BKSOR LE. I had it 6 weeks and didn’t like it at all. I think I lost $1500. This was pre topper and the game had very mixed reviews. Now it’s selling for $2k above.

I made $3k on mine during covid.

Think this thread is simply showing us how knee jerk early reaction selling often leads to loss.

Oops. Thought we were talking GnR for some reason...carry on.

Hahaha! Did I make this chart! I can't do that AND have adequate time to play pinball, sir!
https://pinside.com/pinball/machine/dialed-in

Never have lost money. I truly believe it’s not unusual in the hobby to buy low and sell high.

It’s not unusual to sell pins to anyone
It’s not unusual to flip pins to anyone!
But when I see you about selling games to anyone
It’s not unusual to see me buy!
I wanna buy !

Dang, that would turn me off on EMs.

rightfully so............horrible game!

Tom Jones, now that's a pin that would sell to all the ladies, unfortunately it would look like a horny horse standing in your living room.

Im not buying your left over crap.

(Post removed because it was shown that I was unintentionally a dick. My apologies.)

Original MM years ago. 2004 I believe. Bought it for $6500, because of all the hype, and sold it a month later for $6000. Didn't like the game at all. I guess I'm one of the rare ones that don't like that game.

They would have to start the game by depositing their panties in to the underwear accepter.

Flash Gordon (-$1700)

I've now rotated 60 pins through my basement and have lost money on maybe 5, but last year on the way home from pinfest I made some bad "pinvestments". I brought an Attack From Mars LE and a Rick and Morty to Pinfest and both sold at "I don't want to sell it prices ($25,500)". I also played in my first pinball tournament and got the itch to practice up on some classics so I bought these two semi restored pins on the way home with my gains, ordered a P3 system and a few modules, and still had walking around money left over. I dropped $4900 on the Flash Gordon and put another $300 into it. I really liked it, but $4900 for a Flash Gordon is awfully rich and it took a while to get my money back out. I ended up putting $500 in parts into that Nine Ball and then traded it for a Fathom that was a little easier to move but by the time I was done with that I was down $1500 on it. I still love early Solid State games and try to keep at least one in the collection at all times (Xenon is filling this hole now) but I'm in Xenon $2600 and when its time to let it go I'll be able to get my money back out. I bought at the height of the COVID "Bubble" (such as it was) and these were my first higher end early solid states. I was expecting 20 or 30 buyers for every pin just like I had on most of my previous sales, not a few nibbles over weeks. You live, you learn. I can't complain too much as I was up $6,000 off of the AFMrLE and Rick and Morty sale after playing those for months and over a year respectively. I lean more and more towards temporary trades over time and despite my chart am trying to slow down my trades.

Pinside_forum_6921277_2881469 (resized).jpg

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Haven't sold anything yet although the day is coming I am out of room 3 pins ago. Biggest overpay was $6200 for a players shadow probably would lose 700-800 or more selling that. Whenever you buy a game 3 more pop up two weeks later it seems.

Deadpool pro (Upgraded to a premium), not because values went down or anything though. My wife's good friend really wanted one but the price was out of reach. I gave him a smoking deal on it ($4k). So technically I lost like $750 on that game.

I buy games to play though, if I enjoyed them while I owned them then that's what is important to me.

At the time, a few guys on R.G.P. were making fun of me for “losing my ass” on “Avatard” …ah, the good old days. I’ve sold a lot of games and made a decent amount of extra cash which has kept the cost of the hobby down for me, so overall I’m still “ahead”. If I sold my Ultraman, that would be my biggest “loss”…but even then, in the context of my hobby spending, I’d still be ahead. Good thing I love the game & don’t plan it on selling anytime soon.

Is this a thread about your losses or a place to brag about how you never took one and the thousands that you've made? I've taken a few minor losses, made a little on some, but never a monster profit. When it's time to sell, I make sure that I'm the lowest around relative to condition. When it's time to move on, it's time to move on. This is a hobby for most, not a business.

TMNT Premium. Bought NIB for I think $7500, sold for $7400 a year later with around $900 of mods in it (Pinwoofer system, art blades, shaker, etc). So a $900 loss.

Personally I think some people are too obsessed with not wanting to loose money on any pin. It's going to happen from time to time, just accept it's less then most hobbies. Sometimes you loose money, other times you make money on games.

When it comes to newer games you really need to hold into titles until they are out of production for a few years before they go up in value. That may become more difficult with NIB prices reaching all time highs.

There are some people in this hobby, a certain podcaster for one, that almost seem to thrive off people losing money on games. Every month there's always a few "haha look at this person losing money on their game" type of post. Pretty low, I don't get it.

Ultraman and Halloween

You bought both?
That’s a tough one.

Eight Ball Deluxe LE

When Williams closed and Stern had Striker Extreme out, I needed a source for games. Started picking up NOS stuff on Ebay ( this was before all the repro stuff became available ) to try and restore an older game and add it to the line up.

First one I had enough parts for was EBD LE. NOS playfield, got it clearcoated, NOS pop bumper caps, NOS plastics, etc. Brought the electronics up to speed and repainted the cabinet.

Had over $5K into the game plus the price of the game, around $1300. Everybody always asks for EBD. So I thought great. Then reality hit. Game was lucky to do 50¢ or a dollar a week.

Gave up, went to sell it. Finally sold it for $900 or $950. After the fact everybody was, "I would have bought it if I'd known you were going to sell it". Gee, they must have missed the for sale sign on it for 6 months and I kept dropping the price.

Sold the other NOS parts and gave up on that idea.

LTG : )

Have never lost much, maybe a few hundred here and there on a game, but have hit BIG profits on some pins. Snagged some Craigslist/garage sale games back in the day for $500 or less (SafeCracker, DE GNR), picked up a HUO Elvira LE on Craigslist about 2 years ago for $11k. Have sold other games for nice profits that far exceed any losses over the years, but the pinball market is soft now and it's definitely a buyer's market. If I sell my Alien LV, I will take at least a $1k loss, but I'll more than likely trade it for another pin of similar value. If I needed to sell pins right now, I'm certain I'd be taking some losses. I will never buy another new pin again wasting money on taxes, shipping and post-hype depreciation. At current new pin prices, I can't see any titles significantly appreciating how they used to. Time will tell...

I really dig that spreadsheet! I think I'm going to start something similar to track my pinball journey.

Mind if I ask a few questions?

Is "Temp traded in" a game you owned but just traded/sold onto someone else? How does it differ from "Owned temp traded out"?

What is "Rank" in this context? Top 100 rank? Your personal rank?

What does Yellow represent?

Signed,
A fellow spreadsheet nerd

Sure thing!

A "temp traded in" game is a game that I have on loan from someone else in exchange for a game that I have "temp traded out". I've done this a few times. You try my STTNG I'll try your Metallica, you try my Twilight Zone I'll try your Avengers, you try my Deadpool I'll try your Spiderman, you try my Deadpool I'll try your Iron Maiden. I only had one game temp traded in without a partner and that was a Walking Dead a friend asked me to sell for them. Its easier selling pins inbetween DC and Baltimore than in rural North Carolina.

Rank is where they rank in pinside according to my personal rankings. Yellow items are P3 modules. Not really sure how to count it as I have a Weird Al, Heist, and Cosmic Cart for my P3 but they share a single cabinet. Black items are items I owned that never worked. Usually picked up at a discount when picking up something from someone else or the occasional estate sale or save it from the junk yard save.

Full Throttle LE

Game bricked, all I have left is the backbox which serves as a gameroom TV......

I really appreciate all the honesty in this thread. If you can be honest with yourself about your hobby, including your expenses, kudos

Who's on the hook if something in the game breaks? The owner or the person who had it at that time?

It depends...

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/temporary-pinball-trade-in-the-vadcwvpa-area#post-7171879

I've never lost money on a pin ever. I buy projects usually and fix them up. That said, I have to say I've made little money fixing EM's. It's a labor of love and I hate to see a game get parted out. Only parted 2 out of the 75 or so I owned.

I have made serious money however on some amazing deals that just fell into my lap. That makes up for spending many hours working on EM's to get them playing perfectly so others will enjoy them.

BTTF, +/- $800 loss.

My fault, I didn't give the game as thorough a look over as I should have. The game had issues that I was aware of, but not the melted coils and excessive battery corrosion. I dropped over $1K into it to get it operating correctly, but between that and a not high demand title at the time I wasn't able to sell for what I had into it.

I did pretty well overall. Never got killed on anything.

Overpaid for a BSD when I first got in the hobby but it played great and I played the hell out if it so that doesn't bother me.

Only real regret was I had a later version Tron NIB (with the chick backglass) I got a steal on as part of a trade deal and was going to just hang onto it as NIB since I didn't love the game.

Sold it for one reason or another... don't even want to know what it would have sold for a year or two ago.

RZ - Bought NIB and sold for a huge discount.

TWD. I've only ever played it on location and I rarely have good enough games to get my $1 worth. I'd guess I'm down about $200 on it.

I lost about $2,500 on my nib rz.
I haven’t purchased a nib since. Only used from now on.

Yup, you should have just bought it.

I have never lost money selling a pin.

That said, I could have made a lot better profit on some of them if I had waited a few years! C'est la vie.

I'm sure there's some reason (?), but this graph/pinside doesn't recognize the diff'rent versions of Dialed In. So I don't knowm how the pricing tiers of 8k, 9k, & 12.5k fit into this?
Doesn't list them for Hobbit either. I'm guessing because no actual game play diff'rences maybe?

Lost money on the first pin I ever bought. But it wasn't the lost money that bothered me, and it wasn't being lied to by the seller (someone just about everyone on pinside knows), it was really the amount of time I spent trying to get the machine to work. Time spent finding a pinball tech who knew what he was doing after another caused more problems than he solved. Time spent on the phone with other techs and experts helping me diagnose issues. And the stress.... the stress I felt at having made a large financial expenditure and having my wife and family look at this one pinball machine we had and think "sure would be nice if it was working... kinda sucks that it isn't... when's it going to work again, dad? etc."

Those first five months of pinball ownership absolutely sucked. But I got it right in the end. Spent the money to make the machine something I was proud to sell - even if at a loss. But that time I can't get back. It's only helpful as a lesson and a warning: buyer beware.

I haven't sold the ones I'll likely lose money on, but losses will be there.

Got burned by a seller who shipped a DrWho. Lied to me and purposely avoided disclosing major damage, board issues, DMD issues and crazy amounts of cleanup and corrosion. Easy 1k loss off the top, plus labour.

Dialed in might see a $500 loss.

Ultra man will hurt the most. I like the game though, so I'll keep it for a while. I'm guessing 3k there. I'll never buy another spooky.

Even with these losses, all my other pins are gains. I was lucky to get in just as the madness was starting.

Is it fair to say that any NIB Spooky you will lose money on?

Pretty sure TNA appreciated nicely from the original launch price.

It is fair to say that.

The only way this is going to change is if they start making (much) better games, or doing smaller production runs like they used to.

If you call that a Spooky.
How's the re-run price holding up?

R+M is still maintaining decent value it seems.. not sure about ACNC.. starting to see them float longer now... but I feel like the timing is a key since prices have come up so much now, it pulled those machines up along with it somewhat.

Kind of lost track.. It definitely took a while to fill up the allocation IIRC.. more than people were guessing anyway.

As Rudy says, "Hey, it's only pinball"...