I don't know. Of course, I want more people to SELL there, not shop.

Market share... Pynball isn't even close to touching the exposure that CL, ebay, etc... bring to the table. Mr. Pinball is ancient, and the reason why it is still popular, because of it's age. Honestly, the market isn't really big enough for all of these sites to actually have large volume. I setup Pinlistings.com a little after Pynball.com, and even with advertising, the volume simply wasn't there.

Which is really the issue.... A lot of people want top dollar for their machines (read as often overpriced), and the only way the can get that is with maximum exposure.

A CV for $3800 still listed?

I guess I left out that part... Pinlistings.com I changed over to be an actual online price guide. User submissions of what they ACTUALLY sold a game for, or bought a game for. I haven't listed it here, but feel free to use it and register machines (preferably with pics) that reflect actual trading hands prices.

I have always believed (and know it to be true) that there is the "perceived" pin market, and the actual pinmarket. Pinlistings is the ACTUAL pinball market. It definitely needs more data though...

Oh, and if you click on the game, you can see the date of the transaction- 2010 in the case of CV.

I am not sure how but I have been to the site before. Somehow directed there from a google search. Glad to know you're doing a little bit extra to further the hobby. WTG

see that now, thanks

Slow down; you move too fast.

Back to Pinside Pinball Forum.

that is funny! ME TOO FAST!!!!

Probably looking for that $3800 CV....

the site will only be as good as the people that contribute to it. It could be a REALLY awesome resource if people contributed to it.

Well this contradicts your statement that nobody uses it.

I.e., if nobody is using it, how is it one of the best resources available when it comes to buying/selling games?

I don't bother using it anymore, there just aren't enough people who use it.

If it needs more data, it isn't the ACTUAL pinball market.

There is absolutely no way to cover the entire actual pinball market, so I guess I should rephrase, it is actual pinball market prices. These are the prices machines move at, rather than what people "think" they should move at.

I check Pynball.com every day and I always advertise there when I'm selling a game. I wish move people used it.

I'm trying to sign up now, but it hangs after confirming my location. ...seems he's been having some site issues from what I see on the news section.

OH - I finally got a response:

Proxy Error
The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server.
The proxy server could not handle the request POST /app/guest/signup.do.

Reason: Error reading from remote server

....not good.

Well....there is one reason.

I don't like the site because I don't own any pynball machines. I don't restore pynball machines, etc. The way the word is misspelt annoys me. Yes, I know it is on purpose, but it still bugs me.

I check it once in a while. Not much going on in Cali.

agreed

I've looked at it for potential purchases and agree that the interface is great.
Also agree that there really are not many listings.

Too many "Wanted to Buy" not enough "For Sale"

Five pages of For Sale, sixteen pages of Wanted to Buy. With the market the way it is currently, I don't really even see a reason to have Wanted to Buy. List a machine for sale on Pynball or CL or Ebay or Pinside or RGP and it will pretty much sell if the price is even close to right. Unless you want some very obscure machine there isn't much point. Six people want to buy MM. No kidding...

When/If I go to anything of mine, I will contact the handful of people i know that MIGHT buy it here and then go right to the WTB ads that are close.

That is cool if it works. I just keep seeing WTB ads right next to For Sale ads on CL, RGP, and especially on Pinside Marketplace. Something obviously isn't connecting up right. I would guess that a lot of the WTB ads go up and then once they get the machine they forget to take down the ad, especially if it took them a long time to get it. I would think there are a lot of, 'Oh Sorry... I already bought one...' if you are contacting WTB listers.

But I could be very much wrong here.

Hey,

I haven't used it. I've looked it over a couple of times, but I'm more inclined to post here or on RGP for a couple of reasons.

One, it gives me a lot more exposure. When I checked, there were 133 people online here right now, on a Friday morning. Make that a Sunday afternoon or evening, I would guess it would tap 200, easy. I'm guessing RGP is easily in the same range. More exposure means I'm more likely to get what I want, whether that's a new game in my house or a sale of something I want gone.

Second, if I were to venture a guess, I would say that a REALLY good number of people using Pynball found out about it from one of three places: Pinside, RGP, or maybe KLOV, but don't hold me to the KLOV thing, as I'm not there a ton. So, if I post an ad here and on RGP, I've captured almost the entire audience I'm going to get from posting on Pynball, and the only people I miss are the handful of stragglers who Google "pinball classifieds" and happen to look way down at the bottom of the first page of search results. I would guess a lot doing a Google search would just go to Mr. Pinball, as it shows up first. Whether it's better or not is a matter of opinion.

Third, posting here gives me a filter. If some guy contacts me on Pynball, I have NO idea who it is. Here, if I get a message saying, "LOLZ I saw u hd a Whitwatr fr sale rite me back pics mkay!", I can look around on the forums and say, "Yep, this guy consistently presents himself as an idiot, says offensive stuff, and I don't really think he'll be able to scrape together the money for this game, so I'm not going to do this deal." Then I can ignore him. On Pynball, I don't have that built-in background check.

I appreciate what it's trying to accomplish, but I'm of the opinion it's a bit of a solution looking for a problem. When I wanted a Black Knight, I posted on RGP saying what I wanted, and had one two weeks later. Same thing with TSPP; two weeks from the time I was doing a price check on Pinside to the time of purchase, and that includes 1500 miles of driving. If you've got cash in your pocket or a game to sell and you're already on this site, I don't much see the need to go further. Just my two cents.

Luke

It's too klunky, not very professional looking and I do not like having to spell pinball "pynball"

I like it too. I found out about it when an order from PinballLife included a post card about it. As others have said, I think the reason it doesn't get used as much as it could, is because it is relatively new, compared to the other resources. If it hangs around long enough, maybe it will get used more.

I know this gets said about lots of resources, but Pynball "Has a lot of potential."

It's most of the pieces needed for a good marketplace. It's missing the most important one ... volume.

I really dig pynball

I find a lot of the same over-priced offerings there that I find in other classifieds/auctions with just as much a notion as to if the seller is willing to negotiate. At least offerings in a "community" such as pinside tend to be more realistic or offer prices more in-line with the knowledge base of the community.

Posted a game on Pyn the other day and got 2 replies of interest within hours. (Gotta sell somethin to pay for my ECLEWOZ)

I will start looking at it more. Honestly I kinda forgot about it. Gave it a glance each time I got a Pinballlife order due to the advertisement cards and never really took to it I guess. Looks like a great resource.

John, here. (The guy who wrote and runs Pynball.com) Sorry for the long post.

After two years of promoting the site with flyers to Terry and Marco, and booths at pinball shows, I'm agreeing with Tim and Luke. There just doesn't appear to be enough of a market for the site. The site is up for annual renewal. I'm having a hard time justifying another year of this. It may catch on, eventually, but it doesn't make financial sense to do so, as it wouldn't pay out for a looooonng time, if ever.

My spin on it was to use data from the IPDB to provide a multiple listing service (MLS) for pinball machines, basically--and (attempt to) streamline the listing process. Pinball machines are not real estate properties to be entered into a MLS. Folks just want to type up a blurb about what they have to sell in the stream of other pinball discussion or items for sale (craigslist)--no complexity of having to enter the right data in the right fields, and big deal if some piece of info is missing, someone will catch it and ask in a response post. Can't get much simpler than that. I believe activity on pinside supports this theory. There are more Pinside Forum FS postings than Pinside Marketplace listings--though both have far more than pynball

Yeah, If I were to do it all over, I would have picked a different name, especially considering that google corrects to "pinball" when you try searching for "pynball".

Thanks to the guys who have promoted the site in forums like this. You and about 130 other folks faithfully visit the site every day. I consider the site a success in that I've had folks that really have taken to it enough to want to tell others about it. Your guys' minds probably work much like mine does.

And a big thank you to Terry and Marco. Those guys volunteered to send out flyers without batting an eye... they really care about the hobby.

Tim, I'd love to have a beer with you sometime, and talk shop about hosting pinball web sites.

Finally, don't use Dreamhost as a hosting provider, if you ever are thinking of hosting a web site. http://pynball.com is down right now, as a matter of fact, and there's nothing I can do about it, except change hosting providers. :p

John

John, if this is goodbye to pynball i am sorry but thanks for all of your efforts!

First one is on me, make it to the next MGC and we will make it happen. Pinball is such a niche hobby, it is hard to get anything moving mainstream. The only successful sites in pinball seem to be all of the chat forums that pop up regionally and globally. It is much easier to talk pinball stuff I guess.

Oh an Dreamhost is pretty dang awful, based on a couple of sites I have done for other people that already had it setup. As much as people bag on GoDaddy, in 10 years, I have had ZERO downtime. I have 17 websites setup with them and they just work....

I liked Pynball.com it helped me find a great deal on 2 machines!

When I'm looking for a pin, I use every available resource. These days you don't have much choice if you actually want to score a game.

pynball is a great site, easy to upload photos, I don't know why people don't use it more. Used to be well over 100 pins for sale, it's slowly dwindling.

Dwindling for sale listing count? That's easy enough to address. I can just have listings expire in a year rather than 90 days.

looks like it may be gone, or the servers down...

Bummer, pynball was a nice site...

This is too bad to hear about Pynball. I was really hoping that it would catch on, as it really really made listing and looking for specific parts so much easier than other sites. I rarely sell anything, but when I did I would generally put it there, and never had an issue with it...

Funny, we have had the *exact opposite* experiences with Dreamhost. It has hosted both the MGC and the GOAT Store web sites for years now, and we rarely run into any downtime. I think the key though is that you need a person with tech knowledge to actually talk with them a few times, as we had some downtime early on, and we had them keep switching us around on servers until we found one that it wasn't an issue on.

Knock on wood, we have experienced only minimal downtime in the last five or so years.

I would like to keep all markets separate. If someone knows about one they might not know about all of them. Then I don't have to race to the machine with cash in hopes of getting it.
Everyone knows about CL when is the last time someone got a machine using it??
I have not been able to get to one fast enough in over 6 months. Unless I knew the person personally and asked for dibs if it was ever sold.
I would like some of the sorting features to be incorporated into pinsides' market place

just my 2 cents