the hobby around 2005 and just got back in around 2013. I know nothing of prices in between but can say about what prices I seen then and prices now. Keep in mind each area is different and some people have always gotten better prices then others. And I'm talking about average condition games. Not fully restored games.
Look at the prices of most EM games. Gottlieb Wedge heads have came down in price.
Gottlieb system 1 and system 80/80a/80b have stayed the same or came down.
Williams system 3 to 7 games have pretty much stayed the same. Black Knight has gone up.
Classic bally games are split 50/50
Lost World, Silverball Mania, Paragon, Space Invaders, Strikes and Spares. These were all very popular games that sold well and in high demand back then. They have all gone down or stayed the same since 2005.
Fathom, Centaur have gone crazy.
90' B/W prices have gone crazy in the past couple of years and they will probably climb for another year but that's about it.
If you look through pinsiders current collection and previous collection you will see a growing trend. Out are the 90's B/W and in are the modern sterns. When LCD gets main-stream it will be the same thing.
So we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.

There is no such thing as infinite inflation in any one thing, look at oil! What goes up, absolutely will come down, and those who are stubborn, ride it the whole way down...

This is the misconception when it comes to this topic. Collectors don't like DMD games because it has a DMD - it has to do with the GAME - the light shows, sounds, voices, music, toys, ramps and code. The DMD era of games changed drastically due to designers & and technology...it wasn't about the display. Games with LCDs so far aren't really any different as games. Sure it has a color display, but the game itself hasn't changed. It won't devalue DMD games at all because those games still hold up as GAMES. No DMD has dropped in value due to WOZ or Full Throttle. Their color displays don't invalidate the gameplay and experience of DMD games.

See, I agree with this, but it also leads to my somewhat deeper thoughts on the subject. I'd say the answer to everyone's musings and questions about what LCD will do to the prices, really lies in what advancements to the gameplay can be made through a hi-res LCD display.

I'm with everyone else... I don't even look at a display other than to see my score really, and to watch a multiball start animation roll through. But I feel like there have to be so many more possibilities for easily displaying head-to-head cloud gaming opponents and scores, and just a ton of modern features that haven't been actualized or even realized yet.

Also, I haven't really studied up on LCD in the pinball world yet, so I'm pretty clueless to what's been done with WOZ's screen, and what's in the rumor mill for Stern's first. That being said, if Stern makes LCD the norm with their releases, I think it will be a good thing for catching the eye of kids today who haven't touched a pin before. So DMD prices will eventually be affected in that aspect largely because they'll become mainly sought after by folks like us here on Pinside... However I can't tell if I think that'll make prices go down, or actually up.

Agree

This is a good point. Many DMD games may not end up being cheaper but they won't be taking the jumps in value that the top titles from today or the newer LCDs will take.

The point where SS started to appear instantly made any EM game look ancient.

Gottlieb even printed their score reels to try and make them appear to be SS.

We could not sell a used EM pin for even $25, and sadly, most of them went to the dump.

neptune_(resized).jpg

I could care less about LCD. If they go color dmd on all machines that would be great. But a LCD screen really only looks good in attract mode. Or for those watching. It adds nothing to gameplay.

A LCD the size of a DMD with HD graphics would be cool. But you don't need an entire LCD screen in the backbox.

It was a different time and a different context. Back then you didn't have he collector scene. Pinball was still a mainstream thing. Now it's a retro/collector/barcade thing. The dmd era is still held in the highest regard. And again - the leap isn't here from dmd to LCD as the general game is still the same. EM to SS brought digital sound, and computer tech. It was a wildly different experience at the time. The WOZ experience isn't that different than a DMD pin experience. Sure the color display is neat - but were used to color displays in our lives...it's not mindblowing or anything.

what? you don't like having $100's of dollars of useless shit piled in every open spot on the playfield? Wish I could find that pic that Terry posted, where he filled the TZ game up with all kinds of "mods". Was filled with everything he could find like candy bars and what not. Hilarious.

I got one question for you. How many EM's and SS's pins do you have in your current and past collection?
DMD brought animation, deeper rules and a few new improvements.
You can only improve a pin so much before it becomes a Virtual Pin.

See Multimorphic P3 to see how much you can change a pin without changing it into a virtual pin. Spectacular.

The price inflation will only grow for the next few years. When stern closes their US factories, prices will steady as new pins produced overseas dominate the limited market. If there's a market for 10k pins, China will be producing them shortly.

As I mentioned earlier, one or two LCD games aren't going to change the DMD market. Once it becomes the norm, DMD prices will drop. LCD screens make monochrome DMD screens look old.

And yes, many people buy DMD games for their screens. The DMD allows for a greater detail of information and entertainment than LED and alpha-numeric could provide.

It's the natural evolution of Pinball. We've seem it time and time again since the 1930's.

I was waiting for that comment. Looks to have a promising future.

I don't follow your logic at all

You say a LCD screen only looks cool in attract mode and for ppl watching and adds nothing to gameplay. But say a color dmd would be great.

How does a color dmd add more to the gameplay than a LCD screen would to a player

if there were 2 same machines. One with a color dmd and one with a mono color dmd. Which would the majority of the ppl chose if the price was the same or slightly more ($100 or less)

I would even venture to say if JJP made a woz version with a dmd for $500 - 1000 less than a LCD. The LCD would easily outsell a hypothetical dmd version

What I don't hear from woz owners is that jjp made the game with a dmd

What I do hear from ppl buying sterns is that they should have a LCD screen

At the rate colordmd is going they might have them available for a good amount of the DMD titles by the time Stern makes it the norm. While not necessarily the same it at least gets rid of the monochrome color on those games.

I don't get the long discussion. Good games demand good money. Always. No new game is going to make TZ or AFM less desirable to me. I'm not going to buy a new game just because it has a color display either. People collect older pins for different reasons. Some games I actually prefer older displays for nostalgia. Other games look better updated with a color dmd. It comes down to the quality of the game as a whole and that x factor that makes us love certain games.

Disagree. What happened in the past for pinball is irrelevant to where it is now. People like the DMD era games for THE GAMES - not the display. New games haven't made old games less fun. Old DMD games have kept creeping up due to supply and demand. They're still incredibly fun, everyone wants them - even at rising prices they seem "cheap" compared to NIB games. That's not going to change. No amount of LCD games are going to make pinball collectors go "Oh, my Shadow is now not as cool and fun" resulting in a mass sell-off or reduced demand.

No - its not a huge jump in tech its just colourizing and increasing rez on what would be there already, the only jump in price will be the premium stern charges for it

P3 and P2K did big advancements in technology and still plays like a normal pin.

btw, 60% of my collection is early SS and 9% of it is EM's.

For your sake, with over 20 DMD games, I hope you're right.

However, history teaches us otherwise.

pin_values_(resized).jpg

My games aren't an investment. They're games. Their fun won't change with LCD pins. And once again - pin history is irrelevant to today's market. Look at modern history. P2K has friggin full color holograms and not one DMD value was affected. WOZ has been out for years and has had zero negative effect on DMD values. You have to stop looking at the history of EMs vs. SS/DMD as a lesson for today. EMs are stale, featureless and silent compared to the games that came later. That's why EMs became less desirable. Not because of the SCORE DISPLAY! New LCD games are the same as DMD era games - ramps, toys, magnets, music, voices, light shows etc. The display, while cool, will
Not make DMD era games less cool.

I don't see prices fallen because new games have lcd screens. I think lcd screen look nice but when your playing the game you don't really look at them much. I do like heighway pinball idea to put screen on the playfield. I think hobbit well be 1st pin were a lcd screen really works well in a pinball.

Dude, you keep regurgitating points I've already dismissed. Two Pin2K games, and one LCD (WOZ) are not enough to change the market! This is the third time I've had to say this...the DMD market won't drop in price until the market is saturated with the newer LCD games...which Stern will be pumping out in their usual quantities.

Also, you seem stuck on the EM to SS transition. Yes, simply having LED scoring over reels wasn't that big of a thing. But I'm talking more about LED SS to DMD as far as making the older games look obsolete and drop in value, which is what happened in the 90's.

Nothing more to add to the discussion. Draining this biotch!

I was saying you don't need a giant LCD "TV" in the backbox to use a a translight and info screen. A LCD sized DMD replacement is good enough.
Just like the color DMD in my Iron man.
Color DMD with high rez images is the way to go. Rob zombie pin. And all pins that now have color dmd support.

Future pins, from Stern. Should use a color dmd. No more low rez movie images. They can just import them in HD. From whatever images the licence holder allows.

But they do not need to replace, or reinvent the backbox with a large LCD. A DMD sized one is good, actually perfect. And do you really want look up even higher to see any info.

That's why a full sized LCD is good for watchers, bad for players.
But a color DMD is good for everyone.

+ that won't change the value of anything as eventually all "old" DMD pins will eventually have color DMD. And if they did that the only thing is that the new ones would be in HD instead of color Dots.

O'really?

Nelli_(resized).jpg

You keep making illogical points, so I have to keep vomiting them back at you. Today's market is not what yesterday's market is. The arcade mainstream, pinball was mainstream, it was all about operators. Today is about niche locations and collectors. Pinball's mainstream life vs. Pinball's retro/new-retro life are entirely different things.

There will never be the "saturation" that there was in the past due to arcades not being mainstream. There will never be the volume of units that there were in the past. Aside from a few remakes, the DMD era is still finite - and collectors will always want those games...they also still do well on route. By your logic, Stern's bevy of excellent modern releases should have made B/W games drop in value. Guess what...hasn't happened.

Once again - it's not the DISPLAY that made the games look obsolete. It was upgrade in presentation - ramps, toys, music, voices, sounds and rules that no one had ever seen. All we're getting from the "next generation" now is a display. A minor bump in audio clarity. A display we all have on our TVs, computers, and phones. The game itself is unchanged.

That's a biotch move...

It's only because of the melons!!