I did a seminar at the last Pinball Expo in Chicago on high game prices. The odd part is that the last expo in 2019 had very reasonably priced games? Take that “free play” area, there were several nice EM’s that played and looked great for sell well under $1,000. I sold a Hit The Deck for $1,400, so game prices are still all over the place. I guess they really sky rocketed once COVID shut everything down, I assume that same Hit The Deck would sell right now for at least double that. So yeah, game prices are hard to figure out, but I think once these shows start back up in full capacity there will be reasonably priced games yet again.

Every person who snatches a game under market value off Craigslist has done the same thing.

Back in the 90s owning a MM and paying $4500 for one was a big deal. If the operators would even give them up.

No shit .I couldn’t imagine this hobby without “new pin day” with all the hype .How did the pinball

What was the average price to play a game on location in the 90s? .I take my 2 kids to a pincade in FT Wayne IN and he has $2 get 3rd play free plus most are set to 5 ball .$30 lasts us 4-5 hrs .I think that’s a great price for a days entertainment .We just went to see Black Widow at IMAX thats $100 for 3 hours .I’ll take the former any day of the week and 3 times on Sunday .

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Buyers always want something cheaper and sellers want more money. Typical person thinks their stuff is gold while everyone else's stuff is junk.

Pinball was 50c there weren’t that many 80s games out there. Ironically more are out there now. If there were they were 25c

3 plays for a dollar was also pretty much standard too. More hot spots would probably do straight 50c play though.

After the video fad died. ( about 1982 ) many 50¢ pins were changed to 25¢. But by the late 1980's they were back to 50¢ with things improving for the places that were left and rising pin prices.

LTG : )

Was WPT the first game to ship at 75c? I know it was Steve that pushed for it.

There is a big difference between buying an unshopped, broken game off craigslist and doing a trade where both games are 100 percent.

They are not all broken and you know it. Guys on here go batshit when someone else snagged a nice Whitewater that some poor widow listed for 2k that was sitting in their basement. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but it's a practice that is adopted by almost all of us.

There's a clown that lives about an hour from my region. Every time me or one of my buddies puts a game up for sale we all get a good laugh at what this loser offers in trade.

I remember when I was selling my Tron, he offers his Monopoly straight up, when I decline he "steps up" and offers his Transformers.

He's well aware of what he's doing and that he's flat out trying to rip people off (and proud of it).

Of course he grossly over prices everything he has for sale.

Or the ones that just outright lowball. Someone spent 24 hours messaging me about my potc because I wouldn't take 12k for it. Spent the entire time complaining about how expensive games are now. How they have been doing this for 15 years and they sold games back when they were cheaper. Finally had to block them.

Can almost guarantee if I sell it for 12k I will see it relisted for 15k within a week.

Not all of us... I wouldn't try to squeeze profit out of an innocent old widow. I'd offer to represent her and sell it for what it's worth and split the difference with her or offer her $3000 outright. Thats still under market value, and she gets an extra $1000, and I get a WW for $3K. Thats how you keep karma off your back.

You do realize that what you said you would do instead, is still actually "squeezing" a profit out of that poor old widow?
At the end of the day you're not giving her market value for her pin.

She gets $1000 more of my money than from the next guy that you know is going to buy it at $2000... I ask you how many other people would do that? Not many.

Sorry but if you selling something or trading something it’s your job to know what it’s worth. Plain and simple.

Also, If someone wants to pay a stupidly high price for something, that does not mean they are getting ripped off. It means that they value the game more than what the normal market calls for.

If someone really loves Fish Tales and one never shows up in their area for them to purchase, they may decide to spend an extra couple grand over “market” to entice sometime to sell it to them. They did not get ripped off. They simply bought a game at a value that made sense to them.

Not many, and I wouldn't fault you for doing that. But, you are profiting, which you claimed you wouldn't want to do. I don't see anything wrong with scoring some profit for yourself.

Agreed. Besides, It's not my job to keep other people from getting fleeced. This market is so crazy that eventually even some of those overpriced pins will look like a bargain.

It seems fair you know its worth more so instead of being greedy you offer more and still get a good price .win/win

Cool, but I let people know when they are about to get fleeced. A coworker once asked me if I wanted to buy her old guitar and amplifier for $400... they were worth $1000. I wasn't interested in the guitar, but I offered her $500 for the amp and told her the pair was worth $1000... she said sell the guitar for $500 and you can keep the amp, so thats what I did. She was happy, I was happy, the guy who bought the guitar was ecstatic (slab neck on the Jazzmaster was worth more dressed as a Strat and I am sure thats what he did with it)

Yeah, if I'm ripping off a little old lady, I'm just go whole hog and do it the right way.

What's the point in leaving some of my profits on the table just to make myself feel a little better?

Besides, it's super easy to rationalize this shit. When I was taking a HUO Spider Man out of a lady's house for $2,500 because her kids were gone and she wanted the room in her basement back I didn't hesitate. She was more than happy to get the cash, and I was doing her a favor by not doing the ole nitpick routine and trying to talk her down on site, and by providing a quick, easy, and professional game extraction that was fast and clean, didn't damage her house etc.

The last thing I was thinking was to talk her into accepting another $500 so I could sleep 8 percent better at night. What's the point?

As long as all parties are happy with the deal I really don't see a problem.

That is the point. Karma is a bitch and taking advantage of someone is bad form. You do you Crazy, but I sleep just fine at night because I don't carry my guilt around in a 10 pound sack.

Which is why you are still willing to rip an old lady off by buying a Whitewater that's worth $6K for $3k. Guilt free!

You do you!

(man I wish people would stop saying that, it sounds fucking moronic. And just when "just sayin'" seemed to be going away!)

No doubt about. If I can score a sweet deal/steal for myself and the other party is good with it, then I'm going for it. Fuck it! I already don't sleep very well at night.

Btw "you do you" makes my ears bleed, but it doesn't get any worse than people saying they're "woke" or that they don't feel like adulting today.

Excuse me if my subjective evaluation of an imaginary WW was that it was only worth $4k. But we are getting off the real topic that I would have given her an extra grand and you would have just screwed her over and walked away with it at $2k and been fine with it.

Like I said, you go right on being an ass because you do that so well, or put simply- you do you.

And you just keep making pathetic dad jokes that nobody laughs at while at the same time pretending your shit don't stink because you are only willing to rip off little old ladies 50 percent rather than 100 percent.

U do U!

And once again I live rent free in Crazy Levi's head... I really enjoy the furnishings by the way... you got an interesting feng shui going on in here...

I love how you respond to my every post, whine about me constantly, just got so annoyed you lost your cool and called me "an ass," and NEVER let me get the last word in...and somehow you think you live rent free in my head.

That's not how it works bro!

You see..it is I who am living rent free in YOUR head!

BOOM!

So what are some good resources to find out the fair price for a vintage machine? Clearly from this thread you cannot trust what someone tells you, but some of these old machines do not have a lot of sales history.

Price guides are outdated and obsolete.

Your best bet is to simply pay close attention to the market here and come up with your own guidelines.

Asking advice here from the general community is still a good idea.

Asking a guy trying to buy a game from you is probably a bad idea.

Additional piece here, you can't even go off what pinside "suggests" when you look at a game's page. That is outdated. You need to look at the market listings and archived listings.

I’m so fuckin sick of people trying to buy games from me and quoting “pinside price suggestions” to me.

It happened to me recently when someone on Craigslist offered me $1200 for a Breakshot.

I just tell them, great, go buy it on pinside!

Thanks. The prices I hear are all over the place. I am not sure if it is because the market is unstable right now or what. I am just trying to find a realistic value. I have had the machine since 1975, it is from 1970, so it is not as slick as the new ones which I know is more popular/valuable

Well tell us what machine it is and offer up some
Pictures and we’ll be happy to give our opinions. Since it likely isn’t a super sought after game I would think you’ll get nothing but honest answers here (ie: no vultures hoping they can mislead you and get it cheap)

Having nothing to go on but the year, I’ll say, generally, an as-is mechanical game of that era that probably needs a shop out and various work is probably worth around $200-800 these days. But again title / condition / location affects everything.

Thanks for participating in the Let’s Talk Pinball Pricing thread!!

It is a Williams Aces and Kings.

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It looks to be in nice shape and well maintained for a game in a civillian's collection for 46 years. Not the most sought after title and the pointy people artwork is love it or hate it.

I'd back off my previous estimate as it's not some junky basement game, and say it's probably worth $500-$1000 (on a very good day!).

If it were mine and I wanted to get rid of it I'd probably list it at $1100 on FB, CL, and here and see if I get any interest. WOuld def expect some negotiating to happen at that price. The wild card is always that one guy out there who played Aces and Kings every day one summer at a store or arcade when he was a kid and has super fond memories of the game and is eager to buy that particular title. It happens!

thanks, I had it as a teen and have tried to take good care of it. I still love it

The whole point of this dumb thread is for people to voice their opinion on the stupid and out of control and unpredictable stupid pinball prices. Why someone can get 25K for one machine and I can barely get $850 for one I’m selling I’ll never freakin know and don’t freakin care. All I’m saying is that I’ll never pay more for a game than I think it’s worth despite the ad price or pinside market value. I’m not a fool and have been in this game long enough to know what I’m willing to pay. I also laugh in jest at the way over priced ads cause I envision in my head the poor buyer either having no clue or having way too much money to blow. it’s just a pinball machine!

Exactly. The pinside average is trailing and doesn’t account for off market sales. AFM LE is pinside priced at 8k average; and it’s trading at almost 11k all day long.
The algorithm isn’t properly weighted; and is weighted too heavily towards old sales data. A shrewd buyer can leverage this disparity.

I would not either, I would do the same as you. Other people I know even reverse negotiate.

However, when I stated this in a thread several years ago when someone did just that, and I was stoned in the town square.

Sometimes being a decent human being rubs people the wrong way. You can just feel the anger swell up inside some people and you can guess they're thinking "a damn good deal is once again ruined by some do-gooder who let the seller know the value of the unicorn they possess"

I agree with you totally.....it seems to be the problem with this country, case in point Jeff Bezos riding his giant penis into space on the backs of Amazon employees that he treats like crap

It's ok, he thanked them in his historic acceptance speech!

I once bought a LOTR for $500. The guy I bought it from paid $700 for it...he figured it must have depreciated.

...and hey, had I not bought it from the guy, some other pin vulture would have.

But was it a fleece? Was market value $1400?

I dunno. We were both happy, so you tell me. LOTR was selling for about $3k at the time. He could have looked it up. Meanwhile, I was shocked that the game had been on CL for a week and no one has taken it yet.

Under that scenario, (no body buying for a week) I would have figured something was major wrong with it...

It was listed a bit funny. “Pin ball” & the game’s title wasn’t listed.

I am always on the lookout for a good deal - I watch local home sale listings for pins in basements and contact the owners if they are willing to sell so as not to have to move them with them...