the rise in price on the classics is purely supply and demand, just not many nice BSD's or Indy's, pick your flavor that are readily available for purchase at any given time. Don't see this changing unless they are all remade and with time they will only become more scarce.

Now with stern launching vault editions literally 5 years after original run and over saturating the market, this in time should drive down pricing on some of these pro models.

Sterns are great to play on location... B/W games are to own. It’s not a snob thing, it’s just literally that you might still find a Metallica or TSPP in a theater or something, but you rarely find a Shadow or CFTBL, y’know?

I go back and forth. I love the magic of the B/W 90's pins and they are really enjoyable to own. Stern games lack that magic but they still make some great games. The deeper code works well in the home environment where you can play 500 games and still be learning new things. I have a hard time spending big money on used games unless I absolutely love the game. I guess the same can be said about Stern but at least you get a brand new game. Used games often need work and not always reliable. If same price, I rather have a new game in most cases.

If I was rich I would put a Stern pro on my yacht

I started with all W/B's. Sold those. Started buying Stern LE's. Sold/traded most of those . Started buying back W/B's. Now I find I am buying some Stern Pro models.
Purchased a HUO WD pro and a NIB SW pro. Not sure I will buy any LE's anymore. The price of a Pro, new or resale, is 60 to 75% of an LE/Prem. True they do not have as many features as the upper scale models but they have more value for the money. The code on both my pro models is pretty impressive.

Being fortunate to have a larger collection, I find , I bounce back and forth between all my games. I especially like when I fall back in love with a game that I have not played for a while. I just did that with I500. A real cool speed game.

I started with pinball junk. Like absolute free pinball junk. I was lucky a LOT of the time. Sometimes, the junk never materialized into anything playable. But a lot of times it did. Those are some of my favorite games to play. Mainly because I feel like my choices in getting the game functional is part of the reason it plays good and is fun. So, it helps if the game is a classic to begin with, but sometimes the best game ever designed is just not as appealing to me. I'd rather play my Harlem Globetrotters 10 times rather than one ball on Fish Tales or TOTAN.

A few things about "the classics" people speak of and this pinball thing in general:

Rule 1. Condition is everything. If you can make it look like new again, that's great. However, few are good at this skill and there are many impersonators.

-Something that most people do not always want to admit----> The machine that you grew up playing is probably NOT one of the best designed or most timeless playing pinball games today. It could be, but it's not likely.

-You are probably not having much fun playing single player games in your basement. Invite some friends over, have a tournament on Matchplay.com or, start a monthly league.

-MOST people do not mind if the game plays different than when it was in an arcade back in the decade that the game was from. See Rule 1.

-No matter what, someone will always be there to quickly point out that your opinions about pinball are wrong. Not only that, they will NOT be polite about it.

-There is always someone around the corner a bit crazier than you about pinball.

-You are probably not as good at playing pinball as you thought you were.

-For all other concerns or doubts, see Rule 1.

Yes. And over the last few titles, Stern has been closing the gap between MSRP and the minimum a distro can sell a game for.

I'm starting to find myself in this boat.

After you've played almost every classic B\W for the ten-thousandth time the "magic", nostalgia, or whatever you want to call it starts to wear off.

I'm thinking why would I buy something I've played thousands of times vs. I should probably get a new Stern because I can rediscover a game all over again.

It's a tough call but at this point I've owned or own all the classic games I would want to keep for the long term. Now, I just recycle the Stern's into one of their new releases and call it a day.

Since my first game in 2010, I’ve now owned 37 games. My collecting has varied. I’ve had NIB, projects, rough, restored, high end restored etc. I go for games that interest me, but frequently make impulse buys of good opportunities when they come up. Despite my experience, I still make the occasional bad decision. I’ve learn to cut bait on the bad decisions and move on.

My most recent purchases are a nib Deadpool pro and a Routed High Speed. Both are fun in different ways. While the routed High Speed seems like the better deal on first glance, I probably overpaid. I will have quite a bit of fun cleaning up tweaking the high speed and that adds value for me as I really enjoy the process.

You can find great value in new and used games with patience. For example, buying local to avoid shippingor buying a demo game at a show. Patience, more than any other factor, is what causes me to save or loose money on a game. I wanted a new Deadpool. Guess what? No savings. I do get to play a fun new game.

I buy used machines all the time.
Only had one NIB. I LIKE that its still
Maint. Free