You act like the correction has already taken place. It hasn't.

How did "pinball get a little more affordable today"? At $8k?

Owning MM became a little more affordable today. Not pinball in general. At least not yet.

As long as you did not tell your wife that you could sell your MM "at any time" for a profit, everybody will be alright.

This will definitely have a ripple effect once the balance comes due. People are going to be dumping lower tier pins left and right to come up with their $7000. The next year is going to be a buyers market.

There are several B-level B/W games waiting to jump from my wishlist to my owned...I'm ready!

CRAP!

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

It's been happening for Woz, Met, ST, TH, Predator etc....it will get a whole lot more active, "buyers market"....people want Nib's and new stuff, the "used" pinball market just got a little more affordable today with $8,000,000 going to PPS.....

What will happen to Zidwares Magic Girl @16k or RAZA @ 10k?
Boutique games like this may still go up with only 16 and 125 made respectively.
All depends on how good the final product is.

If what we have seen so far is any indication then the final product will be awesome...that said, I hope it doesn't go up in value, bad for pinball, needs to and will deflate

Supply/demand. Maybe they'll increase the supply as well?
They do look great.

What have we seen? Unless I missed something during the website's transition to the MMR forum, jpop showed a bunch of sketches (which all looked nice, but not much to show after what, 4 years?)

Unless you've signed the nondisclosure and are part of the blog.

So it appears Jpop revealed very little at expo?.....Much cool stuff in the works per the "blog"....

alas I am but a layman pinhead. Our lack of information is matched only by our lack of funds. Perhaps one day we too can join the illuminati

That's your opinion. But it's like saying a Honus Wagner baseball card is way overpriced. It's good for a hobby to have wildly varying prices for rare pieces in high demand.
Besides, do you seriously think there would be a remake of MM going on right now if they weren't valued at 12k+!?!?
Only time will tell if this was a good day or the day of wreckening for the rebound of pinball.

Was the "wreck..." part of reckoning intentional?

Judging by your collection i doubt that Erik! But yes, there will be "illumination" soon enough..

It's interesting that the perception here is that the market "has corrected". So ok, I'll take an $8k Mm. Where can I go pick that up? That's right, I can't. When I can then Id expect used ones to be less. But this is just a preorder. And people have half a year to come up with the balance. If it were $8k, pay today, chances are people wouldn't have had the money to buy them up so fast.

As for dumping lesser titles left and right, its not like this is the first nice selling ~$8k game. That seems to be the norm for LE nib prices. People aren't dumping games left and right to get those either. Those that pick this up can probably afford it without selling all their possessions.

True but here is the thing. MM has been a ceiling with 15k being that hard to reach number. Lower it to 8 and you stop being eager to pay that much for anything else. Other remakes should and hopefully will come out less including non LE versions.
People may not be dumping but many buyers will tie up their money for the next year on orders for what is seen as a better value to the original game. Yes 8k is a lot but its also almost half of what the old game was selling for yesterday. Thats a correction.

The real negative is if it significantly harms those who are working to innovate. So if Stern and JJP and especially the boutique guys lose sales for 15 year-old rehashes it hurts pinball. There becomes less incentive for them to do what they've been doing. If they're not affected then by all means WPC replicas ad infinitum

A lot of people getting into this hobby liked the idea of collecting games that were limited pieces of artwork. Period. Even if they were never intended to be collectibles and were just entertainment machines. Baseball cards is a great analogy IMO. They were not originally created to be collectibles at all!! They were simply placed in cigar boxes as gimmicks. People enjoyed seeing and reading about some of their favorite players. Now, if someone came along later and said ... "Hey, this is turning into a big deal and I guess people must just love seeing and reading about baseball players, I guess I'll go back and reprint all of the old cards that are rising in value because people must really want those." Welllll ... baseball cards might not have survived and wouldn't be much of a "hobby" today.

If you think about it, this cant help but shake the pinball market to the core.

Ill take my very nice original over a repop anyday. 5k would not buy mine

And a LOT of people just want to SEE a Honus Wagner card. But that's the sexiness of the hobby and keeps kids dreaming of building their collecitons.
You want pinball to grow? IMO ... keep it a hobby like stamps, sports cards, art, collectible plates, coins, whatever ... limited numbers and the "hobby" part takes care of itself for years to come. Pinball games aren't just entertainment machines any longer ... have we not learned they can be collectibles and that is a big part of the rebirth going on???
Edit: Or WAS going on.

Well... Pinball machines in the home are a product at the end of it's useful life. If it was more useful out on route, where they were all intended to be 15 years or more ago (including MM), they would have been there. It isn't like the other hobbies that you're naming because pinball machines served their first function as an entertainment device first, and are now continuing to serve their function as an entertainment device in the home.

I can't imagine more than maybe one or two people who bought a MM originally because of it's artistic value.

I deal in used video games. While there is definitely a similar group of people that collect them because of how cool the art for the boxes were and stuff like that, there weren't many people buying NES titles in 1986 because the box looked cool and they wanted to display it in their basement.

That materially changes the market.

I don't understand your logic at all. They just barely became collectible at all starting a decade ago. Suddenly they'll "always be collectible" even now that we know old titles can and will be remade at any time? I'm not sure how that is logical.

Agree, reasonably priced machines wouldn't be remade as there would not be enough profit margin in it for the business's involved. I like the idea of more NIB A-list titles being available, some might even make their way to the southern hemisphere one day.

Now if only Wayne could have done this 8 years ago we would already be onto AFM, CC, MB TOTAN etc

This is not a "market correction". This is only going to affect a few titles that have gone stupidly overpriced in the last few years due to high demand and flippers. Probably AFM and TAF primarily. But if the prices on those games on the open market go down they might not be remade. Planetary runs a business, and if they cannot make the profit they need they will not make the product.

This is not a "big shakeup" of the whole market. It simply makes a game available to the consumer that had previously been priced out of his range by collectors, speculators and flippers. These games are being built to be played, and at a price comparable to what a new LE game is selling for now (WOZLE and STLE). It will probably affect Stern's sales of their new LE games with their new higher pricing levels being that they have less toys and no new technology to answer their competition with. But their beancounters made that bed and will have to sleep in it.

The only loser here is going to be the guys who are stuck with worn out routed games that they thought they could get $8000 for. Most on this site would call them "flippers" and supposedly everyone hates them for what they have done to our hobby.

So the introduction of the MM remake does not bring a correction to our hobby. It simply makes a desirable game more affordable/available and puts one specific manufacturer on notice that other games can be bought for comparable prices to their own game....so maybe they had best step up their quality/innovation, lower their prices, complete the coding on their games or get buried by the competition. If we can all agree that our hobby needs these changes it will be the best thing for all of us.

Competition is a good thing folks......where would we be now if Sterns had none?

I'd gladly take an HUO POTC and BDK for pretty close to the price of this one MM remake.

I haven't read this entire thread so hopefully I'm not repeating what someone said. I don't think this is a correction. I think this is Pinball making as big of a comeback as possible. Of course it doesn't mean arcades are going to be opening around the country full of pinball machines circa 1982. However, it does mean that the pinball hobby is definitely very robust.

I would gladly take both of them for the price of a STLE with a rebate.

You keep mentioning flippers like they are the antichrist that destroyed your precious hobby but you fail to recognize is that it is the people who bought at the higher prices that drove the values up not the people selling.

High demand is what caused the flippers not the other way around.

I'm not a flipper, I have 4 pinballs and was eager to collect more since the mm news came out I'm not so eager to purchase anymore. I will always enjoy playing pinball but the thrill and motivation of collecting just went down. the one thing about collecting is hoping that your collection just may go up not just be remade I might as well collect nintendo games because who ever collects those just likes to play and anygame can get remade and they don't weigh 300 lbs. I understand how people can be happy or disappointed in this but for me it is news that is going to bring me more away from pinball I hope I'm wrong but that is what my gut feeling is saying

Everyone who wanted a new MM can now purchase one .

Many people will need space to add the MM to their collection , thus sell off a pin to used market .

Many will need to free up cash to add the MM to their collection , so many sell off a pinball into the used market .

I would say after talking to someone in Oz that MB and AFM are also on the cards , so the above will be repeated .

In my view this is a win win for all bare the completion JJP and Stern as I can already see some people will be pushing their cash into the new Williams/Bally that are proven fun pins .

So JJP and Stern now have a third wheel to contend with , they now have to improve product ( more bang for your buck) or reduce costs to the customer .

This is all great for pinball .

The only decline I can see is in the prices as supply ( Used and New ) increases

But do they have room is also a big factor , you can only fit in so many pins , so something has to give . You sell a pin or add an extension . And this will be repeated when NIB MB and AFM are added to the market .

Sounds like you are just doing it for an investment or that you need prices to continually rise so that you can justify buying pins to yourself. There is risk in any investment/collection going down as well as up, even Nintendo. I dont want to see anyone loose big money but speculating on any market is purely that, speculation. You should only put in what makes you comfortable and if it is just to play pins and enjoy them then over any longer term you will be ahead, this will be monetary or entertainment value but ideally both. If all pins are devalued overnight then only pure sellers are affected the most, if you are selling lower you should also be buying lower so any downturn would/should smooth out over time.

There are extremes in all areas and MM was at one end, the arse wont drop out of the whole pin industry until you can walk into any large department store and walk out with an LE, then it will be like game cartridges. Collectors still want the limited mint editions of those too .......dont panic.

The funny thing is, the hobby was a hell of a lot more affordable when Stern had no competition.

Seems like the more competition there is, the more this hobby costs.

I told you they were coming at 8k last week.

Baseball cards and pinball machines have very few things in common. The fact that you can collect them both is minor. A person can collect anything you can see or touch, that does not make them comparable. Baseball cards do not earn money for a person every time someone decides they would like to look at it. You can't play a game of baseball just because you own the card. Are they both collectable? yes, but that is where the similarity ends.

You would like the hobby of collecting Pinball or playing pinball machines to grow by limiting the number of people who can afford them because they are rare and expensive?

If someone remakes the 68 Ford Cobra Mustang at a lower price then the collectable one, and I can afford it, consider me a muscle car collector.

Another very valid point. But Stern was not making money and hired a comptroller as well as bringing in some investors at that time as I recall reading. Investors would not come in without a comptroller running the show to protect their investment. So the bean counters took over. Thats when cost savings started by cheapening up the games with things like the peg supports for the playfield and price increases started.

The flippers probably helped the hobby somewhat by resurrecting popular games that were worn out. Would you rather have had a nice restored TOM or a new Austin Powers for the same price? But once the high prices they got for a few restored games got known it started a viscous cycle. Lots of guys were out of work and hustling a buck on the side wherever they could to support their families. They got competition from other perspective flippers and then had to pay higher prices for routed games to restore. Naturally their higher base costs reflected in the higher prices they had to charge for the game. After all, they had time and money in working on those games. So the cycle continued. Most of them were making more profit per game (tax free no less) than Stern was. Add the increasing popularity of pinball as people found out via the internet that some of their old favorite games were available for home use and the hobby took off while supplies of games decreased. We all know how prices and game quality went after that but lived with it and complained to each other. So other people listened to the complaining and figured they could build a better mousetrap and make a profit doing it. Thankfully the market is consistantly strong now, we have better game selection and we all hope it stays that way without any more crazy price increases. But when a manufacturer raises their prices specifically to "take the flippers out of the game" its not a good sign for the hobby.
So in a sense the answer is "yes"....flippers have recently destroyed some of OUR precious hobby by causing one manufacturer to artificially raise the prices we have to pay for a new game. But their timing was bad. They raised prices just when the competition dumped multiple new choices on the marketplace. The buying public just said so today when they bought 1000 new MMs in about 6 hours while people were cancelling their orders for STLE.
It looks like many people have the same opinion as me....at least 1000 of them plus more that tried to order but were too late in the que.

Lol, you know the base of the hobby is well to do and old when they constantly refer to a hobby as a market. This is not wallstreet, you are not Jim Cramer, this is a hobby. I wish there were more posts about actual pinball than market bubbles and pinflation, but maybe I'm in the minority so I'll just join in. Here is your market forecast: some days, men with receding hairlines will pay more for wood and steel than others, the end. Booya Skidaddy!

Lets assume the new version has all the quality expected, has the same play feel in spite of different power boards being used, has a properly clear coated playfield, and is equally desirable. Then, I think the biggest factor will be availability. I mean, 2 years from now whether or not Joe Blow that decides he wants a MM "right now" can order one and get it shipped. If so, used ones will have to be worth less. If not, just like trons, they will all hold their value. Adding 1000 to the market will lower the price of just that game only as long as they are readily available to buy. If they're sold out, then its back to whatever it takes to pry from a sellers hand.

If this hurts anything, I think it will be stern le and JJP sales. I think its more likely people will pass on buying one of these in the next 6 months in order to buy a new MM rather than selling off their current collection in groves. Im sure a few people will sell a game or two to make room or free cash, but that's ready happening each time a new stern game comes out. So the market is already use to that. Plus this gives 6 months to patiently sell a game. A few hundred extra games for sale world wide over the next 6 months won't cause significant price drops.