The way I see it, we printed 9 trillion USD back in 2020 (or 22% of all our currency in one year) hence diluting the value of the US dollar, Stern apparently is operating at full capacity and there are part shortages. So...what would you expect them to do? I'd honestly be completely shocked if they didn't raise prices. After 2020 our dollar simply doesn't buy as much anymore, it is what it is.

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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.

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?

I presume the concept of what an operator is will have to evolve. In the old days it was someone that bought a game, vended it, moved it along when it didn't earn anymore, rinse and repeat. Nowadays I assume the people operating will be pinball fanatics that will buy a game, put it on location so it earns some money, depreciate it over a period of time that makes the IRS happy, then they keep the game after that effectively getting a game they want at a huge discount. One they tire of it they can sell it for more than they have in it as the cost was offset by earnings, depreciation and tax deductions, rinse and repeat.

I sold my large collection of games a few years ago and never looked back, the money was just too ridiculous. I only kept the consoles themselves which are fairly cheap anyways, and each one has some form of flash cart setup to play games from sd card. Yeah it's a leap to sell them but honestly after a while it's just no big deal. Playing games of sd card is actually better anyways especially with cd based games as no worries about read errors and games load quicker.

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Yup, it doesn't fit otherwise.