I've been curious about pinball numbers and whether (or how quickly) we're moving towards the dreaded 'market saturation' for modern machines (for sake of this discussion, consider modern machines to be DMD's and newer).
How many people and/or businesses collect/own machines? If I'm looking at the Pinside Map correctly, there are about 22,000 Pinsiders globally? Of these, maybe not all are owners/collectors. Also, there are probably a bunch of owners/collectors that aren't on Pinside. So what's the number globally for owners/collectors? ~50,000? Much higher? Lower?
How has this number changed from year-to-year? Maybe the stats on how Pinsider member numbers have changed from year-to-year could offer insight. Do we know these numbers / can they be shared? How many new collectors/owners join the hobby each year? Is there 5% growth year over year?
How many modern machines currently exist? Are there a million machines in existence? 1/2 million? Pinside top 100 currently lists 344 machines. Maybe ~200 modern machines with average of 1500 in existence each...is this reasonable...so maybe only 300,000 machines in existence?
Between all manufacturers, how many new pinball machines are produced each year? This seems to be a down year, but between Stern, JJP, API, and CGC...do they crank out 4000 machines a year combined?
How many modern machines get destroyed/junked each year? I'm guessing this count is much smaller than the number of new machines produced, right? So the # of machines is increasing right? Anyone have a feel?
So ultimately: Where do all the machines go? Are personal collections staying the same size - and the machines added each year are proportional to the new collectors/owners? Can the manufacturers keep up with demand of a growing market? Or are personal collections getting larger and larger: if so...aren't we all running out of room (I know I am)?
Happy to receive any firm statistics or even opinions/guesstimates.