when it comes to old consoles its too easy download an emulator and have the same experience without dealing with worn out 30 year old equipment, and i can do it completely for free..... it just takes 5 minutes of research, i have done it myself. many attempts have been made to replicate pinball, you simply cannot replicate beating a real steel ball around in a metal box on a wooden play-field. unless virtually reality happens in a real way. still i dont think its possible to replicate gravity in the truest sense. video games are just too easy to recreate. i know your buisness might be buying and selling old video games, and while i completely respect that, i personally wouldnt pay $5 for a NES because i can get the experience for free on my PC hooked up to my 55" TV. now the only think it wont replicate is the few shooting games the NES had..... duck hunk. wont work on a modern TV anyways, i believe a CRT was required for the gun. i could be wrong.

There isn't a SINGLE pinball machine in this category. This thing you just made up doesn't exist.

You don't know what you are talking about and shouldn't have started this thread.

remind me again which title was $2000 in 2007 that is $10k today?

google: "clueless newbie"

The last time the economy was in the shitter, pinball prices kept going up. It almost put STERN out of business...but, the poor economy didn't cause all pinball owners to simultaneously bail on their games.

Well this already happened due to MMr. Restored MM's were going for $12-$20k. Now that you can get a new one for $8k, those prices came down. Supply and demand. Same's happening for AFM. Not every game is going to be remade, though.

Magic Girl.

To be upset, your premise would need to have some logic and merit behind it. It doesn't. People with EXPERIENCE and KNOWLEDGE are trying to educate you. Try to learn from this knowledge instead of pushing back with snark.

he was being facetious. Magic Girl is a disaster.

Technically, the game was only made available this year...

google :"I'm too poor to afford the games I want so I'm gonna pray for a market meltdown like hundreds of broke newbies with sticker shock before me"

For what? Magic Girl didn't exist in 2007. It practically doesn't exist now. It was never $2k or $10k. Not sure it can even be called a "game", really...lol

google: "making parents basements jokes and thinking I'm the first"

We gonna do this all day?

Calling MG a "game" is a disservice to actual games.. Magic Girl is more like a "Scam in a box".

I started collecting 3-4 years ago at age 33 -34 and look at my collection....... however most people ive meant are fairly older in the hobby. But still plenty of collectors in their 30s from what ive seen.

Google "Projection".

that's not what "example" means. a thing you made up that does not exist is actually ... the opposite of an example.

Here's a hint: If you HAVE to start a thread with a disclaimer that your aren't trolling, you are trolling.

You are trolling and have been all day. This thread has literally sucked from the first sentence.

Jumping into a forum filled with tons of people with decades of hobby experience & trying to "educate" them when you know every little about the hobby and its history is going to result in people poking fun at you, especially if you keep digging deeper rather than LEARNING and engaging in a fact-based conversation. When you're all passion/no knowledge yet trying to "pinsplain" to us, that's what we call "pulling a Kaneda".

okay ... so if a machine that was $2000 in 2007 and is $10,000 today is "a typical case", then you should be able to cite at least one "example", right?

Too much of your opinion has no proof points. The critical issue is that of new pinball machine prices and I don't see any of the manufacturers reducing prices any time soon, even in the worst crash (banking crisis 2007) prices across many things were not affected hugely. Demand is stronger and stronger for home use and it's that demand that will be the multiplier for pin increases outside of the link to new pinball machine prices.

That's what the every stakeholder said about your housing market.

Interesting hypothesis, @g0nz0, although I'm sure the American market is much different than the European one. I've bought all 3 of my flippers for about $4000 each. I'm pretty certain I could sell my TOTAN for almost double that.
I for one know that back in the days when arcade games were declining and video games were on the rise (say about 2004-2010) pinball prices at home in Poland declined dramatically, and from posts on the Polish Pinball Forum I read that there was a massive problem with Germans abducting our pinball machines. Basically, the Polish currency has a very high relative purchasing power parity even though it's weak. For example, I've been living in the United Kingdom for a quarter of my life, and £20 buys the same amount of goods in a grocery store as 20 PLN, but 20 PLN is about £4.
I was going through the Polish equivalent of eBay a while ago to see what I've missed out on (I dare say I'm one of the youngest collectors on this forum). Average pin price for top titles was around $2000-3000. I saw one auction, I think the price listing was $3500 (about 14000PLN) for TZ, AFM, and Congo for the lot. Try finding Twilight Zone under 4000 EUR nowadays... mine was a lucky catch!

Basically what I'm saying is - pinball has become a collector hobby, and collector hobbies aren't cheap. I don't think pin prices will decline in the future, unfortunately. Especially now that servicing pins has been so easy (manuals are available everywhere, 3D printing and other techniques allow you to make easy replacement parts, etc.). Not sure about how it is across the pond, but the production of MMR didn't help to depress MM prices (the ones I've found were around 7000-8000 EUR, way above what I'm willing to give for a single game). I guess Europe is interesting because despite the limited supply there's also a limited demand. I mean, when people ask me what my hobbies are and I say pinball there's only a handful of people who know what I'm talking about, and most of them think Windows XP rather than the actual thing.

Anyway, we'll see what the future holds.

all i'm doing is asking you to support your own assertion that a pinball machine meteorically rising in value from $2,000 to $10,000 since 2007 is typical of the market. in fact, all i asked for was one single example. how is asking you to back up your assertion a personal attack or trolling?

How do you know how much money he has for pinball? I could afford any machine I want but prefer to get beaters and bring them back better than new. With that said, no I won't be buying any nib's.

I surely didn't read every post so I don t know if anyone said it.

If you want prices to drop that's simple. Stop making them by hand. When a machine can string the game together then prices will decrease. Until then, never gonna happen

You're missing the fact that as time goes on items like this will become MORE collectible - especially as supply diminishes.
If the current pinball companies don't stay in business, prices will go even higher. IMO Pinball machines are in a special class of collectible that will maintain it's collect-ability for at least another 50 years, if not much longer. Comparing video game consoles is an extremely bad comparison - $20-$50 games with millions of available copies (cheap item, very large supply) and they get outdated and practically useless compared to new versions of the same. Pinball games of today will not be extremely outdated in 10, 20 or 30 years - because at it's core it's all about the ball and the flippers.

i really wish i knew where some of these collectors get the money for NIB games. from what i can tell and my perspective the typical wages around here are in the toilet. typical factory job is now working for some lowlife temp service paying $12 per hour. i make more then that only because i have a CDL class A, im far from rich but truck drivers are at least in demand. a very high percentage of the population makes less then $30k per year...... before taxes mind you. so is everyone buying these high end pins a filthy stinking rich exec or CEO? my entire collection is probably worth about $9K that's less then one high end game, and i think i have some pretty good titles although not A list. i focused on games that had good gameplay but were not top dollar machines. firepower for example, a phenomenal game maybe one of the best games out of that era, but games from that era typically arent where the money is at. im fine with that, i love that game...... and it was cheap in comparison. jokerz has great gameplay but really isnt that popular, high speed awesome game with but with high production numbers keeping the price low..... again i dont care its a blast to play. apollo 13 never really was a high dollar machine, i think its under-rated.

i have one DMD in my collection, and personally i dont think that weather or not it has a DMD makes or breaks a game.

a $10K pin, i would have to win the lotto or be out of my mind.

i am 36 so i was probably the last of people to see these things in the wild when they were newer. im talking MM or ATM. i just dont know where the money is coming from.

Call it a hunch. Nobody ever starts one of these threads when they can afford what they want (and they always want MM, MB, and Tron LE, not something cheap and cool like an EM or High Speed).

When I joined the hobby 15 years ago I saved up $350 and bought a Williams Argosy, which was and still is totally awesome. I didn't go on RGP and complain that I couldn't afford $3000 (!!!!!!) for an AFM and predict a market crash.

You just made this up. We aren't slowly losing collectors, we are quickly gaining them.

Facts aren't really your thing.

I googled "example" and it still means what I thought it did.

You don't think there has been a lot of new blood in the past few years?

OP have you been to any shows recently? They are insanely packed. I'd argue that pinball is more popular now than it was back when I was a kid. I was born in 79 and saw a lot of pinball in arcades. With leagues and competitive pinball, I see way more pinball than I ever did growing up. I'm fortunate to be able to go to PAPA headquarters quite often and get to see the impressive collection that they house. For the record, I currently own 6 machines and am going to look at another today. I play in league and the leagues are as strong as ever. The turnouts are incredible and there are a lot of good people. You may be correct that there is a limit as to what people will pay for a machine but as batman 66 SLE showed, we haven't quite reached it yet. If prices dropped I would scoop up a bunch of machines and I'm sure there are others just like me.

You missed my point entirely, which isn't surprising.

There's plenty of pinball machines - hundreds - that you don't have to be rich or stupid to buy. If you bought one, you'd get more joy from it than you did from making a troll post almost entirely built upon stuff you just made up out of thin air.

$6000-12000.

Why did you say collectors are dying off and we are losing them when the exact opposite is happening?

There's a lot more people that make in the 150-350K range then people realize. There's also a lot of people doing it at a much younger age then people realize. Lots of area's of the country are booming and there are good jobs for skilled workers that pay very well. No one in my area makes under 30K unless you are high school educated and in retail of some sort. Factory positions even start at $14 and up with great benefits in most cases.

The good thing about pinball is that there are pins for everyone's budget. If you plan and save even someone making 30K a year can build up a nice collection of cool games slowly over time. There's no need to chase after all of the new shiny games.

Can you provide links to any of your bullshit?

I'll wait.