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Should you expect to get your money back or make profit on a pin? (After maintenance and tweaks not mods!)

David_Vi

David_Vi

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This might be related to the recent pinflation, but I think this has been relevant a long time.

For example I see listings that often contain things to the tune of, "I've spent xxx on this so it owes me it back".

I'm finding it hard to explain this so I'll give an example from my own experience. I bought Black Rose in 2020, £1800. It was in overall decent players condition, already had LEDs but a few locations were missed. Had some flashers not working in hard to reach places (funnily a note was in the manual about them not working). It had a weird hacked metal sheet held in place by star posts to make the broadside shot easier. (Turns out the broadside gate was missing a rare tiny spring which I managed to get from Pinparts Australia).
I put that area of the playfield back to how it should be, with correct posts and no hacked ball guide.
Fixed the manuals failed flashers.
Rerubbered with perfect plays, Reinstated knocker, rebuilt flippers, replaced a lot of GI and insert LEDs with comets to fit the theme better or where they were missed on a previous led job. Fixed a wireform so the ball doesn't fly off it on a clean shot, leveled and cleaned up the canon mech ans adjusted ball guides for intended ball feeds.
There's other bits I don't recall but im a fiddler by nature who likes games to play well.

I did a lot of what I'd call, maintenance and fine tuning to get the best out of a game. I don't think these necessarily add more value to a game but I spent a lot doing these, especially parts from Australia 😳 not to add the hours and hours of labour doing these things.

Should I have expected that money back?
I don't believe so. To me it's a hobby and I get enjoyment out of it 95% of the time.

I sold it earlier this year (to a community member who had shown interest and helped me out previously) for about the same I bought it for, ok I added £200 on, which is nothing and I believe people would pay a lot more for similar games. It seemed like a decent price even if it was more than I had bought it for.

Considering prices have skyrocketed, for example I bought my Road Show for 2.9k in 2020 (and I was told it was overpriced!) but now they seem to sell for around 4k.

In my opinion a games worth what that title is worth. If you overpaid then had to fix it up, new boards, parts etc should you expect that back?

Isn't this pushing prices up?

Opinions please 😁😁
 
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I don't charge for tweaks to pins. So, I've replaced auto-plungers and flipper mechs and repaired the Caster's Club on Fish Tales, and I would never add that to the price of the pin - it's part and parcel of owning a pinball machine to keep it playing well and, after a while, deferred maintenance shows in the overall condition.

However, I get a lot of people who seem to think inflation isn't happening in the wider world or that a pin *should* be worth a certain amount, even if no one is willing to sell or buy at that price, or that people selling should take a financial bath purely to be nice. I can understand if pinball machines were a couple of hundred quid (I've thrown in entire promo card games with board game sales), but not with machines worth thousands. It feels like some people think that everyone they're dealing with can afford to airfreight pins from the US to the UK on Concorde, and that they sit in a bath of gold every night, to the extent that they can lose hundreds on a sale without it hurting. And it suspect it's that which is really driving the "I will try to charge you for every pound of Marco Speciality postage I have spent shipping a coil". It's kinda a way of politely justifying asking a real, fair price without sounding like a greedy ****.
 
Big Phil said:
Simple answer it sells to whoever wants it at that price.

Put it up for sale at a price you want. If it doesn’t gain interest, reduce it by £50 a day.
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I think it's more complex than that.

So, my experience is, as follows. You post asking "How much is a 2025 Stern Spartacus Pro?" And someone goes "Oooh, they're worth £2.50."
  • You post a Wanted ad for a Spartacus for £2.50 and get no one replying, at all. It's like crickets out there. Eventually, after some banter by DM (and in person), someone offers you a Spartacus for £3.50.
  • Alternatively, you realise that you've spent £4 in total on your Spartacus, and you post it wanting £4. People get upset and say you're a greedy so-and-so, and it's too expensive, and no one buys it publicly. The entire advert has crickets. You do, however, get a tonne of DMs, some offering £2 for your Spartacus, and some offering £3.50. You sell it for £3.50 making a loss of 50p.
Eventually, you realise the market price for a Spartacus is actually £3.50, not £2.50, but this isn't public knowledge. So, the more-experienced folks keep posting, again and again, that Spartacus is a £2.50 pin, but it should only be £1.50 because the skill shot is entirely luck-based, there are too many naked warriors wearing neon loincloths on the backglass, and the music sounds like yodelling. And that they bought their Spartacus, ten years ago, for 10p from a pub skip. And no one ever realises Spartacus is a £3.50 pin.

Hence, I'm guessing that some people post adverts going "I know Spartacus is a £2.50 pin, but I have spent £1 on SCREWS. AND POSTAGE. AND A SINGLE FLIPPER THAT I HAD TO IMPORT FROM TIBET. TIBET, I TELL YOU. So, I'm really sorry, but have no choice but to offer this pin for £3.50 to cover my costs..."

There we are: my theory.
 
If you’ve replaced a ****ed play field with a brand new one then it would be reasonable to take that into account on resale. Sticking a new set of rubbers on is not the same thing 😉
Similarly if you bought cheap because the boards are ****ed then I’d expect a high price with new boards.

All kind of overshadowed though but the horror or pinflation.
 
Big Phil said:
Simple answer it sells to whoever wants it at that price.

Put it up for sale at a price you want. If it doesn’t gain interest, reduce it by £50 a day.
Click to expand...

I realised this was the answer after posting... It's worth whatever someone is willing to pay😂 or it won't sell.
 
johnwhitfield said:
If you’ve replaced a ****ed play field with a brand new one then it would be reasonable to take that into account on resale. Sticking a new set of rubbers on is not the same thing 😉
Similarly if you bought cheap because the boards are ****ed then I’d expect a high price with new boards.

All kind of overshadowed though but the horror or pinflation.
Click to expand...

I don't count a new playfield as maintenance, that would add value but I feel you can't really add your labour onto the price.

It's differently if you buy a game for a price and it turns out it has expensive issues with boards that you didn't know about. You can't really expect that money back.


For example we've spent hundreds possibly near a grand getting Diner working. It was bought a bit cheaper because the boards were screwed but at the end of the day it's still just a Diner and worth what a working diner is worth. Even if we've spent nearly 1k getting it working.
 
johnwhitfield said:
If you’ve replaced a ****ed play field with a brand new one then it would be reasonable to take that into account on resale. Sticking a new set of rubbers on is not the same thing 😉
Similarly if you bought cheap because the boards are ****ed then I’d expect a high price with new boards.

All kind of overshadowed though but the horror or pinflation.
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Yes, but that's overall condition. It's like a house. You don't charge people for repairing the bath tap. It's just that, if you fail to replace or repair anything, when you move out of the house, it looks like a bomb site and you lose money on resale. People are going to walk around the house, turn on the bath tap and be like "f*****g heck, I do NOT want to see the survey."

Same thing with pins. People should just replace the f*****g rubbers if they're worn. This isn't rocket science. No one deserves an award for basic maintenance. Thing is, if someone tries selling with degrading rubbers, I'm going to see the pin and think "what other horrors doth lurk in the CPU boards and beneath the playfield?" and the price I'm willing to pay will reflect that.

Likewise, if I replace the playfield, it's like building an extension. And, if I replace the rubbers, it's like painting the front room. It just makes the whole package look more appealing.
 
Big Phil said:
You’re really over complicating it. Put it up for sale, list the work you’ve done and the price you want.

It’ll either sell or it won’t. Forget the naysayers.

Then reduce it daily if you really want to sell.
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I've got nothing I want to sell, I was just curious as it's something I've noticed a lot in the last couple years when looking to buy or seeing listings
 
Its not really fair to add the cost of routine maintenance but if you've spent a significant sum getting the game working 100% then I don't see adding that to the sale price as a problem, after all people would want a discount for a game with loads of issues.

The only time I could see a problem would be overspending restoring a less desirable game (new PF, decals etc) then expecting to recover the outlay.
 
What if you bought say a TAF 10 or so years ago for £2k and only cleaned it and maybe re rubbered it, what you going to do then about the price😂
 
M4carp said:
What if you bought say a TAF 10 or so years ago for £2k and only cleaned it and maybe re rubbered it, what you going to do then about the price😂
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Mad profit. I suppose if I sold my Road Show I'd have to sell it at the current going rate of around 4k, but I'd feel dirty.
If you don't sell at going rate you'll be out of pocket when buying another pin as everything else has gone up.
 
David_Vi said:
Mad profit. I suppose if I sold my Road Show I'd have to sell it at the current going rate of around 4k, but I'd feel dirty.
If you don't sell at going rate you'll be out of pocket when buying another pin as everything else has gone up.
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Exactly mate, you need to adjust otherwise you will be out of pocket for your next one unless you get lucky.
I have sold a few high end WPC’s recently that I bought on here on here 2 or 3 years ago and only put the price up by the parts I fitted (no time) plus a drink and I have to spend a day travelling to pick mine up normally. I know what you mean about feeing dirty pricing something up👍
 
VeeMonroe said:
I think it's more complex than that.

So, my experience is, as follows. You post asking "How much is a 2025 Stern Spartacus Pro?" And someone goes "Oooh, they're worth £2.50."
  • You post a Wanted ad for a Spartacus for £2.50 and get no one replying, at all. It's like crickets out there. Eventually, after some banter by DM (and in person), someone offers you a Spartacus for £3.50.
  • Alternatively, you realise that you've spent £4 in total on your Spartacus, and you post it wanting £4. People get upset and say you're a greedy so-and-so, and it's too expensive, and no one buys it publicly. The entire advert has crickets. You do, however, get a tonne of DMs, some offering £2 for your Spartacus, and some offering £3.50. You sell it for £3.50 making a loss of 50p.
Eventually, you realise the market price for a Spartacus is actually £3.50, not £2.50, but this isn't public knowledge. So, the more-experienced folks keep posting, again and again, that Spartacus is a £2.50 pin, but it should only be £1.50 because the skill shot is entirely luck-based, there are too many naked warriors wearing neon loincloths on the backglass, and the music sounds like yodelling. And that they bought their Spartacus, ten years ago, for 10p from a pub skip. And no one ever realises Spartacus is a £3.50 pin.

Hence, I'm guessing that some people post adverts going "I know Spartacus is a £2.50 pin, but I have spent £1 on SCREWS. AND POSTAGE. AND A SINGLE FLIPPER THAT I HAD TO IMPORT FROM TIBET. TIBET, I TELL YOU. So, I'm really sorry, but have no choice but to offer this pin for £3.50 to cover my costs..."

There we are: my theory.
Click to expand...
How much coffee have you had?
 
Depends if the work/parts add value to the game, a game with a brand new playfield is going to fetch more than the same exact game with a chipping playfield. Condition is key after all.

Glad you removed mods from the equation, that really grinds my gears, especially when they are the **** 3D printed tat mezel churns out. Add mods but don’t expect to get the money back on them.
 
I've made money on pins, I've lost money on pins.

I tend to rotate them fairly frequently, and don't pay more than I think is a fair price, so usually break even when I move one on
 
If you look at cars, then the second hand price doesn't change that much to reflect all the extras that a car may have and which would have increased the new price considerably.

In a similar way, I reckon that for example a Dr Dude may be worth £1.6k give or take. Adding a £900 new playfield and brand new plastics for £100 won't make it a £2.6k machine. It might make it more sellable at £1.6k or it might make it a £2k machine. But unlikely you increase the price you will be able to sell if for by the amount that you invested in new playfield, plastics etc.
 
There isn't a perfect answer to this.

You could buy a NIB, do nothing to it and then it's worth less or more depending on the demand and fan appreciation and rating of the game.

You could buy a mod that isn't made anymore but is a huge hit and provides maximum impact to a game - like the Eli EL wire kit for Tron. This will increase the price of a Tron Pro more than mods that are still available, or total crap like those replacement bumper caps :)

You could completely re-rubber it with titans and put plastic protectors on and some other bits - I think this will go somewhere to £0 added to a nominal rational increase in price.

You could replace the speaker system on a Pro with a decent upgrade and I think this would affect the resale price in asking an increased price of one with the standard crap speakers.

I have seen some pins being resold with repainted armour - some people haven't got a clue and paint them to most revolting and hideous colours which negatively affects the game - in my opinion I would pay less than stock armour as it now needs sorting.

On the flip side a well painted armour set, or limited armour set from a well known artist can increase the value.
 
johnwhitfield said:
If you’ve replaced a ****ed play field with a brand new one then it would be reasonable to take that into account on resale. Sticking a new set of rubbers on is not the same thing 😉
Similarly if you bought cheap because the boards are ****ed then I’d expect a high price with new boards.

All kind of overshadowed though but the horror or pinflation.
Click to expand...
 
David_Vi said:
Yes sorry I didn't intend for it to go that way
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I think it’s inevitable, sadly.

Stern are pushing up prices through some combination of increased manufacturing costs and rising demand. Stern are the biggest source of new pinball machines entering the market. What this means is that, if you want to sell an older pin and buy a new one, the sale price of the older one gets higher and that looks ‘better value’ compared to the new Stern. The rising prices then feed down through all pins.

I think some people think, if everyone was nicer/less greedy/old timers, they could somehow stop this process - thus, why any thread about mods/profit turns into a pricing thread. But, in fact, it’s not something anyone can do much about - we’re just being rear-ended by Putin/Liz Truss/COVID-19 :(

I certainly don’t intend to make a profit on a pin. Obviously, some people will inevitably make a profit because they bought when pins weren’t cool. It’s exactly the same as houses, TBH. For the last decade, certainly in London, you’ve been able to make more money owning a house than by working - this isn’t a good thing either, but it’s not any one’s individual fault, it just means economic policy needs to change.
 
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paulg100 said:
Its like saying buying a house in 1960, maintaining it for 70 years then feeling dirty for selling it at todays market value :hmm:
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Because in an ideal world I just want to move my games on to someone else in the hobby who will enjoy it, I don't want to make a profit.
Because I like to think the same courtesy would be applied to me.
Otherwise prices go up and up.

I know it's not really like that. Just that's why Id feel bad making 2k profit on a game.
 
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