((((((Update- wrote this 1 year ago and thank goodness I was right! Please read my 1 year update below and tell me what you think.))))))

Written April 2013
I am a newbie and was looking for a fun hobby to collect and have fun with, not that kids and bills aren't fun but anyway. I bought my first pin in january and just got second last week. I am now a collector I guess.

There has been talk of a pinball "bubble" coming because prices are rising on the pins, especially new ones. I will tell you why I think pinball will move forward and not crash for a long time. I will compare pinball to other "bubbles" and hobbies.
Top 10 reasons why pinball will be OK-

1. You can actually play pinball - unlike 99% of other collection hobbies out there. Think about it, you can't play with a baseball card, you read a comic book once or twice and put in plastic and you are not taking your vintage Mego figures out of the box.
2. Any age can play and enjoy. Yes, the 20 somethings and under love their X Boxes, but if they played a new Iron Man pin chances are they would dig it. Someday they may put one, then two, down in the gameroom.
3. Arcades are dead, but the new games are hip and cool and are easily marketed to the younger generation (if not now in the future). 10-15 years from now these 20 year olds who don't care about pinball will see a Avatar pin and be interested because they dug the movie when they were younger and want to give it a try.
4. People are making money selling pins, but no one is quitting their jobs to do it full time. Look at other bubbles, Baseball cards, Stock market in the 90's or real estate. People were quitting there day jobs. When those markets slowed a little they had no income, so they sold slowly, than fast, then crash. Pinball is hard to make a living from sales and service.
5. Investors do not like big, heavy items that have huge shipping costs. You could sell a stock for $5 or mail a comic or baseball card for $5. Exactly how are you going to sell a storage unit full of pins? Long process. "Wish I was closer"-we hear that every day.
6. New pins are expensive, but you have an army of older pins that are awesome for under $2000. They are still reasonable and some just as good or better then the new pins. Everyone has their opinion on that and they vote with their choices in their game room.
7. You can put in sweat equity in your collection. You can work on your machines to make them more valuable. This sweat equity can make you not a slave to the market. You can buy a nonworking pin and revive it. You can't improve a X-Men #1 or a Mantle rookie or a stock you own of a company. Housing you can do sweat equity in though, but the materials and tools are expensive.
8. "If you have a pin you are in"- I see so much support each for each other on Pinside. When someone says "just got my first pin", even if you have 20 Pins you think back to how excited and nervous you were when you lugged your first one home. You remember people who helped you out in the past and pay it forward to the new guy. Welcome to the club! Other hobbies and bubbles had and have a bunch of braggers- stocks or real estate or people who rarely share their secrets and knowledge- sports collecting or art or antiques.
9. There is not crazy cut throat competition for pins. Yes, you want to get on the list for the new ones and you may miss a Craiglist listing, but the pin market is pretty wide open. Part of the reason is the size and shipping of these . You can reach out to people across the country and say "I am going to look at " " pin at a good price". With most other hobbies you can't put out there "hey there is a rare vintage camera for a good buy it now price I have a question on", because anyone can get it and have it shipped to them with a click of a button. Not pins.
10. Within the pin hobby you can move from any pin to any pin. You can trade out your old pins for new ones and they are all essentially the same- you have a ball, you use flippers to hit it and score points. It is rare that a person sells their X-men comic collection and buys a Spider Man collection the next day. In pinball if you get bored you could trade your Diner for a T2 or Adams family for a TZ and you totally change your collection without changing what you collect. Get it? Being board won't last long with pinball.

Opps just thought of this late
11. The next big investors in pinball are......drums....people who want to open a new pin company! Pinball doesn't even have any competition yet. Someone is going to challenge Stern- Jersey Jack?, some one else ,(could it be you?), and prices on new ones will level out and people will have more choices. Marvel or DC? Stern does not have sole ownership or pattern on pins that I know of so you do not even have to go to court to get in the business. (Like baseball cards did in 1981 with Topps) Everyone says $10,000 pins are coming. That is enough money to get new business people and their money into it. This will drive technology and make pins cooler and cooler and could bring in the younger collectors. The i-pod, with 10,000 tunes in your hand, may of crashed jukeboxes, but technology will add a new layer of pinball machines and make them better........or not.

Pinball is cool fun and I don't know which is better the Pins or the Pinsiders who own them!
Let me know what you think. Will it survive?
Thanks for everything.

(April 2014 update - 10 reasons why it is not going to crash this year and keep going strong.)

1. I think pinball today is at a great point with prices leveling out. Steady prices mean steady demand and a calm market. We can just play pinball and not worry about our pins becoming worthless or we need to buy more now because I won't be able to afford them later. Ah.
2. Newer machines are slowly depreciating, but people are catching them at reasonable prices, so they are not crashing. They are depreciating like a car really - a 200 play machine will get more resale than a 1200 play machine and you may sell it faster, but you probably will not get all your money back on your mods.
3. New pins are selling, but there are no flippers of NIB pins. The NIB Trons get leveled out by the NIB Avengers.
4. Older pins are leveling out. If prices aren't rapidly increasing there is less chance of a crash and if prices are not rapidly decreasing there is no crash. There are still so many good pins in the under $2000 range, which is a good price point to bring in a new collector.
5. Still hard to make money in pinball, I mean like quit your job and sell pinball for a living kind of money.
6. It will not crash because there are no investors. Investors cause bubbles and busts because they mess with the supply of something that people want or need. How many people have a dozen NIB pins they are going to buy to flip? Have you heard anyone say "I just bought 27 Shadow's as an investment!"? $4500 player Shadow's by Christmas!
7. The threat of a remake will keep popular pinball prices in check. Look at MM. Maybe we enjoy the play of a game more than the nostalgia of it?
8. Pinball has a great demographic - 30-50 males who have a few bucks and are looking for something fun. We are going to be around for a long time, hopefully. As long as Iron Man does not kill us. Hence, no bubble.
9. Important point - let me know if it is true. Most of us lose money in pinball and we are happy doing it, but we don't lose our shirts! We tell ourselves we break even and tell our wife's and girlfriends we break even, so we stay out of trouble. We really lose a few bucks though. If we add up all the costs to purchase, repair, mod, ship, gas and wear and tear driving our vehicles, money to enter tournaments and extra beer we drink along the way, we are all losing money. Our time? Do not even bother valuing our time repairing and restoring because you will never get your money back. We all love what we are doing and it is worth every quarter we lose and I don't mind at all losing a few bucks more in the future to have this much fun. If we love what we do = no bust!
10. We are in the best hobby with the best people ever, so why would it bust?

Thanks for a great year and looking forward to a great year ahead.

Bump

Yeah, mabey you are right in that respect. Pinball is getting up there for the even above "average joe". Just because my household does OK and I can afford a couple of grand on a pin does not mean everyone can.
I am still going on my "pinballs are too big and heavy to move or ship = investors stay away" view. Could be wrong.
It is a great hobby though. What else could beat it? Cars, mabey?

Gordon Gekko would never sell his Medieval Madness Pins that low! Not now.

(FYI - He owns 8,000 of them!)

Mabey it is the wild West.

Right! LED lights use even less electricity! We need a pinball that runs on batteries, like a Volt.

Reposted and looked at it from your angle on the $2000. $1000 pins are fun also though. There are still pin deals you can get out there though. You have them in your collection right? They just don't come everyday. The thrill is in the hunt, right?

Added the investor part. Let me know if you agree. The OP is always a brilliant idiot.

The future technology of pins. Did not think of that. Competition would drive this. Would it bring the teens and 20 somethings in now? A major tecnology shift would prolong the bubble correct?

I am 41 and I never really played pinball growing up. I played Galaga. I was drawn to pinball because I had a gameroom and needed to put cool stuff in it besides my pool table, dart board and Foosball. I got my first pin 4 months ago and one more last week and play my pins more than the other games

You think a lot of people are into and know about pinball because of the circles of people you hang with or blog with, but 99% of people know what a pinball is, but have no idea that they can actually own one. They do not know how to get one, what to buy and what you need to take care of it.
There is such a big untapped market out there. You know the deal all it takes is for a person to start playing a little, then you go on Pinside and you know what happens next.

60 in 1's do well if the cabinets are not beat to sawdust.
You are right, cycles happen in collecting. One good thing is many pins of the 2000's are geared toward the 7+ years old to 20 somethings interests today- Avatar, Transformers, Avengers, Iron Man, Batman, Spiderman, Family Guy and for the seniors -Wheel of Fortune! These titles are timeless and a 20 year old today will someday look for something cool to put in their loft (or space ship) and they will see a 15 year old HUO Iron Man and say "I loved that movie when I was a kid", then he will play and want it. Could make the cycle be more bearable or none at all.

Thanks for all the input. Great posts! I am new and am learning a lot.

I wanted to add that when I bought my first pinball, I had no expectations of it appreciating in price. None!
I will be honest, I do not want it to drop to nothing and have to bring it to Goodwill to get rid of it, though. I figured worse comes to worst, I will put a few hundred into it, sell it for $500 less than I paid and have a cool collectible my friends, family and I played for a couple of years. (Downside is not too bad).
I think that most people who get into it are just like me, you like it first and you don't want to get hammered on it in resale or pump hundreds and hundreds in on repairs (who does), but they don't see the pinball as something that is going to up in value where they will profit off their pin. Hence, semi-bubble proof from new collectors who just like to play.

Some day Soon I will post a topic "Why Pinball is NOT cut throat (yet)" check it out. (It is not compared to other hobbies)!
Thanks for everything!

Bumping the bubble post form last year. Will it bust this year? Nah.

I mentioned that the threat of a remake will keep popular titles in check in the future. The $8,000 threshold will be tougher for older pins to break through.

We know our friends up north have it tougher on pricing and availability. We feel for you.

CC and BBB are examples. If you own them, you have to have "remake" in the back of your mind somewhere. If the stars and licensing agreements align there could be a AFM, SS, TZ or AF remake also. Probably not, but it will be in the buyers and sellers minds. Maybe these titles will be priced at $6500. If it is would people be in?

Even if $8500 is high to you, that is a pretty reasonable cap for the best titles in pinball, compared to other collectables markets.

I agree with you, although people do not want something they collect to become worthless. What is even worse is the reason something becomes worthless - people do not care for it any more.

Part of collecting is owning something that not only you, but others care about. People may say "I hope the market crashes, so can buy everything up cheap!". That is fine and all, but there is a price that goes along with the cheap pinballs. If the market crashes there will be no more Pinside, no places to order parts from, no where to ask collectors how to fix games, no pinball leagues, meet ups, tournaments or expos and all the broken
Pinbots and EM's will go in the dumpster.
A big crash will be you in your basement all alone with your "cheap" MM, SS, CC and BBB and no one to to play with and that would suck! No?

Right, my example of worthless was Beanie Baby worthless.

We are at a good spot right now in Pinball where most of our pins go down a little in value (if we include maintenance) each year, but that is fine because we play them every week and we sell them or trade them for another pin that went down slightly last year also. That makes things even. No?

There will always be specific exceptions to go against this, but mostly this is what we may find.

^^^ Amen! ^^^