After the past 3-4 years, this great hobby I have been a part of since 1983, seems to be correcting itself. I see numerous posts to sell off entire collections but most importantly the insane prices are dying. The new era pinball machines are this generation's treadmill, buying when the trend was hot, mostly due to Covid, and realizing no one is playing them and they are just collecting dust and junk.
As I see it, the boom of Pinball was due to Covid and the idea people can make a quick buck flipping lack lustered machines, stealing mods before pickup, the Waffle craze which is a cute way to avoid taxes, to even selling one's space for a pre-order.
Call me old, cranky, etc... I really do not care what people think of me, but it is nice to see people leave this hobby and see the prices continue to drop. The pop up arcades will also soon die off, leaving people that had the delusion of riches and fame trying to revitalize the arcade era with machines they cannot properly maintain and will never sell for what they paid for.
After 2 years, I finally started to buy machines again, but I will wait for the bottom to truly drop out and buy games penny on the dollar, all while laughing with the idea people paid 6-7 times what the machine was truly worth, all based on a ridiculous ideology of the new pinball elite. The only downside is that I will be spending a great deal of time cleaning up the hack jobs people did to these machines, you know what I am talking about, the alligator clip guys...
Clarksville, MD
Edmonton, AB
. I got in the hobby the year before covid and have 2 of my 4 pins downstairs paid for and that was never the goal. I was just going through them trying to find the right pins to stay. Not selling anything off either as I’m in this to stay and actually feel bad for the people who knew no better as to what was going on. I don’t take happiness in others despair.
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