Well it's about time they saved something.

I speak French

Onion = On yawn

i'm 35. i've always loved both video games and pinball. now that i'm old enough to fill my basement with whatever i care to covet, i find the pinball machines hold a certain fascination that the video games lack. i mean i still love video games. it's just, there's probably a dozen different devices in my house capable of playing good video games. pinball, though, that's different.

so in some respects, i suppose my situation is indicative of the "bubble" argument. i'm sure people like me are contributing to the rise in prices. but i think there's a lot more going on in this hobby than simply a certain generation reaching a certain age. there really does seem to be a surge of interest in the hobby, not just fueled by speculation or nostalgia, and not just amongst people my age. right in my own community, there's an active pinball league (and these guys look like they're mostly in their 20s) and various pinball organizations seem to be thriving. I went to the Fairfax Pinball Open and saw tons of people younger than me. at the FPO, i saw a hobby on the rise with young people.

here's my theory: once upon a time, video games were on the cutting edge of technology. they stood out as a high tech object in the world. but in this age of digital technology, we all stare at computer screens all day long. heck, most of us own phones that provide a better gaming experience than a typical arcade. video game cabinets just don't stand out. they don't offer anything a person couldn't experience by pulling their phone out of their pocket.

but pinball is different. the physicality of controlling that steel ball truly sets it apart as a unique experience, moreso now than ever before. the drop targets, ramps, rails, toys, plungers -- all of it combines to create a physical complexity that becomes more of a spectacle every day as this world goes more and more virtual.

i think there's a chance that kids today, for whom video gaming is by far the dominant form of recreation, will find controlling a real physical object a cool and compelling challenge. not all of them, of course. i'm not saying pinball will be the next huge craze or anything. but i think it can carve out a sustainable niche that is fueled by more than middle aged nostalgic dudes.

i don't think we'll ever see pinball machines casually placed in bars and restaurants again. there are good reasons those kinds of locations don't work and will continue to not work. but dedicated arcades and barcades are popping up and succeeding. this is a development that shouldn't be overlooked.

Most if not all video games can get emulated and thrown up on a very thin screen. They take little to no space these days. The tactile nature of pinball is appealing. It's real. A giant mechanical and computerized game. It's also very hard to only have one. I have not found the one machine that could stand alone and fulfill all the things that are great about pinball. 80% of Sterns business is the home market. When people see a pinball machine at someone's house, they immediately want one. For sustainability, there needs to be competition, innovation, and new customers. People will buy great products.

I am trying to get an investment consortium here in Winnipeg to back my idea for a Pinball\Gentlemen's club scenario. I want to call it, "Titties and Pins™" I think this concept will cause a Pinball explosion here in Canada Especially with the wifey

What do you guys think?

Pinball-Stripper.jpg

Those vids helped pinball. Lots of new arcades opened up, and provided more places to play pinball.

And you couldn't always get the latest and greatest vid, so pinball was a cheap filler for space.

LTG : )

We operate pins, and the younger generation is defiantly curious and still willing to drop .75 for a go. As long as I see that there will always be hope!

I predict Stern and JJP in their current form will be gone within 10 years. Small boutique pin makers (skitb, spooky, jpop,etc) will take their place making very small runs for the collector maket.

HEP restored "A-Listers" or 401K?

I know which one would be more fun.

That's cajun, not French!

Things aren't really bubbles in that they never really pop and disappear. More like cycles of high and lows I don't think pinball will completely die. What also happens to often is we draw a wall around what we know we think we know. What the original poster may be forgetting to consider are the markets outside of the US/Western culture. All those millions of Chines and Indian consumers who will have more and more disposable income as their cultures develop. So while you may have seen the end of the Arcade in our society, it does not mean it won't take off somewhere else. When it comes to consumer goods, you can never say never. 7 years ago RIM was the king of mobility. There were no Tablet PC's. Laptops were king. Consumer turns all that on its ear pretty quick. Facebook........ what happened to myspace? Things come and go, everything old is new again - Neon colors are back on runners and clothing and so are bell bottoms. Who knows what the future will hold but I personally don't think the death of pinball will come when those of us that are currently collecting get too old to continue on. There will still be a market somewhere.

Interesting point. Kids today are wicked smart with pretty limited attention spans......because they are that smart. They're onto the next thing before you know it. Pinball has an analogue variable no current programmed game can replicate. But that's always been the beauty of pinball to me. You can walk up and have a kick ass game and the very next one you can get your ass kicked due to those infinite variables involved in a pinball machine. Practice any electronic game long enough and you'll master it. Pinball I don't think is like that.

I think this is it more than anything. Our generation is also targeted heavily in movies, tv, and general consumer products more than any other age group. Just look at all the re-makes of television shows and movies that are from our youth. Even shows like Family Guy rely on 80's and 90's nostalgia to drive up ratings.

As we get older and the next generation (that didn't grow up in arcades) becomes the prime consumer demographic, pinball as a hobby will start to fade and collectors will downsize, hit our mid-life crisis', and eventually move into nursing homes. Driving long distances and hauling around 300lb. pins isn't as easy to do when you get older. I still think we have another 5-10 good years before we see a decline, but it is bound to happen eventually. You also have to look at the availability of parts and parts vendors in the future. Places like Pinball Resource, PinballLife, Bay Area, etc. won't be around forever as the owner's get closer to retirement age. We need to hope that parts will continue to be produced otherwise we will all be stuck with a bunch of broken machines and sky high parts costs.

i would opine that the heyday of pins was the 60's and early 70's... you had several established mainstream manufacturers cranking out new machines on a monthly (sometimes more often) basis, and pinball machines were EVERYWHERE... gas stations, drug stores, you name it, there was a pin there...

Ditto! I couldn't have said it better myself!

How long have you been in the hobby? 'The prime pinhead generation'??

Pinball had been suffering for decades where the 'prime generation' actually was dying off because the market was dominated by older people. You know.. the people that played pin before the video explosion. The market was dominated by the older generation through the 90s and into the 2000s. The ones that are in their 40s now were the vanguard 'young ones' during that period.. the few surrounded by people already in the 40s-60s.

Now, that vanguard is much of the core of the market as they aged and now are in their 40s-60s.

What has changed now, that didn't happen back then, or in recent memory is two fold
1) a strong surge in interest from younger (20s to low 30s) hobbists.... in far greater numbers than last time
2) a huge influx of NEW people in their 30s-40s into the hobby with disposable income

The hobby base has blown up with both new faces AND new money.

But this new influx of participants are not sticking to the old mantra of how the old guard viewed and appreciated in the hobby. Most hobbists were the guys who fixed games themselves and relied almost exclusively on the second hand market. NIB was unheard of for 95% of the market.. no one would consider paying that much for pins that hadn't been vetted.

But now the new money coming into the market sees NIB as the way to 'get started..' and the price points are accepted. That inrush of money at the top has set new expectations of what a pin can be worth... the core DMD W/B market flushed with value as new money chases what was already a limited commodity. The 'tolerance' for price points was completely reset with all these new people and new money flooding the hobby.

This new breed of hobbists also significantlly changed the common tastes and what is held dear... this has caused the mod market to blow up.

Both the flocking to NIB and mods show that the customer base has shifted.. and if you are at shows or competitions you can see the new blood.

Is it a bubble? It's certainly a surge... but I don't know if it will pop. One could argue it took 10-15+ years of the old W/B market truly being out of production for the traditional operator->hobbist market funnel to fully dry up. With that old funnel of machines gone.. the new blood are flocking enmass to new sterns and new manufacturers.

Where the pop will be is if the new blood fizzles quickly. But pinball is certainly making a niche comeback along with others in formats like the barcade, etc. But it hasn't blown out mainstream yet and I doubt it will. It will still be something on the side... and there are plenty of these niche experiences that have failed too.

I appreciate that this new surge has kept pinball factories and parts suppliers up and going. I don't like how the expectation of prices and conditions has been changing... but maybe eventually that will create a second market tier of stuff that isn't 'good enough' for the new money and us classic hobbyists will thrive on affordability there

Wait, this actually exists? Where?

That was the 'last' peak - but you're looking at titles produced instead of 'titles on location'. And that peak of DMD games in 92-93 the players were predominantly an older crowd.. its not like kids who were 8-9 were sucked up into the DMD peak. Even if you were in college in 92, that puts you at 39 now.. which doesn't speak to the surge in players appearing now in their 20s. While 92-93 era was a peak, it crashed quite hard quite quickly afterwards in terms of production.

We are all amazed by TZ and TAF production numbers... but while they are huge.. and dwarf today's numbers... they aren't *that* massive compared to many SS titles. Space Shuttle.. Cyclone.. High Speed.. Pinbot..Flash Gordon.. and many others that many DMD-and-later hobbists don't necessarily connect with as 'popular' were pumping out 7-15k titles too. That's in addition to all the existing titles that were still on the street and the multiple manufacturers at the time. Pinball was in far more places back then.

Tieing that back.. you have all the people that were new to pinball in that time of the mid to late eighties.. in addition to all the people that pinball 'was' the arcade before the video boom.

While the 90s were the heyday of some peak production - they weren't really the heyday of pinball's relevance and penetration into everyday life.

I think a good metric of pinball growth can be seen in the IFPA/WPPR player database numbers, particularly with the rate of new younger players and women. Competitive play is the best chance for pinball to break back into the mainstream IMO. I love what PAPA TV is planning to do, and hope for the day that tournaments are shown on ESPN2 or another high-profile outlet.

Newbie here. I'm in my early 30's and grew up playing pinball.

I frankly love playing and my kids love it as well.

You cannot digitally replicate a pinball machine. Virtual pinball for example is a cool concept to wet one's whistle but it cannot hold a candle to the real deal.

Pinball will not die because the fundamental game cannot be replicated in digital format.

The risk I do see however is the lack of exposure of pinball to the younger generations. If you polled the kids at my son's elementary school as to how many have played a pinball machine, I bet the numbers would be extremely low.

I do not believe it is that kids and teens don't want to play pinball. The problem is that they cannot easily find them to play.

You just do not see them regularly in the wild like you used to. I can remember tons of restaurants having them as kids. I would eat my food as fast as I could just so I could leave my folks and go play some pinball.

Pinball, like any hobby, is dependent on new and younger players. However, if they do not have access to machines, you will see a steady decline and then a complete collapse.

Now excuse me while I get back to my ham radio and pogs...........just kidding.

Thanks for the heads up. Heading up there tomorrow to play.

@fgop...

you can't truly digitally replicate football either (for example), yet FAR more kids play madden than the real thing, and the real thing is readily available to them...

yes, some kids will play pinball given the opportunity... heck, some of them will play bocce given the opportunity... but the reality is, the "younger generation" really isn't inclined to appreciate something physical/"analog" when they can do it without effort/"digitally"... heck, that even extends to "digital vs. digital"... my nephews would rather play those handheld nintendo things than a ps3, and those suck (imo) compared to a console game...

it's a "smaller/faster/easier" world today... no real opinion on whether that is good, bad or indifferent, but it is the way it is...

heck, 99% of the population thinks driving a car with a stick shift is too hard... it'll be a sisyphean task to try to get people to entertain themselves by spending more effort instead of less...

now get off my lawn...

I wish that was the case up here in the plains. I can see the coasts and the bigger metros (Minneapolis) for example have machines more readily available in public, but they are sadly just not easy to find up here outside of private collections.

Our metro has a population of roughly 216,000 and the only machine I have seen in a while was an Attack From Mars at Old Chicago that was in need of some serious repair. In our metro there are only 3 machines in the public. One in a laundromat, one in a bar (recently had a stabbing out front), and the one at Old Chicago.

In general, my belief is that up to the mid 90's, pinball was everywhere from small towns to big cities and anyone could easily find one to try. My two quarters.

@fgop... when i said "the real thing is readily available", it was in reference to football (the "madden" analogy), not pins...

no argument from me on the rest... "location pinball", for all the discussion about it coming back, is all but dead almost everywhere, and "back in the day", there were pins everywhere... i played the great majority of pinball in my yute at gas stations and corner stores... that ain't happening anymore, sadly...

Rebirth or bubble -call it what you want.
I can play pinball in my own house without pants on and not worry about being arrested again!

You're right - and I've said the same (but not with the doom and gloom).

Basically, yes, if pinball doesn't evolve, then as the boomers and gen-x/y-ers go away, so shall pin prices go the way of EM gun and puck games.

On the other hand, right now, it appears Gen-x/y is just hitting its stride. So if you're looking for prices to plummet in the near future, I would not wait for it.

It won't be a rebirth until pinballs start appearing in 7-11s, liquor stores, etc....all the places they were when I was a kid. Pins in the wild here are still a rare commodity, unlike in 92-95.

No, this will never happen again. But specialty arcades and bar-cades have a chance to thrive.

Perhaps,but until they become common across the United States, this is NOT a rebirth, plain and simple.

Everything happens in cycles. I guess we're between denial and acceptance in this cycle. It gets uglier!

Of course we will !

Wait? What are you expecting from us exactly?

This is "not" a short post about pinball...it's a long winded one.

People who believe that pinball is an investment, only worry about things like this.

Yeah yeah, everything is a "bubble". You hear financial experts say "I said years ago that the real estate boom would end". Ok better explanations would be when and how will it end.
There will be a day when you can't flip your NIB pin and make a couple of grand quickly, but there will always be alot of people who dig a High Speed 2 Getaway for 1600 bucks. Even the 20 somethings will add this to their gamerooms as a cool feature someday soon and yes their friends will say "wow let me play that".
There are too many awswome pins in the 1000-2000 range for a big crash bubble- will my high speed 2 only be worth 800 bucks some day? Doubt it. Hence no big bubble.

Its a rebirth of a bubble

You're right on the money pezpunk. Not only have home consoles/smartphones and tablets surpassed the arcade experience many years ago, but the video game market today has grown so large that it has become quite saturated. Where can you play a video game? On your PC, at home on a console, on your smart TV, on your Apple TV, on your Roku, on your third party streaming box, on your ipod, phone, tablet, etc. Video games have become too much of a part of our modern digital lives. And what's worse, the mobile games are only designed to be addictive, repetitive time wasters. Angry Birds, Temple Run, Candy Crush... there's no real depth to them beyond flinging birds, collecting coins, and matching patterns.

And even with that, full-blown PC and console games have also become too numerous and have been suffering in quality for years. Today's video games are buggy, watered down versions of what they used to be. Developers now charge for "downloadable content" that should have been included the base game as a complete package. Developers are greedy and driving away real talent. In the 90s, a new console game was a big deal and you were almost guaranteed a great experience. Now, you're lucky if you get something that isn't a violent M-rated shooter and actually get your money's worth.

And unfortunately that's not going to happen with the cost of pins now .... so it's kind of like a Catch 22.

This belief is probably only held by us, pinball players, which is a niche market.
Someone sitting at home playing it on Microsoft Surface, who doesn't play them in real life, doesn't know the difference or care.

I disagree, I have plenty of Snes and Genesis and Saturn and Ps1 games that are just awful and were awful when they came out.

Hence the word "almost."

Yeah the times I go to the local arcade I don't see kids playing. Although when I worked in an arcade in the 90s I don't really remember them playing all too much. Also, these games are pretty brutal these days. Get a young kid to play tron for $1 a game and it's over in under 4 minutes.

Redemption rules these days.

It's the only sample we need to keep this hobby alive.....and possibly even growing.

I'm sure if you add up all the kids and future kids of current hobbyists it would add up to more people than are currently buying pins.

We are not talking about pins becoming the mainstay they once where in the 70's....we are simply talking about keeping this current trend of (very small) growth going forward.

Our kids, and possibly the growing popularity of virtual pinball is probably all that we need.

And there it is! That same dollar will go into a redemption machine and last a LOT less than the 4 minutes it would last in a pin. Redemption gives something a kid can understand, tickets. And they think with a speck of "skill" on a redemption game they can get a huge amount of tickets. It isn't the time, it is feeling like a winner that makes kids stuff money into machines. If you have a kids pin competition even the kids will know only one kid won. But with redemption they will all feel like they won as the claim their plastic zippy straw that they "earned" at the counter.

Make it happen. If we as the pin community really support pins on location it can grow. Talk up pinball everywhere you go. Do you frequent a local bar, restaurant, mini mart? Talk to them about getting a pin. Talk to local ops. Talk to locations with pins. Get other pinheads in your area to go out and play location pinball. If you want something,make it happen.

For $20