And dangerous.

I kinda got dragged kicking and screaming into the import scene when I moved to Florida in the early 2000s since it was during the Fast and the Furious JDM craze. I owned a Supra and a FWD Toyota Celica that I did a 3S-GTE turbo engine swap on (Toyota MR2 engine). It was by far the most dangerous vehicle I have ever owned - not the fastest, but the most dangerous by a wide margin . When that 60-1 turbo hit, and trust me when I say it hit hard, one had zero control of what lane it was heading toward when the torque steer took over. It had to go.... I am back to my RWD, American V8s now and don't miss those JDM days in the least.

I hear you! Short wheelbase, RWD cars can be squirrelly too:

It’s coming.

GZ is a great game that I’ve spent a fortune on mods and will never leave. Same with GNR.

The “Uber rich” are dropping these games like a pack of dogs dropping deuces in the park!

Made way too many. Catch that falling knife.

Nobody would possibly believe this term could be used for buying pins these last few years. But now, it's 100% spot on.

Pins are starting to resemble custom hot rods - they can make their owners happy, but they rarely make their owners a profit.

As it should be and was in the before-times.

I agree.

Maybe the only people who benefitted from the weird price run-up were the owners of the Banning museum. They sold their business assets at just the right time, as it turned out.

Only auction pinball auction I watched, and live. It was nuts.

$500 increase from last release

EDIT: sorry it's only 100 up from scooby.
Halloween 1000, acooby 1400, TCM 1500

I struggle to understand how anyone can see the value in this. Yes, it feels and looks cool. But man oh man $1500 is a LOT of money for this. I had a used Halloween CE and a Toy Story CE with it and wouldn't have paid more than $100 for that feature.

Well, January 2024 is looking awfully different from January 2023. I look back and laugh when, in the spring, I mentioned how the market was soft and was snarkily asked "Is this your first spring in the pinball market?" (because everyone knows the spring is slow, you dummy!). And then I mentioned it was even softer in late fall, and was told "Oh, it's the holidays, the market is always soft around this time of year".

It's amazing when people can't recalibrate their thinking and accept that things DO change, that markets change, and what was happening yesterday won't necessarily be happening today or tomorrow. We're in a time that seemed almost unthinkable a couple year ago - there are a TON of games priced way below what we were clamoring to pay just a short while ago. And they're sitting there, unsold. Exciting...and changing...times indeed.

American is running a sale on most of their pins. Sweet! Another $500 off and I might be a customer for GTF.

https://www.knapparcade.org/post/american-pinball-announces-memorial-day-sale

The crash is here! Hide yo kids! Hide yo pins!

Can I get a Godzilla for 5k now?

A couple of years ago I remember seeing multiple people state they'd rather spend a couple hundred dollars OVER NIB pricing for a used pin, because "those pins already have the problems worked out and it's worth it". Of course, this was when NIB was pretty hard to find.

When we're desperate, we'll use pretty much any excuse won't we?

There are currently almost a dozen different modern titles for sale here on Pinside for $5k or less. Amazing. Is anyone really still thinking "pin prices only go up"?

No, but other pros for that, yes. It's definitely coming down hard at the moment. It's almost as if pinball companies aren't catering to enough newer audiences and have priced things too high. Who could have possibly predicted this?!?!

I see a Godzilla pro in the market place for 5800 right now,go get it .

You will find a Godzilla pro for 5 k soon, be patient.

$5k is definitely possible but I think "soon" might be an overstatement. The bottom tier modern pins are barely there, and I think it's too beloved to be $5k anytime soon. If Godzilla is $5k, today's $5k used pins would be $4k or sub-$4k. Now THAT would be something.

After seeing a 6.5k Alien RV with sub-50 plays, a 5k Godzilla feels imminent.

There are a few out there at that price and cheaper. https://pinside.com/pinball/machine/pinball-brothers-alien-ellen-ripley-version/market

.

Your average pinsider waking up to check their for sale thread circa 1820.

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Which is how it should have been all along. The runaway price train is now under control and subdued. But I agree, more and more people are sitting on the fence either due to funds, space, waiting for further drops, or a combination of those.

Regardless, all of those factors are never good for used sellers that are accustomed to making money or not taking a loss to get their new nice and shiny. However, it is great news for buyers. All of it is terrible news for manufactures if they lose sales to their home customer base that relied on the ability to move machines in and out with profit or little to no loss. It's not at the "catch the falling knife" stage, but that is a certain a possibility that could come to fruition if market conditions continue to erode.

All I know is that whenever I tell a non-pinballer what my machines cost they can’t believe how expensive they are.

you’ll be purchasing at peak pricing.

Things are definitely slowing down. My work is. Stress increasing for salespeople I can tell. Seeing more games listed at lower prices and not being snatched up like a year ago.

I decided to start at the beginning of this thread to find the first now silly/outdated post. I made it six posts. Congrats OP!
Not that you were off base in your observation. It was spot on. For a long time. Which made people start to think that's the way it will always be (and to some, somehow that it'd always been that way).

That post is from March 30, 2021. TAF was still averaging $7400- Good ol' days.

I saw tonight the Distro Panick thread was locked. What's the happening price bubble thread these days?

Not as active as the panic thread, but The Great Pinball Price Crash thread seems to be the current torch bearer for pricing speculation/hysteria.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-great-pinball-price-crash/page/37#post-8256845

I'm not paying close attention to the EM market - are prices higher today than they were a year ago? I would have guessed not. I know some 90s B/W are still holding steady.

Somebody is paying good $$$ for an EM. At least in my personal sample of 1.

I restored a 1976 Bally Night Rider last year from the ground up, practically every nut and bolt. It came out great, played beautifully, and even won awards at a big Pinball and Arcade show in Denver.

In October 2023, I decided to part with it in order to fund my next project. Got some reasonable local and pinside offers in the $4K range, which was around my break-even point and seriously considering. I had also put it on eBay for $5400 just to see what would happen. Boy, did something happen.

With shipping and tax, a guy paid $6570.94 on eBay for my EM Night Rider within a week of posting it. I used the net proceeds from that, plus the sale of my restored Meteor plus a little cash, to buy the family's grail pin (Ghostbusters Premium).

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There's always dumb money on BaT..
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/pinball-machine-13/

Paging blondetall

Funny thing about this is location...
I bought a like new surf champ EM for $500, a pretty good Williams Big Deal that needed player count for $400, a rough Supersonic (im currently turning into a 2.0)for $200, a near perfect Delta Queen for $300 (missing backglass) , a dead, dirty Coney island for $200 (new cpu for $159, rubbers, and ball, and fired right up). And I've recently bought 5 Allied leisure cocktails for $50 a piece.

I see machines going for 2-3k on the west coast and up north that I can buy for a fraction of that in the southeast (alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee area specifically)
Every once in a while an estate sale will pop up with one or two, or a warehouse auction, guys getting out from old arcade days, etc.

I'm not downing any price anyone wants to sell for, or the difference in quality of machine, but I am seeing quite a lot of pins hit the secondary market as opposed to just a few years ago.
Even newer pins like valhalla, GOTG, TNMT, deadpool, etc dropping slightly in my area 5-5.5k range.
Don't think there is a formula at this point still, but good prices are out there to be had.

Stunning game in as new or better condition.

Way way better, the insides of these never looked like that, basically been done up to museum showpiece!