Give it a year or so when people start flipping these $8k plus pins for a lot less to keep funding the new stuff

The days of buying a new pin and getting your $$$ out of it are over

I don't care but a lot of people haven't yet figured out that phenomenon

Simple solution. Drain your own thread. Problem solved.

nice score!

Can I ask what makes you think that people new to the hobby are only interested in the most expensive machines? I can't think of many hobbies were new users start with "the best". Most new to a hobby start out slowly and over the years their collection and budget gradually grows. When I started in this hobby, I started with a modest budget. I then went out to buy a machine within that budget. Sure, many of the more expensive titles were out of my budget, however that sticker shock didn't cause this complete one-eighty that you seem to be implying. I still bought a machine. Additionally, I still want some of those machines that initially gave me sticker shock.

Thats funny,she told us she drinks to forget shes married to you.

If everyone hates these price bubble threads so much why is this one at seven pages in as many hours? Must not be that redundant after all.

Even though he said...

we all know he isn't.

Please read the thread before plagiarizing jokes.

"Why I Feel that your Pinside post ratings Are Going To Plummet."

this is the market price today. No one knows the future, pinball prices could go up or down.

If you go to a restaurant and say you are buying lobster, often it will not say 'market price' if nobody wants to buy it the price will go down.

A while ago maybe 12 years ago a V12 Mercedes would cost you $112K brand new and some people thought that was crazy/insane and would not buy it and would advise others to not buy something at that insane price. Today the cheapest V12 Mercedes is $220K.

Just because something costs a lot of money does not mean that prices are going down in the future.

* this is the requisite Cargument *

I know cars are different that pinball machines, people can lease cars, people can take loans on cars, people can get tax write-offs for cars, cars are notorious depreciators. Cars are not the same as pinball machines.

But in the sense that no one needs a $220K V12 Benz and no one needs 10 pinball machines either. When you get past what is needed, there is somewhat of a correlation. I mean if all you want is A-B transportation it's cheaper to get an Uber or just buy a Civic and call it done. Same with Pinballs you don't need to own one and if you do, you don't need to own $8K AFMr.

You should give the older games a chance. I'm a similar age as you but it's the early SS games that get me excited. Part of it is the sound effects and music are similar in style to NES or Genesis.

At Allentown, Stern Freefall left the biggest impression on me. Every time that electronic voice would say something I had a big grin on my face. "Geronimo". I like how on these games you have to work for multiball. This one required spelling Sky Divers. You could do that by hitting all the lanes and switches associated with each letter or hitting the kickout in the middle which spotted a letter. It was very rewarding.

this is probably true. When I bought my pins, I never thought I'd get the full purchase price back. If I make a profit or a loss it's still that I buy for fun not investment.

I don't go on vacations and expect to make a profit, I do it for fun and the experience.

I don't buy expensive TV set and HT equipment and pay Netflix and/or buy discs to make a profit. I just spend money on these things to have enjoyment, often in 10+ years the equipment is trash. I just figure it all as entertainment.

Currently (so far) pinballs have been cheap entertainment for me. Yes I did lose $1500 on XMLE but other pins like SM that I bought used and added some mods. I sold for the same price (minus loss on mods) so maybe lost $200 in 18 months but figure if I payed $.75 per play. Other pins I would probably net zero or gain. But I figure my pins a lot like my home theater system. Maybe expensive but I spend it for the enjoyment.

In all if I pay (net) around $.75 or $1 per play I figure that I am doing ok.

I am active in the investing (stocks and bonds and options) so not like I am buying pins for investment that's crazy and I don't think anyone really is doing that (buying with the hops of getting rich off future price increases).

Sadly I think the price of almost nothing is going to plummet. In the near future.

But I think things are going to get better for a lot of people. Basically I'm predicting prosperity for many of us.

What does this mean for pinball. I don't know exactly but I think many of us are headed for some good times. Enjoy them my friends. Good times.

what some people may not get is that some of us don't have arcades or Barcades in our location. If I want to play pinball, it's way more easy and convenient to play in my basement.

I make money and I spend money and if I want to buy a pin, I will. I think BM66 was over priced with the premium costing the same as a usual LE. With the LE costing about 2 pros and the SLE costing about 2 normal LE pins.

Someone at pinfest asked me how I could afford NIB games.

My response was: "When you're single, your pockets jingle."

And you don't have to pay retail for the 12 beers you're gonna drink...not a drop in the bucket.

Ding ding ding, we have a winner!

It adds up as much beer as i drink!

Pinballz in Austin is byob though. Major thumbs up.

I'm 37, hardly played pinball as a kid and now look.

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Yeah...but there's nothing to do in Rapid City. There's, like, your pins and Mount Rushmore. That's it.

Yikes. That Avatar is scary.

That cargument about brass-age cars is bogus. The problem with those things is they're barely drivable on today's roads - you certainly couldn't use one as a daily driver. They're not as generally useable as say a 1950's or 1960's car. I suppose the pinball equivalents would be flipperless, which are equally as useless. But there's WAY more "modern" pinball machines around than those old bone shakers.

That said, the prices on EMs have been climbing too - I regular see them $1K and more. Which doesn't seem like much but these are games that were $50-$100 when I started. So the tide is lifting all boats.

I have to agree, OP is doing the usual newbie blowhard thing and posting a bunch of crap like they're the first person to ever think of it, even though if you spent five seconds searching Google, you'd see this is well worn nonsense. It's kind of embarrassing.

I mean, if you want to stick to the usual cargument, he's basically saying "The prices of Ferraris are insane! I think the collector market is going to tank in a few years." Really?

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I was just thinking that avatar is awesome!

With so many new companies and titles, new games are going to be like new cars: they will lose an initial 20%, possibly more, on cost unless they kick absolute ass and have low production. LOTR is a good example of a machine that is correctly boosted for the market, and it will rightfully retain that boost.

What I think everyone should pay attention to is the amount of wealth and supply/demand.

Wealth:

Just because you struggle to buy an 8k pin, doesn't mean there aren't 20 million North Americans (not to mention the rest of the first world) that can easily afford to buy several 5k+ pins and enjoy them.

Supply/demand:

The demand for pinball, in general, is on the rise, and this is obvious by looking at production and the market. Stern is upping its production, and companies like JJ and AP are producing great titles. As for a secondary demand, there is a large interest in younger people; for example, the league I am in is mostly young people recruited by older people. Will this new market replace the old? YES. There aren't that many 40+ year-old pin collectors out there, comparatively speaking to other major hobbies. I see the market at least doubling, and a key difference with the new members is that these kids are meeting owners, not just seeing pins in arcades. I wouldn't have imagined owning a machine when I was younger. My league is small, and a couple of the kids already have plans on buying in the future.

Is this a rich person's hobby? For A list titles, absolutely. Are there a lot of rich people? Yes. Will there be more rich people that like pinball machines in their dungeons in the future? For sure. Will they want Twilight Zone over the newest digitally enhanced machine? Yes. It is simply a better playing machine. No LCD will change that.

Oh yeah, also - almost no one I know played pinball in arcades when they were teens, us 40-somethings all played Pac-Man and shit. We all discovered pinball in our 20s and 30s. No reason the Nintendo generation won't do the same, same as the PS4 generation.

Thank you

Funny I don't know anyone that played Pac-Man in their teens...then again I guess it's all which time frame it was.

I started collecting arcade machines and then found a cheap pin on Ebay and bought it and then I was hooked. I discovered Pinside and it was all over. You don't have to have played a specific pin or any pin to get into pinball. The crown jewel of my collection is my RRWOZ. I paid over $9000 for it and maybe I won't make my money back but I don't care because I bought it for fun, not as an investment. Also, we won't run out of rich people. There will always be some new guy with money looking to spend it on something he can show off to his friends.

I do sometimes wonder how some of you have enough money to buy pins when you can't even capitalize, use punctuation or use the correct your/you're or their/there/they're.

haha I was wondering when this thread would finally hit rock bottom, surprised it took so long

Haha! That's not all. I have 5 kids.

The previous owner was a big fan of LEDs. It looks pretty awesome in person but does stand out a bit from the less flashy/gaudy pins.

The collector market isn't going anywhere anytime soon. As long as they keep making "perceived collectibles".

It's the majority of the pinball market that buys pins and plans on selling them when it gets old and they are tired of playing it. Happens to all pins.

Today, for example, you bought a Hobbit "LE" for $8500 and you sell it for $7k - 7300 if you are lucky. That same story is going to true for a lot of pins north of $8k.

It's in part because there is no such thing as a THLE, 1500 and different versions don't make it "collectible".

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People that live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Read your first sentence.

It's easy to spell APPLE, all you needed to know.

How is he throwing stones when he then wrote this ..

It's weird. I thought it was a Tron at first glance and approved of its appearance but when I realized it was Avatar I thought, "what?!"

images (resized).jpg

I thought we were talking about NBAFB! Avatar would draw a wtf from me too.

This is what I originally thought he meant and was just typing it up.

Sorry, but you aren't stating the truth here....Pins now are exactly the same as with console games; it's simple supply and demand. NES was the best selling system of the 80's/90's by far; there were tons of them and tons of NES cartridges in existence...Look at what's happened to Neo Geo and TurboGrafx prices, they have skyrocketed...You couldn't give those Turbo games away in the late 90's; I know, I made some horrible trades with them for N64 stuff, and wish I could have that back...I'm looking at you Beyond Shadowgate.

Same as pins today; Well, you missed out on the 2k AFM from 10 years ago, get over it; it is what it is. There were only 3500 of them produced, so that's just economics.

However, given the resurgence in popularity of this hobby, you now have PP and Chicago Gaming Company doing a remake, which you can buy brand new for $6500; that's awesome, and should be appreciated.

I should add that Arcade Cab prices are skyrocketing right now, not for shitty conversions, but for true dedicateds, the prices have gone up a lot in the past 3 years alone. Paperboys for 5-6k, Vector games at 2k, Dedicated Midway fighters at 1k+ easy all day.

You guys didn't look at that pic.

We should meet sometime. Granted, it was my very very late teens, but a couple of friends and I used to go over to Bickford's in Framingham Massachusetts to get their Baked Apple Pancake (tuesdays was two for one!) and dump quarters into Pac-Man. Those were some fun times. We had the whole game memorized and would get to the key levels where one tiny incorrect flick of the joystick ended the game. Good times.

Wake up!!!! Almost 328 posts while you were sleeping. Oh wait some of them are yours.

I'm a little slow, got it now, thought we were discussing his Avatar not the pin Avatar, yes that Avatar is loud! I do see a Tron down the row.

I did but my goddamn rods and cones melted so it took me a few to recover.

By our teens the fighting games were becoming top dogs around here, besides pins. Mrs. Pac-Man maybe, but she blew Pac-Man out of the water and it was almost impossible to find and actual PM.

Console games are crazy and not in a good way. I refuse to pay $5.00 a cartridge for crappy NES games like Double Dribble. It used to be fun to buy video games but not anymore.

I haven't noticed an upswing in arcade vids either. I'm sure there's a small natural raising of prices but nothing drastic. Everything around here is still less than a thousand most days.

Thumbs up was for the know-it-all smiley btw... not for your great comeback

No one likes an angry & arrogant newb martyr. Pinball is supposed to be fun. It's your choice to be fun or to be a douche. You're choosing douche. It's not too late, but that's on you.

Same deal - the A-List games are inflating like crazy. I see a ton of $2K+ classics selling. But the thing to remember is they made 10x vids than they did pins. Something like 200,000 Pac-man machines? Insane.

I agree, but in my day (im a child of the 80`s) , only chicks played Mrs Pacman.

So how much was a Flintstones in 2007 and how much is it now, I would consider this a cheaper one, but is it?
In 2007 I saw them for $1,100-$1,500, now $4-5K. I purchased mine for $2,200 in 2013

And where are you concluding that "If people are buying the cheaper ones and skipping over the shiny ones then that will also cause the over priced shiny ones to fall in price. Because demand will drop" I haven't seen this drop in demand and yet all the cheaper titles are being bought up, in fact the cheaper 90's DMD titles are going up! How much is Hook? Lethal Weapon 3? Tales from the Crypt? today!

Don't get me wrong, I too wish the prices were not what they are, but the reality is......they are. I don't like paying what the demand is, but remember it is your money (in my case my money) and you may choose to do with it as you will.

Value is relative to what someone is willing to pay... and so is a perceived deal, if you feel you got a good deal on a game are you wrong because someone would not think it was a good deal? Ones own perception is reality.

Just keep looking, hopefully you find what your looking for and I hope you get a good deal, in the end who really cares what anyone else thinks, just buy what you like and play it, enjoy it and have fun!