Quoted from PinballHelp:Not necessarily. There are threads indicating there's new people collecting games, but there are also collectors getting out of the business, dying, passing on games, etc.
For example, let's look at Boston Pinball's ebay sales figure history for pinball machines:We are seeing an increase in pinball sale prices, BUT we are also seeing a decrease in the amount of games sold.
So what the above graph can illustrate is not that the collector market is necessarily growing, but that the law of supply and demand works the way one would expect.
Another thing the above graph distorts is the "average sale price" which is undoubtedly going up because modern games are selling for five to ten times more than older games. So while it looks like "pin prices are skyrocketing" they really aren't. Their *Average price* is because now people are buying and selling $7000+ games in addition to the standard $500 EMs and $1000 SSs. When you take that into account, it doesn't look like the market is growing that much - there's just higher-priced machines being sold which makes the average go up.
Not look at a specific graph of a specific game sale history:Sale prices for TAF as illustrated above are relatively stable.. they're going up only ever-so-slightly. If the collector market were actually growing significantly, we should see a more significant rise in the sale prices of one of the top pinball machines, but instead, we're only seeing a modest increase which is consistent more with an actual decrease in the number of buyers and available machines.
In short, there's not a whole lot of evidence that the pinball market is dramatically growing. The uptick in pricing is more consistent with a) less machines being sold and b) newer pinball machine prices pushing up the averages.
I would be hesitant to place so much emphasis on Ebay data. I have been an active buyer and seller for over 15 years now. Ebay has significantly less relevance as an active marketplace for buying and selling pins today as compared to 5 or 10 years ago.
This past year I purchased 5 pins and sold around 15, none of which were advertised or found on Ebay or any other sales channel. Other games that I indicated I may sell in the near future already have a few solid buyers lined up for them. Is this hard evidence? No, though I don't need to see a chart of numbers to tell me that the market is stronger now than it has been at any other time in the past 15 years.
Our pinball hobby is growing. Otherwise, how do you explain the explosion of tournament and league play, and the slow increase of location games in different parts of the country? Not to mention the growth of the limited edition games aimed at the home collector?
Brian Bannon