I didn't read every post and this the first time not reading every post and commenting on ANY forum. It seems you have first world problem. Can't you play your current machines?

It's kind of like saying if I can't take out my million dollar yacht, I can't go fishing.

I enjoyed this hobby more when it was broke smelly people with a lot of passion. Some people act as if it NIB or nothing at all. I've never come close to owning a NIB machine, nor would I want to.

I'm not trying to bash the OP but what happened to finding and fixing machines and being satisfied once you had? I'm not saying the OP has to fall into either extreme. There is a happy medium however.

Just play the new overpriced ones on location and enjoy the ones you already own, plenty of hobby enjoyment left even though prices are getting crazy.

This, this and this. And there are still deals to be had if you cultivate pinball relationships. I never pay "retail" and I never charge "retail." A machine I'm interested in comes up at a fair price on my personal radar about every 6 months or so on average, and has for the last ten years. Just picked up a nice Funhouse for a third or a quarter of the price of nibs these days because of a connection I made years ago.

Ifn yer new machines or nothing, well I ain't got nothing to say to you...

What a quote, I should end every post I make with that.

I sold all my games years ago, and happily for profits on each one. Now I just play on location for what $20. I’m just not willing to tie up big money in pinball anymore for worse quality. I completely do not understand the current interest in NIB.

But, but you can pay more for Sterns NIB quality products!!!

Oh wait.... nevermind.
My Paragon playfield is pristine BTW.

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Fu*k now we have the dimple argument creeping into this shit thread….

Sorry...
But I dont need a price increase to keep me away from Stern or JJP.

U should prolly remove EHOH from your wishlist then

Oh no!! I refuse.
It's a rad game.
It pisses me off that I cant buy one.
I'm going to pay $9000 grand, and watch the playfield turn into an impressionist painting?
Oh no.
My TNA is also gorgeous after 3 years.

For $9,000,000 I agree that PF better be bullet proof.

TNA looks great cause the ball has no real path to be launched in the air. Its a flat new style modern EM.

Why not buy a superior and cheaper Bally,Williams or Gottlieb pin?

$9000 grand?

I'm out too at that price point..

RnM looks great also……what’s the new theory?

Yes. But he’s only buying one. That’ll show Stern!

Prices have gone up for every piece of amusement equipment(along with everything else) not just pinball my props to stern for not doing as soon as others. Anyone with a working brain should have saw this coming. governments cant keep printing money and handing it out like candy without inflation.

Everyone has to draw a line somewhere, I have a NIB on order for a Stranger Things Pro. If that and other Stern Pros move to close to $7000 after tax and whatever, I’m out. Honestly, I can afford that but, for me, it’s just not worth it at that point. I’ll just see what I can do in the secondary market or enjoy what I have.

It’s not as complex as a pin, but I just ordered a custom made hand wired tube amp for my guitar from a boutique amp manufacturer in LA. You get personal services, direct communication with the guy that makes them by hand and the ability to make choices in terms of what you want. It’s an amp for home use and small gigs, but it will come in at around $2500-$2700. Everybody has their passion and pinball is one of mine, but I’ll have way more fun with that amp than a $7000 Stern Pro.

With that being said, Stern can do whatever they want but so can we…

One of the most important books I have ever read. Astounding, in all things like the Accuracy of your analogy.

Very nice. We are all the children of George Orwell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Minutes_Hate

My unpopular, useless opinion:

The market can sustain it. Stern has a 3000 unit backlog, inflation, cost of goods through the roof. Distributors don’t and won’t have significant inventory until middle/end of next year at this rate. Look at the prices from the last Tennessee auction ffs.

Personally I don’t know if I’m still in yet. Definitely have to see products before I buy. Interested in cactus and Godzilla but will probably throw $ at a 6500 Godzilla before I buy a 7500$ entry level cactus canyon. I’m done with fomo.... I gotta see the game first. I’m also probably done with American.... tired of waiting for any kind of announcement from that company.

Price has gone up over 2k at this point since lotr... over 1k since gb. The games have less stuff in them. You can tell when you look at mando that there was a limit on the bom, all the way down to the number of screws they used on it lol. Doesn’t mean it’s a shitty game at all. (It does mean that I had to spend $300 on wireforms and an animatronic grogu though lol). Stern is in business to make money, they’re not unicef. It is what it is.

Mike

Of course this is assuming that we don’t have some kind of Lehman bros collapse or the taliban doesn’t fly one of our old f-15s up our ass. Then all bets are off

I agree that the market can sustain it…for now. However, with my business, my philosophy is to build long term relationships and customer royalty. The play is I’m in it with you for the long haul and I will always treat you right, so that when times change (and they will) those same customers will stick with me because they know I always treated them right through thick and thin. In other words, I never take the opportunity to fleece my customers for quick extra cash at the sacrifice of losing that confidence and trust. In my opinion, that is what Stern is doing now. We will see how it turns out for them. Maybe great, maybe not.

It's gone up more then that. I got my LOTR NIB when it first came out for $3250.

With the price increases and new subscription revenue stream Connect will provide I wouldn’t be surprised if sale of the company is being actively planned. Gotta pump up that EBITDA.

Stern BTTF FOMO will be like you've never seen it before. Everyone (including myself) and their grandmother will want it. I've been in the hobby 12 years, and it will most likely be my first NIB (if I can get one).

I’m not convinced they’re doing BTTF. Rumors aren’t always right.

Agreed. Little doubt in my mind, at least for the next year or two.

RnM is a good game but that's strictly due to code. Again not very much going on there to cause dimples.

Ehhhhhh...... ok. I mean I can see it flying off the shelf. I can wait.

LOL.... 0-100, right into a wall bro

edited

That's the problem with themes one really loves, it makes one crack open the wallet just that extra bit more to make the stretch. I won't lie, if they do make BTTF I will probably pay their price. Having said that I'm lucky in that I have a few local places to play all the new pins (thanks AYCE Gogi!) so I can skip most pins and be just fine.

I am in before the lock.

What are you talking about? Not remotely close.

These posts are so hilarious:

"I mean....I could easily afford it...but principles....!!!!!" - Not so good humble brag. Like people who post it need us to know they CAN still afford it so they dont lose credibility with that rest of the crowd throwing around "fuck you" money.

"I mean...I'm done paying the price, unless they do BTTF. Then I'm buying one dog gone it....!"

And we wonder why prices just keep going north. Not like this community is making it clear or anything.

If political discussions here are taboo, why does one get a thread eject and not the other?

Not sure why not buying the latest stern would push you out the hobby? Just play your current machines or buy the other thousand cheaper games available or play in arcades etc…

You don’t need to own the latest crazy silly expensive shit to be a pinball enthusiast!

I personally just don’t see the return in value on these new games. Far far better things to blow 10k on and get FAR more in return

This. Think of it like cars. If you like collecting classic cars who cares what's rolling off the assembly line or what it costs. A vast majority of my collection was made over 25 years ago and my newest title is already 6 years old.

First because I didn't bring up politics, I was replying to the absurdly generic/incorrect comment someone else made. Second, because the printing of all that currency in 2020 *is* directly related to this thread. Example:

- When Medieval Madness was reissued and there were then many more in circulation, the existing units naturally went down in value.

- If a publicly traded company issues 24% more shares, it's stock price will get hammered and the value of an individual stock goes down.

- If you print 24% more currency, the existing currency gets devalued.

That event in 2020 is directly related to this thread. It was never a question of if prices would go up but instead by how much. Basically people are now trying to determine if we will get inflation or hyper inflation. To make a foodgument, if you were regularly trading 10 beers with me for a pizza and the value of beer went down 24%, would I still take your 10 beers? No, I'd want 12 or 13 because your beer is now less valuable. All these points are related in that the dollar was devalued in 2020 and now pinball costs more.

There's also the more complex side arguments of how that 2020 printing of currency has caused people with money to park it in other places like property, stocks, items of value, etc. That's way to much to get into here but that also affects pinball pricing. It's easy to say "Stern evil", "Boo Stern", "Stern is poopoo caca" but Stern does not take doubloons, Atari cartridges or lampshades for their pinball machines, they take $USD. And when the $USD got devalued in 2020, well, what do you expect to happen to pinball pricing?

So here's my take, as a consumer I obviously don't enjoy spending more. Especially, when the price-jump is pretty large. But I get why Stern would do it.

It's funny, cuz used prices had finally gotten to the point where I decided buying NIB made more sense. Just got a JP Premium last week.

But now that NIB has gone up so much, I'll probably be going back to used games again. It's a funny cycle. Of course I've still got a Fathom and an UM headed my way, but those were you snooze you lose sort of buys.

Facts and logic have no place here sir. I'm going to need you to boil down your argument to "My team good. Your team bad".

I was paying 3250-3450 for lotr.

And if manufactured today, LOTR would sell as a Premium, if not creating a new class of Super Premium pins, that would list for at least 8-9K.

Well I think we have get used to this across the board of pretty much everything for a while.

We pretty much have a demand side type economy now which is basically print and even hand out money with the hope that businesses come up with great ideas and products and compete for the consumer’s money out there and hope they will hire a lot of folks with good wages as this happens and get more taxes back to Govt in return for their investment. But we also have - let’s look at raising taxes and add more regulations on businesses and their owners which “may” give less incentive to hire, invest, create for consumers money with price or quality and even have lower, not higher tax revenues back to govt. This is what is happening now - look around. Will it work? We will see over time.

Supply side economy gives tax breaks for businesses and usually less regulation which gives incentive for businesses to invest to come up with better products which consumers will want to buy and this “hopefully” creates more competition, better products for consumers and will add more jobs, and generate even more taxes at a lower rate from the sales of the products. If this is working well then more money will be added to the economy. But this “may not” work either. That is not going on now from what I see. We have money first now.

In the background we have also have Govt who has interest in steering consumers towards certain purchases and incentives to certain businesses to make certain products. Too really muddy things up we have many business with owners and higher up employees paid with stock and the market has been very hot lately with many companies losing money that have stocks with very High price increases over the last year making the owners, employees and shareholders large and small wealthier. Will the govt incentives to consumers and employers work and will owners, employers and management of companies have incentive to invest and produce better products when their net worth has rose significantly over the last year and any new competition for them will likely have higher start up costs, more regulation and higher taxes to come in and compete? We are living this now so we will see. And the two items above have been going on for years but now we have HUGE amounts of Govt money being added to the economy along with HUGE stock gains at the same time and both more then ever in history. What will happen? Not sure but living it now.

I could be wrong in my views of the above thoughts of what is going on, but this is how I am looking at things without tons of degrees hanging on the wall. And we will see what happens.

And it doesn’t matter what you or I think how or what this all is or what will happen, it will just work out how it will work out. Just live your life how you want to live and adjust along the way and you will be ok, no more NIB or not. Just my 2 cents

It took you this long? 1%er problems

Wonder if salaries are going to keep up with inflation too. If so it’s a easier pill to swallow.

Nope. Delorean matchbox car on a spring and generic voice acting along with no movie assets if Stern keeps this shit up. But don’t worry, that titles two releases away and there will be another $1000 price increase by then.

Fuck this FOMO shit. Stern has destroyed any chances of turning this bom crapfest around.

It's very simple, you want to buy it you buy it, you don't want to buy it you don't buy it.
If there are more buyers than none buyers prices go up , and if there are less buyers prices go down.

But when I see people buying at 3k+ a NIB LE still in production just to be among the first ones to get their hands on a game, I will say the non buyer club will be short lived.