The rule here is documentation. Just keep pics of your pins, right up a little sheet on each one and its estimated value then when you sell them, write down where they went and for how much. On the deposit slip just write where the money came from and get a receipt from the buyer. I have been audited by the IRS before. An IRS audit is an educating moment on what they expect and require for you to validate income.

Here is another perspective: Your future is uncertain. Paying off your mortgage is like an insurance policy for your future. Economies tank, stock markets crash, you could loose your job, Illness, car accident (especially here with all the lunatic drivers) No debt, doesn't just offer peace of mind, it provides financial freedom for whatever curve ball life can throw at you!

Here is yet another perspective. 15 years ago I started my current job. I rolled over $38k from an old employers IRA into my new IRA. I just checked this week, that $38k is now worth $130k. So there is an Opportunity Cost to paying a mortgage off early. Ironically enough, a $38k pinball collection purchased 15 years ago would probably be worth $130k as well!

The bottom line for me is to have a diversified portfolio of investments, a little bit in everything. Having that much money invested in a pinball machine collection would be way overweighted for me.

Same reason I paid off my house this year as well. I'd say go for it. While it may be hard to get games back in the same condition you have now, part of the fun is the hunt. Save one game so the rabbit can multiply again.

Keep the pins and sell the house!

Sell, live debt free.

Besides all the games you own are only going to go down in price so you will be able to buy them all back, but for less money!!

I recently sold my entire 12 pin collection due to buying a smaller home. I was really bummed at first but the extra money really came in handy with our home purchase.

I have to admit, in a weird way, it's kind of nice being pin free. No more constant worries about stuff breaking (I'm not mechanically handy in the least). For my pin fix, I now play on location. Happily, machines have been popping up at businesses all around San Luis Obispo lately.

Agreed. I would love to have my house paid off but doubt it would change my life much in reality. People tend to live within their means. If you no longer had mortgage payments, you would probably spend the money somewhere else - like pinball machines lol. It doesn't make sense to sell pins and buy them again later. IMO best thing to do is to attack your mortgage with extra payments and living lean. Perhaps sell a few pins and apply it to the principle. In a few years, you could have the home paid for and keep most of your pins.

Why does everything have to be absolute? Sell all, pay off all. Why not sell the games you don't play (or haven't played in say a month) and pop that money down on the principal, then refinance to a shorter term. You should easily be able to keep 5 or 6 games and buy back some peace of mind on the mortgage balance.

I’m in the process of paying down my mortgage now as well. There is a lot of talk on the financial sense of doing so, i.e. how low is the interest rate, opportunity cost of investing the money elsewhere, how much will it cost or save to buy the pins later, etc.

For me it’s not as much about the financials: there is an immense value for me in paying down my debts even when it doesn’t make the most financial sense to do so. It’s like I’m buying out my stress in life, and that makes it a good deal.

I'm on a 15 year fixed at 2.625% and if I could pay off my house completely by selling something I'd do it in a heartbeat. At 4.5%, it's a no-brainer.

Then he better move to Iowa because same problem exists for buying back the pins, It's gonna cost more to buy another house here, a lot more!

If he would have come in and said," I am going to sell off half of my pins. Which ones should I keep.", then this conversation would had slid into "sell this one and keep this one" and someone else would chime in and say "No! Keep the one he says to sell and sell the one he says to keep." After 30 posts there be 15 post saying to keep each pin and 15 posts saying to sell each pin.

Sell. looking at your collection,I don't see any Games that would be hard to find down the road..

That lineup is not going to pull more than 90k all in at the moment unless you get very very lucky with buyers who don't know how to negotiate to market pricing. And imagine the hassle of endless tire-kickers, bad deals, people backing out, people in your home constantly to move 15 pins to 15 buyers. if you want out quickly, list the whole lot for 80k and move them to a single buyer.

97500 is really pushing top of market pricing on games that are mostly trending down.

Sell half and pay down your house. Then you will have your house paid for and a few short years - and a few of your fav games in it to boot.

I could argue both sides.

BUT....one of the best feelings you will have in life is when you pay off your mortgage.

Three years ago, I sold off two pins for around $10k because I was in such striking distance of getting out from Wells Fargo, and it felt great.

A word of caution, banks do everything withing their legal power to stop you from making those last payments. Its a separate department (it was for Wells Fargo) and even when I tried to walk into a local office to make a final payment, they turned me away.

I would do it again in a heartbeat....even though its probably not financially the most prudent thing to do.

Move to Seattle - housing's really cheap here!

Sheesh! Hearing all these figures.....try living in Jersey! My friend has a medium sized house. $600,000 and pays $24K in taxes....

New homes in suburban Charlotte, NC (one of the hottest economies in the US) run 350k-450k for more square footage (3250sf+) and nicer finishes than anyone really needs...oh and taxes are under 4k per year! And no winter....

24k in property taxes per year are more than most people pay for their combined mortgage payment plus escrow at 2k per month!!! damn!!!

My friend just moved to Charlotte and bought a 3 story mansion for $480K! And, yes, low taxes.....

I’d sign up for that tax bill today.

New Jersey property taxes are brutal, even worse since my children attend private school.

More depressing if we’d invested in Amazon stock 10 years ago $10k would be worth $240k. 42% annual rate of return.

Sometimes a low loan rate is better than paying off if you can earn more on investments.

https://dqydj.com/stock-return-calculator-dividend-reinvestment-drip/

It depends on if you look at debt negatively. Debt is not a dirty word if managed properly. It can get you into a lot of trouble, but it can also free up a lot of cash for other things.

I'm surprised no one else has mentioned $98k is not a conservative estimate... It's closer to best outcome.

Regardless, i would sell to pay off my mortgage for sure. Pinball machines are basically priced at their ceiling right now, besides the most collectible/desirable machines, you're getting more for your money buying NIB. $3k/mo (36k/yr) is enough to buy every new stern (3 x 6k) and jjp machine (2 x 8k) NIB every year

I literally can't imagine that. I have 4 bed 3 full-bath house 10 minutes from downtown Birmingham, AL. It's exactly 10 miles from my garage to my parking space at work. Paid $140k for the whole thing with brand new maple hardwood flooring.

Prices up north are completely insane.

Normally I would say you'd be better off with investments. However, in this case it seems like your payments are pretty high and you're almost done paying them off, so selling them and paying off the mortgage makes a lot of sense. $3k a month buys a lot of pinball machines back pretty quickly. Or $200 buys a console that provides 10x the entertainment value for less than 1% of the cost of the pinball machines. Pinball machines aren't really worth owning at home unless their value is stable to some degree, otherwise their cost is way too high compared to other mediums.

It is, and the thought has crossed my mind here and there. However, my interest rate is almost 1% lower than your rate and my property taxes are LOW ... also, I have an unhealthy emotional attachment to many of my machines (mainly stories about the road trips my wife and I took to get them).

However, they're just *things* ... the memories won't go away.

Here's what I'd do if I hit the "sell" threshold you are at ...

1> Choose 3 games. Doesn't matter how. Pull the names out of a hat if you are undecided.
2> Keep those, start to sell the others. Apply any cash raised IMMEDIATELY to your mortgage.
3> See if there is mental anguish ... if it gets to be too much, stop. Else, goto 4
4> Sell another game. Is this the last game to sell? If yes, goto 5; else goto 3.
5> Your collection is now down to your final games AND you've paid one hell of a chunk of your mortgage off. Horray.
6> You still have three high quality pins judging by your list ... you can now start to accumulate them again .

One other thought ... if you think you're going to miss the games you sell, maybe sell your first game and buy yourself a high end virtual pinball machine (yes, I know, it's not pinball, but some of those virtual machines are frigging great these days). That might make selling off the others easier.

Everyone that's saying "Sell your pins, pay it off".....why haven't you? Hell, why don't we all?

What's the point of having a big empty house with no mortgage?

You should have a 6 month salary security blanket set aside for illnesses/job loss/emergencies etc. Don't touch it unless the shit REALLY hits the fan.

We have 2 mortgages right now and will die with several more if things go as planned. We have 2 rental properties (one is paid for) that pay the mortgage on our new house. Our tenants pay the mortgage on the rental. We plan on having more rental properties in the future. Being mortgage free is not the goal. It's all how you look at things.

Maybe some of us planned our life better then what you are suggesting...mortgage free and living the dream....w/o debt.. many ways to get there son.

My point was, YOU don't have to pay off your mortgage. If that's your dream, why not let someone else pay it off for you.

Yes, many ways to get there.

If ya wanna bring your payments down that’s great ...... don’t sell off everything ya love. Keep three of your favorites and still make your life easier

Life too short brother. You need to enjoy it while your above ground

Part of being old is being able to collect Social Security. So keep on working my friend, cause I'm letting "you" help pay for my pins.

I agree but didn't know if I wanted to say anything. I see about 91K unless there is something special going on and you can find "that" buyer for every game.

Owning real estate isn't really "work".....and it definitely pays better than Social Security......

keep trying..

sry Wacky for the indirect de-rail..good luck to you

You can't compare investing to Financial Freedom. Paying off all of your debt has no risk! Investing always has risk. Two entirely different situations. Once you obtain financial freedom, then investing in whatever, becomes much easier.

Well, if you decide to and are willing to ship I'd love to work out a deal for your Funhouse, WoZ and/or MMre

Why do I somehow expect to see you on TV late at night, sitting in the back of a rented biz jet, and telling us all how much money we can make in real estate without any work to do on our part other than send you $79.95 for your books on how to make money in real estate with out working? Buy my books and the money will just start rolling in.

We are catching up to you!

Never owe if you don’t have to. Living debt free should be everyone’s goal.

Financial responsibility is boring af

I was going to say that as well since our mortgages are paid by others, on top of which we make profit and can sell the paid-off-by-others real estate when we retire to have ample play money if need be. Property manager handles it all, so we don't do a darned thing but spend the cash. Mortgage free is not the way to go currently given the low interest rates in this country, but the last time I dared suggest that I got ragged on by the generally older audience here at pinside, so this time I'll let you take the slings and arrows for it and I'll leave it at that

As for the pins, honestly just sell all the common ones. I find it's good sometimes to just purge, it helps you to see what you really need. If you miss some no biggie, since they are common ones you can eventually re-buy them. But I suspect you'll find that you actually miss far less of them that you'd have thought!

EricHadley take a look at your income (both active and passive) and based upon your risk tolerance and ability to leverage/manage debt, figure if you can make more than 4.55% investing compared to paying off your mortgage. If the answer is yes, you are better taking that money and investing it now to grow it vice paying off the mortgage.

Note: before people freak out, this strategy is not right for everybody and is dependent upon individual circumstances. This tends to work better with people with larger incomes and risk tolerances.

Anyone else chugging along on a mortgage payment with no near-term end in sight and feeling super behind reading this thread?

I’m working on a second mortgage to buy the 15 games!! Lol. I kid, I kid!

That fits right in with similar statements:

1) It takes money to make money.

2) Do not invest/play with any money you cannot afford to lose.

Your interest is good, but still a little high compared to mine; 2.35%. I honestly think I locked in at the absolute bottom in July of 2012. Still, by today's standards you are sitting pretty. Consider your interest rate a loan to yourself, or so my CPA says.

I have 35+ machines. I could sell them and cash out, but then sellers remorse would set in big time, I'm sure.

You have to consider all the time, energy, and emotion you have put into your collection and what that will mean if it's all gone.

Just my two cents, which is worth about, uh, two cents.

Terry.