Quoted from dnapac:

I've seen a lot of people bash Stern for this. How much was a new pin in 1990. According to my rough calculations $3500 in 1990 would be about $6500 now, and $4500 in 1990 would be about $8500 now. I agree, pinballs are very expensive, but was wondering if there has been a huge price increase, or is most of this inflation?

Quoted from rotordave:

Bingo.
No panic people ... this is what will be happening.
Stern will ship components to a plant in Brazil for final assembly ... all to skirt around the Brazilian import taxes.
You might find that they will ship fully completed playfield assemblies ... maybe cabinets in knock down form, or maybe the local guys will make the cabinets locally. Anyone can make a pinball cabinet and slap some stickers on it.
This is what happened with arcade games in New Zealand in the 70s/80s. We had horrendous import taxes to protect the local manufacturers. So the gaming companies imported only the game boards and controls from the manufacturer, and the cabinets and TV components were made here. Yes, NZ used to make its own TVs....
In the 70s, Stern Pinball used to ship components to LAI in Australia for the same reason. LAI assembled all the parts locally to avoid the taxes.
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