when people stop paying insane prices

edit: people will have to stop paying and then games will have to go unsold for a while before the sellers put two and two together. I had to put that in there or one of the argumentative types would point out that won't happen concurrently.

If you are not buying , then it has stoppped for at least one person...

Not sure it's going to.

Over here in UK a SUPER MARIO WORLD SNES NIB game has just sold for £8,300!! That is more than a MM and how many of those SMW games were made 100,000's,!

There are some crazy people out there!

11k OBO is not insane at all...... all he/she is doing is preventing the lowball offers to come in. no matter what you price it at (on Mr Pin, epay, CL, here, etc), people will lowball. Stick a MM for $10k and people will offer $5k. So if you bump up the price 100%, then the lowball offers at 1/2 the price end up being right on the money

11000 = they will take 6k

Just look the other way if it bothers you. Take an economics class.

I think you're right. It's Mike Chestnut selling the game, and he listed it a few weeks/months ago without a price, so he probably got a ton of lowball offers. Mike is a reasonable guy though. I'm sure if someone really wants this they can work out a deal.

Not to mention, if you want a particular game, and want a really great one. What would a top of the line restoration cost ?

A High End Pins job on Banzai Run would like end up way more than $11K when you add in the price of a base game, all new parts, and labor.

LTG : )

Prices might plummet on Friday

theend.jpg

prices will never go down as long as there is demand - it's a limited commodity

never say never. oops

This is one of the reasons I started buying NIB. Since the older games I wanted were in the same general price range I figured why not get the thrill of unboxing a new one.

I don't see the craziness ending anytime soon either. As evidenced on this site there are a lot of new people getting in the hobby and the same amount of classic machines that there has always been.

12/21/12

Remember when Tatman sold his Indiana Jones for $6k and the next week all IJs went up 1.5K? That was a good time.

Whirlwind, with its cooling fan action, will skyrocket.

Recently battled with the notion of dropping an insane amount on a MM.
My AC/DC Premium cost me just over 7k taxes in and it's unbelievable.
I have a tough time believing that an MM at twice the price will bring that much more fun to my house when it's much older technology. Sure, it's a great game and rated number 1 for a good reason, but with any kind of technology, newer has some benefits.
The LEDs in my AC/DC and the programming kick serious butt.
I expect 15-20 yrs from now, nobody's going to want AC/DC if AC/DC III has come out.
I need to log some hours on an MM to see what all the hype is about.

banzai run for $11k? now that IS insane

I stopped buying for a while since its killing the wallet and I cannot justify it.

Some guy and CL asked if I wanted his Adams Fam. He said they go for 8k on Ebay and told me to piss off after I told him around 4.5k.

Price aside... If this machine came from the same orginal owner as the HUO MB from Mikes collection, you will be getting an absolutely perfect machine.

Im not sure that is a fair comparison. The amount of people who have love for a snes game because they remember playing it everyday as a kid is at least 10 fold to people who remember playing a MM even one time in there life. I know the math is fuzzy but think about it.

Or you could just buy Stern's The Pin to save some $$...

50%-80% 0ff the gmail tire kickers demand
so they can make a profit flipping it on ebay

It's been said over and over.....people can ask whatever they want, doesn't mean they are going to get it.

Talk to the buyers if you need an answer.

This and only this

Mr Pin prices are always a little higher with eBay next. BR is pretty rare but that's almost double what a restored one goes for but what the hell do I know

LTG is correct considering Chris did my Banzai. Mike Chestnut is a great guy and has awesome pins. These are hens teeth and the price is fair. Almost all these games are checked, crazing and beat to death. Good Luck Mike.

Gotta love the people that think that because something is LISTED on Ebay for a price that's what it SELLS for. If they check completed listings they'll see them relisted over and over.

When people stop over paying.

I have a last action available: 11,000. !!!

You will then be a pinball peasant....

When people are paying the rediculous price of $1300 for a playfield the prices will stay high considering that is only one of the many parts in an MM. I can't imagine how much time and money some of these guys put into saving those games from the dump when they're paying $4500 for a beater to begin with.
Pricing is not going to go down. Look how much they went up during the "recession" in the first place. The manufacturers are not going to get any relief on wages....there are no unions involved. In fact most business owners are worried about their costs going up due to Obamacare, so they will have to pass those costs on to the final buyers.

A HUO Banzai, went for @$16000 about 6 years ago.

I will be selling one of my restored Banzai's in a few months when I get it put back together with a minimum price for $10,000 with both playfields touched up and clear coated and the cabinet redone by Matt at Back Alley.

How much do you think it costs to have this stuff redone?? try finding people that will redo Banzai playfields, HEP wont touch them anymore. CPR is taking pre-orders, my guess is as good as yours when they will done.
I had a gentleman wanting to buy and ship my 3rd unrestored, taken apart Banzai and have it shipped to Australia a year and a half ago.
Banzai Run is a piece of history, double playfield one of a kind.

Some people are big into HUO pins, how many HUO BR's do you think are out there??

Scott
Detroit Pinball

This is pretty much where im at also. I'll be looking for a title in the spring, if i cant get it for a reasonable price, i'll just go for a NIB. No way will i pay close to NIB prices for a 20 year old machine, it just doesnt make sense.

It doesn't look like the insanity will end anytime soon. From NJ craigslist today:

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I'm selling three pinball machines in great shape. They have been in my private collection for over 30 years but now I need to make room for more pinball machines. They all work perfectly with the exception of a few problems that can easily be fixed by changing a fuse or replacing a bulb. The glass is new and the rubbers have been replaced. Also waxed. I know these machines were only valued at a couple thousand dollars a few years back, but now they are worth much more, just look on ebay or craigslist.

Addams Family $15000
Star Trek TNG $11000
Medieval Madness $26000

No emails or scammers. I only respond to phone calls. Ask for Jack (as in Get-Real-Jack).

cnj.craigslist.org link

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How Jack has had the machines for 10+ years before they came out is certainly interesting. Jack only responds to phone calls but curiously forgot to include his number in the ad.

So you think that ad was serious? You completely missed the sarcasm?

It was just too good not to post it.

My personal favorite is people who post games at double or triple market value and then you offer them even slightly above market value and get a nice rage filled response about you are a low balling scum, lol.

There is no such thing as low ballin, simply making an offer and negotiating.

I was wondering exactly how the world was going to end.

I don't get this either. If they're gonna pull "if you don't like the price don't buy it" then "if you don't like the offer don't take it" should be just as fair. I would much rather someone be upfront with how much they want to pay than come poke around for an hour and THEN majorly undercut the asking price.

I also think $11k is about what a HUO Banzai Run should sell for. Supply (only one on the market and most likely one of very few that ended up in a home) & Demand (it may take a while but someone will come along and be willing to pay this, in the meantime it will remain with the dude who owns it and he can say he has a HUO BR). No need to let it drive you out of the hobby. In fact, it shouldn't even concern you.

Well everyone's definition of "low ball" is different.

If you're asking $3000 on a machine that frequently sells for $2500 in like condition and I offer you $2000......that's not a low ball. That's an offer and the beginning of negotiations.

Don't like to negotiate? Then state that your price is firm.

Now if I offered $850 on that same machine you could simply ignore me.

In 5 years these prices may look like bargains

Totally. A lot of sales are lost due to shitty negotiations. For example, a guy had a game on craigslist for $3,000, which was about 2 years ago and much too high for the game. $1,500 was a really fair price at the time. I told him the deal with the market value and past sales etc and said I would be solid at $1,200 cash pick up any time, hoping to negotiate. He sent back saying I have no idea of the market value and Im an idiot blah blah. I ended up getting a message from him about 3 weeks later asking if I still wanted it and he was willing to go down on price because he needed to sell asap. I said sure, I'm at $1,000 now because I was tapped out for another game. He said for the sake of getting it sold he'd do $1,200. So , I snagged it for $1,200. If he would've messaged me back the first time and didn't make himself sound like an ass hat and said something like " i would really like to wait for more offers, but i will let you know if it doesn't sell" then i would've been much more willing to pony up fatter cash. I was easily ready to pay $1,800 for the machine, no doubt. But, he burnt the bridge, came back crawling because no one made any other real offers on his insane price and he got burned on one guy wanting to buy it.

I'm sure this makes no sense and rambled, but my point is I just go nuts when people are ass hats in reply to an offer. Perhaps the buyer is willing to pay $2,500 if you are asking $3,000, but it truly does not hurt to ask $1,000. I will always hit with a low offer at first, always, but am prepared to pay what is needed.

If the hobby keeps expanding, the prices aren't going to deflate much, if at all. When I first started collecting seriously, a MM would run you $4,000 or so, and that was considered "crazy money" for a machine. I saw CQ MMs go for $6,500 many times, and I couldn't believe how expensive they were.

Now it seems that half the games in my collection are $5,000 or higher machines. None of the games I currently own (TSPP, TZ, SM, AFM, TAF, WH2O, BoP, OXO, DE Simpsons, LOTR) were over $3,200, the most I've ever paid for a game, when I bought them. And that $3,200 (SM) seemed liked a big deal at the time, but it was less than a year old.

Today, I probably could only get the BoP, OXO, and DE Simpsons for under $3,200, especially given the condition of my machines.

Personally i think what drives the prices up are the cost of NIB pins. As they rise, so does everything else. If a NIB pin only costs $4500, there are a lot less people willing to shell out $4000 for a 15-20 year old machine when a NIB can be had for $500 more. Certainly this doesnt apply to everyone, there will still be buyers who just HAVE to have that machine, but i think most would side with me, especially people new to the hobby. There are thousands of titles and many are very very fun games. Not everyone buys into the hype of "whats hot" right now.

It is all supply and demand, but I agree that NIB prices can be to blame also.

Insane prices will stop when people stop buying NIB pins for ever increasing prices.

It is a chicken/egg scenario (NIB cost more, so old go up; Old cost more so NIB increase) but I realy think the NIB prices are the main impetus behind the current RATE of increase.

Im also not even really sure that there are more people getting into the hobby now then there was 5-10 years ago. An internet forum can easily give the illusion that there are more people getting into the hobby as the people that are out there and have been out there find these forums. People joining forums is not an accurate measure of how much a hobby is growing, if indeed it even is. Without haveing some really hard numbers im not sure how you would gauge this growth or shrinkage.