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?

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.

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 like how this guy completely ignores people like Rarehero pointing out exactly the problem, which is that he's acting like a troll because he's ignoring everyone, and then calls everyone else trolls.

Mods, at what point can we just call this guy a troll and give him a nice eject?

Here you go, I'll quote his post which pretty much covers it.

This is a perfect example of what he's talking about. He's laid out exactly the issue, and you just ignore it because "that's one view." Even though it's the view of pretty much everyone else, myself included.

Guess what - yours is just one too! But somehow yours is right and all the experienced pinball collectors are wrong? Or they're just trolling you?

I mean, come on.

I think I'd take Rarehero's predictions over yours, since he's been collecting for at least a decade and has absorbed some actual information in that time.

I've been at this for over 20 years and I agree with him. Are we both just wrong because somehow you know better?

I started collecting in the 90's and even when it was just me and a bunch of operators at an auction, games still sold for real money. I mean, a Twilight Zone for $800 is crazy cheap now, but that's still real cash when a new game was $3,500. So, again you're wrong.

But you have no facts or information to back that up, so it's literally just your opinion based on nothing, whereas others have posted tons of information showing otherwise.

So, you're just pontificating to hear yourself speak and ignoring everyone else. That's a textbook troll.

Technically pinball boomed more in the 90's than the 80's - I mean, TAF came out in 1991.

Didn't Stern own or have a stake in Nutting Associates, which is how they snaked the Bally boardset?

The main difference is that Model Ts have questionable utility in the modern world, given their unique control systems and limited capabilities, whereas 60's cars operate essentially the same as modern cars and can be driven in regular traffic, so they have more general usability.

Just like flipperless games are worthless, and most woodrails, but "modern" (ie. 70's EMs and up) continue to rise in value as they play similarly enough to modern games to maintain their usefulness.

Pinball as a whole might fall out of popular favour again, like it did in the 90s. I'd say there's probably only a half dozen years left before it wans, but there will always be a core collector group.

Yeah, not happening in my lifetime. Self-driving tech is still decades away from being viable and even then it'll be many more decades before they outnumber regular cars. I can see gasoline engines becoming illegal except for a "vintage permit" or something in my lifetime, but not for many decades.

ANYWAY, sorry to add a cargument.