Quoted from Honch:They aren't going nuts, but they are getting harder to find. It took me about 7 or 8 months to find a TFTC and I was searching aggressively everyday.
I look at it this way -- ten years ago, they weren't very easy to find. Today, they still aren't that easy to find, but yet they cost about the same when they sell.
TFTC is a great game, but it is hard to find. It has my favorite shot in all of pinball (the right ramp) and I've been kinda, sorta looking for one now for 10 years. While I have seen them come up, none have ever been in the price range where I would go jump on it...
Quoted from TheLaw:At first I was unsure about trading games and it seemed a little weird, then I basically reach my limit of games, and now I've got to do something.
See, you have a limit. I do stupid, stupid stuff so that I don't, at least not yet. I need a frickin' house to actually put the other 80% of my collection...
Quoted from NPO:Yet again, to me, DE is a treasurecove of underrated pins at decent prices right now. DE machines are what B/W machines were back in 2001-2009 days - realistic and affordable pins. Then again, B/W machines have FAR MORE followers than DE. With 2 DEs and 1 B/W - I have always been for the underdog .
This is because, in a nutshell, when people get into the hobby they are looking for the machine that they first got interested in pinball for. Back in the day, it basically worked like this...
Gottlieb titles never broke down, but never made crap on route, so few people got them and routed them, and few people want them now.
Data East titles earned well (I've heard the best) right out of the box, but generally imploded with problems very early on. They would end up getting replaced quickly because they would earn like crazy for three months until they broke, and then they would earn horribly while they sat off. Certain odd design decisions don't help matters at all (like if one switch in JP goes out, JP can't start modes no matter what you do).
Bally / Williams titles earned decently when you set them up, and once you fixed all the issues after opening up the box (yes, ladies and gents, B/W titles were far worse out of the box than Stern titles, it was up to the ops to tweak them and make them work), they kept working and earned really well. So, they tended to stay out on route much longer than the other titles, and it was more likely your first experience falling in love with a game was on a B/W DMD, or if you fell in love with a DE, there was a good shot it would be broken three months from now and maybe pulled.
That's why B/W titles get the love that they do.
I agree that DE is a treasure trove of under-appreciated pins, but generally someone's choice is going to be the one they fell in love with in '94 (or whatever) followed by the new one that shouldn't give them issues.
Quoted from decktard:Also consider some inflation factors. That $1000 pin from 2002 is now worth $1275 just based on the value of the dollar alone. Wonder if some people don't suffer a little bit of the "back in my day candy bars cost a nickel..." syndrome.
That's a great point, but no -- it's definitely not all that. In 2002, I was doing this already, and I could have bought TZs all day for $1200 and TAFs for $1000 from various ops that were just hoping to clear up some inventory space. A lot of other games were just as cheap. Even accounting for inflation, it doesn't make up for the fact that the market has truly taken off.
The one thing I didn't note though is a lot of buyers like to mod machines like crazy right now, a trend I personally don't really get, but that's cool -- it's your machine. When it comes time to sell that machine, they don't look at it like people did 10 years ago [flashback...]
Okay, this decent TZ is $1200, this really nice one is $1400, this one where I put some cool marbles in the gumball machine and a couple extra toys on the playfield is not quite as nice as that $1400 one, so it should be $1300.
Now, we're going, "Okay, I bought my Tron Pro for $4800, I added a flipper fidelity kit for $150, different light cycles for $50, EL wire for $150, the Tron arcade thing for $200, and a topper for $250. I don't really want this game any more, so I'll offer it up for, lets see here... $4800+$150+$50+$150+$200+250 = $5600... oh, but I put some time into doing these mods, so how about $5800?"
10 years ago, you buy that machine and you do all those mods, and you have a $4800 game with whatever depreciation you got from opening it and playing it for a while. Today, who knows -- maybe you could get $5800 for it. Seeing what some other blinged out examples have been selling for lately, that doesn't sound too "out there."
It's fascinating to see. Glad I bought 90%+ of what I wanted in the way of pins years ago. Glad I can deal with my arcade vids now, as those prices bottomed out a while ago and you can still get stuff cheap!